FlowLayout

This simply “flows” the components onto the form, from left to right until the top space is full, then moves down a row and continues flowing.

Here’s an example that sets the layout manager to FlowLayout and then places buttons on the form. You’ll notice that with FlowLayout, the components take on their “natural” size. A JButton, for example, will be the size of its string.

//: c14:FlowLayout1.java
// Demonstrates FlowLayout.
// <applet code=FlowLayout1 width=300 height=250></applet>
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
import com.bruceeckel.swing.*;

public class FlowLayout1 extends JApplet {
  public void init() {
    Container cp = getContentPane();
    cp.setLayout(new FlowLayout());
    for(int i = 0; i < 20; i++)
      cp.add(new JButton("Button " + i));
  }
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Console.run(new FlowLayout1(), 300, 250);
  }
} ///:~

All components will be compacted to their smallest size in a FlowLayout, so you might get a little bit of surprising behavior. For example, because a JLabel will be the size of its string, attempting to right-justify its text yields an unchanged display when using FlowLayout.

Thinking in Java
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