Question

I would like to create a textwidget/component wich looks like the firefox address bar. I mean a Textfield wich allows me to place little Buttons inside the field (e.g. cancel/reload/…)

I tried customizing a JLayeredPane, by creating a custom layout manager which maximizes the Textfield, and places the remainder from right to left. My problem is that this gave painting issues, I would not always see the items I added over the textfield. This might be Jython related, I try suppling java.lang.Integer(1) to the JLayeredPane.add. However the Layers are ordered exactly reverse to what the documentation says.

TO cricumvent this I derived my own JLayeredPane class and redefined paint to call paintComponents which in turn iterates over all components and calls their paint method, starting with the textbox, the rest thereafter.

However I don’t always get the updates right away, meaning the buttons are hidden/only partly displayed and I can’t Interact with the button.

1. What do I have to acutally see the update on screen (is it hidden in a buffer?))
2. How can I make it so that I can interact with the buttons?
3. How can I shorten the Texxtfield, so that the text starts scrolling to the front before I reach the end of the Textfield so that the text does not get hidden by the buttons? I still want the Textfields area to extend under the buttons

edit: the button is only displayed in the right place after i make the window smaller, after that it is also clickable

edit2:
I took the freedom to boil the answer down to this, which hides away a lot of that button code/unneccessary stuff

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.ItemEvent;
import java.awt.event.ItemListener;
import javax.swing.*;

public class playground {

    private Icon errorIcon = UIManager.getIcon("OptionPane.errorIcon");
    private Icon infoIcon = UIManager.getIcon("OptionPane.informationIcon");
    private Icon warnIcon = UIManager.getIcon("OptionPane.warningIcon");

    public playground() {
        JPanel panel = new JPanel();
        panel.setLayout(new BorderLayout());

        panel.add(makeButton(), BorderLayout.WEST);

        JTextField text = new JTextField(20);
        text.setBorder(null);
        panel.add(text, BorderLayout.CENTER);
        JPanel buttonsPanel = new JPanel();
        buttonsPanel.setOpaque(false);
        buttonsPanel.setLayout(new GridLayout(1, 2, 2, 2));

        buttonsPanel.add(makeButton());
        buttonsPanel.add(makeButton());

        panel.add(buttonsPanel, BorderLayout.EAST);
        panel.setBackground(text.getBackground());

        JMenuBar menuBar = new JMenuBar();
        menuBar.add(panel);
        menuBar.add(Box.createHorizontalGlue());
        JFrame frame = new JFrame("MenuGlueDemo");
        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        frame.add(menuBar);
        frame.pack();
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }

    public JToggleButton makeButton() {
        final JToggleButton button = new JToggleButton();
        button.setFocusable(false);
        button.setMargin(new Insets(0, 0, 0, 0));
        button.setContentAreaFilled(false);
        button.setBorder(null);

        button.setIcon((errorIcon));
        button.setRolloverIcon((infoIcon));
        button.setSelectedIcon(warnIcon);
        button.setPressedIcon(warnIcon);

        button.addItemListener(new ItemListener() {

            @Override
            public void itemStateChanged(ItemEvent e) {
                if (button.isSelected()) {
                } else {
                }
            }
        });

        return button;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        javax.swing.SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {

            @Override
            public void run() {
                playground menuGlueDemo = new playground();
            }
        });
    }
}

Answer 1

may be could it be simple by using JMenuBar, with Auto complete ComboBox / JFextField for example

import java.awt.ComponentOrientation;
import javax.swing.*;

public class MenuGlueDemo {

    public MenuGlueDemo() {
        JMenuBar menuBar = new JMenuBar();
        menuBar.add(createMenu("Menu 1"));
        menuBar.add(createMenu("Menu 2"));
        menuBar.add(createMenu("Menu 3"));
        menuBar.add(new JSeparator());
        menuBar.add(new JButton("   Seach ....  "));
        menuBar.add(new JTextField("   Seach ....  "));
        menuBar.add(new JComboBox(new Object[]{"height", "length", "volume"}));
        menuBar.add(Box.createHorizontalGlue());
        menuBar.add(createMenu("About"));
        JFrame frame = new JFrame("MenuGlueDemo");
        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        frame.add(menuBar);
        frame.pack();
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }

    public JMenu createMenu(String title) {
        JMenu m = new JMenu(title);
        m.add("Menu item #1 in " + title);
        m.add("Menu item #2 in " + title);
        m.add("Menu item #3 in " + title);
        if (title.equals("About")) {
            m.setComponentOrientation(ComponentOrientation.RIGHT_TO_LEFT);
        }
        return m;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        javax.swing.SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {

            @Override
            public void run() {
                MenuGlueDemo menuGlueDemo = new MenuGlueDemo();
            }
        });
    }
}

EDIT

I can simply but a text input and some buttons in a container with a proper layout and achieve [Textfield…] [B1] [B2] but I want [Textfield [B1] [B2]]

with proper LayoutManager

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.ItemEvent;
import java.awt.event.ItemListener;
import javax.swing.*;

public class MenuGlueDemo {

    private Icon errorIcon = UIManager.getIcon("OptionPane.errorIcon");
    private Icon infoIcon = UIManager.getIcon("OptionPane.informationIcon");
    private Icon warnIcon = UIManager.getIcon("OptionPane.warningIcon");

    public MenuGlueDemo() {
        JPanel panel = new JPanel();
        panel.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
        JButton button = new JButton();
        button.setFocusable(false);
        //button.setMargin(new Insets(0, 0, 0, 0));
        button.setContentAreaFilled(false);
        button.setIcon((errorIcon));
        button.setPressedIcon(warnIcon);
        panel.add(button, BorderLayout.WEST);
        JTextField text = new JTextField(20);
        text.setBorder(null);
        panel.add(text, BorderLayout.CENTER);
        JPanel buttonsPanel = new JPanel();
        buttonsPanel.setOpaque(false);
        buttonsPanel.setLayout(new GridLayout(1, 2, 2, 2));
        final JToggleButton toggleButton = new JToggleButton();
        toggleButton.setFocusable(false);
        toggleButton.setMargin(new Insets(0, 0, 0, 0));
        toggleButton.setContentAreaFilled(false);
        toggleButton.setIcon((errorIcon));
        toggleButton.setRolloverIcon((infoIcon));
        toggleButton.setSelectedIcon(warnIcon);
        toggleButton.setPressedIcon(warnIcon);
        toggleButton.addItemListener(new ItemListener() {

            @Override
            public void itemStateChanged(ItemEvent e) {
                if (toggleButton.isSelected()) {
                } else {
                }
            }
        });
        buttonsPanel.add(toggleButton);
        final JToggleButton toggleButton1 = new JToggleButton();
        toggleButton1.setFocusable(false);
        toggleButton1.setMargin(new Insets(0, 0, 0, 0));
        toggleButton1.setContentAreaFilled(false);
        toggleButton1.setIcon((errorIcon));
        toggleButton1.setRolloverIcon((infoIcon));
        toggleButton1.setSelectedIcon(warnIcon);
        toggleButton1.setPressedIcon(warnIcon);
        toggleButton1.addItemListener(new ItemListener() {

            @Override
            public void itemStateChanged(ItemEvent e) {
                if (toggleButton1.isSelected()) {
                } else {
                }
            }
        });
        buttonsPanel.add(toggleButton1);
        panel.add(buttonsPanel, BorderLayout.EAST);
        panel.setBackground(text.getBackground());
        JMenuBar menuBar = new JMenuBar();
        menuBar.add(createMenu("Menu 1"));
        menuBar.add(createMenu("Menu 2"));
        menuBar.add(createMenu("Menu 3"));
        menuBar.add(new JSeparator());
        menuBar.add(new JButton("   Seach ....  "));
        menuBar.add(panel);
        menuBar.add(new JComboBox(new Object[]{"height", "length", "volume"}));
        menuBar.add(Box.createHorizontalGlue());
        menuBar.add(createMenu("About"));
        JFrame frame = new JFrame("MenuGlueDemo");
        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        frame.add(menuBar);
        frame.pack();
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }

    private JMenu createMenu(String title) {
        JMenu m = new JMenu(title);
        m.add("Menu item #1 in " + title);
        m.add("Menu item #2 in " + title);
        m.add("Menu item #3 in " + title);
        if (title.equals("About")) {
            m.setComponentOrientation(ComponentOrientation.RIGHT_TO_LEFT);
        }
        return m;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        javax.swing.SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {

            @Override
            public void run() {
                MenuGlueDemo menuGlueDemo = new MenuGlueDemo();
            }
        });
    }
}