Border Layout

A simple LayoutManager that lays out up to 5 widgets in a rectangle, one per border (NORTH, WEST, SOUTH, EAST, stretched along the border) and one in the middle (CENTER, stretched both ways). Often used to combine fixed-width and/or fixed-height widgets with other that can use all available space.

A typical application of this layout manager is to build Explorer-style GUIs, where

• A JTree widget goes into the WEST region on the left border
• A JToolbar widget goes into the NORTH region on the upper border
• A JPanel with some JLabel widgets goes into the SOUTH region on the lower border as a status bar
• Some data display (e.g. list of files) goes into the CENTER region in the middle
• And the EAST region on the right is usually left empty

see LayoutManagers, JavaSwing, SmalltalkLanguage