Question

I have a JDialog with just a few components inside it. I want to make the dialog as small as possible. Currently I am using pack(). This has the unintended effect of reducing the dialog’s width so much that the title is no longer completely in view. I want the dialog’s width to always be great enough such that the title is always completely in view.

I am using swing. I realize that the title bar appearance/font is determined by the OS. I would prefer to stick with swing so at the moment i am planning on calculating the title string width based on the font of a JLabel. Then I will set the minimum width of one of my components equal to that.

Is there any better way to pack a JDialog while keeping its title visible?

Answer 1

 public static void adjustWidthForTitle(JDialog dialog)
{
    // make sure that the dialog is not smaller than its title
    // this is not an ideal method, but I can't figure out a better one
    Font defaultFont = UIManager.getDefaults().getFont("Label.font");
    int titleStringWidth = SwingUtilities.computeStringWidth(new JLabel().getFontMetrics(defaultFont),
            dialog.getTitle());

    // account for titlebar button widths. (estimated)
    titleStringWidth += 110;

    // set minimum width
    Dimension currentPreferred = dialog.getPreferredSize();

    // +10 accounts for the three dots that are appended when the title is too long
    if(currentPreferred.getWidth() + 10 <= titleStringWidth)
    {
        dialog.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(titleStringWidth, (int) currentPreferred.getHeight()));

    }
}

EDIT:
after reading trashgod’s post in the link, I adjusted my solution to override the getPreferredSize method. I think this way is better than my previous static method. Using the static method, I had to adjust it in a pack() sandwich. pack(),adjust(),pack(). This wasy doesn’t require special consideration with pack().

JDialog dialog = new JDialog()
    {
        @Override
        public Dimension getPreferredSize()
        {
            Dimension retVal = super.getPreferredSize();

            String title = this.getTitle();

            if(title != null)
            {
                Font defaultFont = UIManager.getDefaults().getFont("Label.font");
                int titleStringWidth = SwingUtilities.computeStringWidth(new JLabel().getFontMetrics(defaultFont),
                        title);

                // account for titlebar button widths. (estimated)
                titleStringWidth += 110;

                // +10 accounts for the three dots that are appended when
                // the title is too long
                if(retVal.getWidth() + 10 <= titleStringWidth)
                {
                    retVal = new Dimension(titleStringWidth, (int) retVal.getHeight());
                }
            }
            return retVal;
        }

    };