Question

I’ve been working quite a bit on a game, not too fancy, and i was wondering on what the best way to make a menu screen would be. I am currently using a single JPanel as the foundation for
“painting.” I was wondering what the best way to implement Menu Screens etc. would be.

What I thought of so far:

a) Have the current JPanel take care of the Menu screen.

b) Make new JPanels for them and swap them to the next one; ex: If i hit the new game option, then switch to a new JPanel that holds the Game setup.

Extra Question:

Is it better to us a Canvas or some other component over a JPanel, given play-ability on an Applet and an Application was a concern?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Recommendations:

• If this is a Swing application, then by all means stick with Swing components such as JPanels.
• Your users will probably prefer your swapping JPanels, and if you decide to go this route, the CardLayout will make it easy to do.
• You will probably want to swap JPanels if the views presented in them are significantly different. If it’s only a matter of changing text though, then you could possibly get by with changing the text of several JLabels instead of swapping.