<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>JGoodies Forms :: Reference :: Alignments</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../style.css" >
<meta name="description" content="The JGoodies Forms helps you layout and implement elegant Panel quickly and consistently.">
<meta name="author" content="Karsten Lentzsch">
<meta name="keywords" content="JGoodies Forms Java Layout Swing UI Design Usability Lentzsch Kiel">
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
<meta name="date" content="2003-07-31">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" leftmargin="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" topmargin="0" bottommargin="0" >
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
<tr>
<td colspan="3" bgcolor="DDDCDC"><a href="../../README.html"><img
src="../images/banner.gif" width="436" height="46" alt=":: JGOODIES :: Forms" border="0"></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="3" height="1" bgcolor="C9C8C8"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="160" height="500" valign="top" bgcolor="F4f3f3" class="nav" nowrap="nowrap">
<div style="margin-left: 17px; margin-top: 17px; margin-right: 10px; ; margin-bottom: 17px; line-height: 18px;">
<!-- ************ Anfang der Seitennavigation **************************** -->
<b>General</b>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="../../README.html">Readme</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="../../RELEASE-NOTES.txt">Release Notes</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="../../LICENSE.txt">License</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="../whitepaper.pdf">Whitepaper</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="../visualbuilders.html">Visual Builders</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="../references.html">References</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="../tips.html">Tips & Tricks</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="https://forms.dev.java.net/faq.html">FAQ</a>
<p>
<b>Tutorial</b>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="../tutorial/introduction.html">Introduction</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="../tutorial/quickstart.html">Quick Start</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="../tutorial/basics.html">Basics</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="../tutorial/building.html">Building</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="../tutorial/factories.html">Factories</a>
<p>
<b>Reference</b>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="alignments.html"><b>Alignments</b></a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="constantsizes.html">Constant Sizes</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="componentsizes.html">Component Sizes</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="boundedsizes.html">Bounded Sizes</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="colsandrows.html">Cols & Rows</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="cells.html">Cell Constraints</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="groups.html">Groups</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="variables.html">Layout Variables</a>
<p>
<a class="nav" href="../api/index.html"><b>API Docs</b></a>
<p>
<b>Web Pages</b>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="http://forms.dev.java.net/">Project Home</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="http://www.jgoodies.com/downloads/libraries.html">Downloads</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="http://forms.dev.java.net/servlets/ProjectNewsList">Announcements</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="http://forms.dev.java.net/servlets/ProjectMailingListList">Mailing Lists</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="http://forms.dev.java.net/servlets/ProjectIssues">Issue Tracker</a>
<br>:: <a class="nav" href="http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/">More Examples</a>
<!-- *********** Ende der Seitennavigation ******************************* -->
</div>
</td>
<td width="1" bgcolor="E7E5E5"><img src="/images/banner.gif" width="1" height="1" alt=""></td>
<td width="90%" valign="top" >
<div style="margin-left: 20px; margin-top: 17px; margin-bottom: 17px">
<!-- ************ Anfang des Inhalts ***************************************** -->
<table width="530" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td>
<h1>:: Reference :: Alignments ::</h1>
Column alignments are: <i>left, center, right, fill</i>.<br>
And row alignments are: <i>top, center, bottom, fill</i>.
<p>The <i>fill</i> alignment expands a component to span
its display area, so that the component's left-hand side
is left-aligned, and the right-hand side is right-aligned.
The same applies to top/bottom for rows.
<h2>Applying Defaults</h2>
FormLayout aims to minimize the effort to specificy alignments.
Therefore it 1) tries to reuse alignments, 2) provide good defaults
for form oriented layouts.
<p>1) The column and row alignments are applied to all components
that are located in a single cell of that column/row.
A component can override its column/row alignment by
setting an individual alignment via a <i>CellConstraints</i>
object.
<p>2) By default, the column alignment is set to <i>fill</i>.
The implicit alignment for rows is <i>center</i>.
And so, if you don't specify column and row alignments,
your components will be horizontally filled and vertically centered.
This is a good default for most text fields, combo boxes, buttons
and it works fine with labels too.
<h2>Alignment Constants</h2>
The classes <tt>ColumnSpec</tt>, <tt>RowSpec</tt> provide
constant values for the alignment values mentioned above.
<h2>String Representations</h2>
I recommend to specify column and row alignments in
the FormLayout constructor using string representations.
These strings will be accepted by the <tt>FormLayout</tt>,
<tt>ColumnSpec</tt>, <tt>RowSpec</tt> and <tt>CellConstraints</tt>
classes and by many builder methods.
<pre>
columnAlignment ::= LEFT | CENTER | RIGHT | FILL | L | C | R | F
rowAlignment ::= TOP | CENTER | BOTTOM | FILL | T | C | B | F
</pre>
<h2>Examples</h2><pre>
ColumnSpec.LEFT;
ColumnSpec.FILL;
new ColumnSpec("left");
new ColumnSpec("f");
RowSpec.BOTTOM;
RowSpec.CENTER;
new RowSpec("bottom");
new RowSpec("c");
new FormLayout("left:pref, 4dlu, fill:pref",
" top:pref, 3dlu, center:pref");
new CellConstraints(2, 3, ColumnSpec.LEFT, RowSpec.TOP);
new CellConstraints(2, 3, "left, top");
new CellConstraints(2, 3, "l, t");
CellConstraints cc = new CellConstraints();
builder.add(component, cc.xy(2, 3, "left, top");
</pre>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- ************ Ende des Inhalts ************************************** -->
</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td nowrap="nowrap" bgcolor="F4f3f3">
<div style="font-size: 10px; margin-left: 17px; margin-top: 20px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 4px;">
(c) 2008 JGoodies
</div>
</td>
<td width="1" bgcolor="E7E5E5"></td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" height="1" bgcolor="E7E5E5"></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
