Layout Manager

A LayoutManager is a JavaLanguage class that is responsible for managing the layout of widgets (components) on a panel. It is a fundamental concept in the Java GUI world. Instead of hard-coding platform-specific widget sizes and positions one uses a LayoutManager and leaves the hard work to the LayoutManager. The more powerful LayoutManagers like GridBagLayout work on a set of constraints to identify the concrete size and position of the

• BorderLayout
• FlowLayout
• GridLayout
• GridBagLayout
• BoxLayout?

A typical Java GraphicalUserInterface beginner's error is to skip layout managers and hard-code widget sizes and positions. These people then later show up in Java news-groups and whine about the fact that their GUI "does not work" on another platform than their development platform. That problem has become an FAQ.

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CategoryJava