Question

I want to make my text field clear the text when someone clicks it. How can I do this?

Answer 1

on java.awt.TextField you can add a MouseListener like so

TextField field = new TextField();
field.addMouseListener(new MouseListener() {

    public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {

    }

    public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e) {

    }

    public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e) {

    }

    public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent e) {

    }

    public void mouseExited(MouseEvent e) {

    }

});

The reason being that java.awt.TextField is a subclass of java.awt.TextComponent (which, in turn, is a subclass of java.awt.Component). The Component class has a addMouseListener() method.

Alternatively, you can replace MouseListener with java.awt.event.MouseAdapter has it encapsulates all of MouseListener, MouseWheelListener and MouseMotionListener methods.

From JavaDoc (of MouseAdapter):

An abstract adapter class for
receiving mouse events. The methods in
this class are empty. This class
exists as convenience for creating
listener objects.

Mouse events let you track when a
mouse is pressed, released, clicked,
moved, dragged, when it enters a
component, when it exits and when a
mouse wheel is moved.