-Ken

I’ve implemented your suggestions using the button’s ActionListener instead of the MouseListener. All fine but if I have two of such buttons in a toolbar and, once a popup menu is visible, I click on the other button, the first one remains selected. To solve the problem I’ve added a PropertyChangeListener to the menu, listening for the “visible” property, in order to force the button to be unselected when visible is false.

This is the implementation, where createToggleToolBarButton creates a toggle button with the given ActionListener,

public JToggleButton createToolBarButton ( final JPopupMenu menu )
{

final JToggleButton button = createToggleToolBarButton(
new ActionListener() {
public void actionPerformed ( ActionEvent e ) {
if ( ((JToggleButton) e.getSource()).isSelected() )
menu.show((Component) e.getSource(), 0, ((Component) e.getSource()).getHeight());
else
menu.setVisible(false);
}
}
);

menu.addPopupMenuListener(
new PopupMenuListener() {
public void popupMenuWillBecomeVisible ( PopupMenuEvent e ) {
}
public void popupMenuWillBecomeInvisible ( PopupMenuEvent e ) {
}
public void popupMenuCanceled ( PopupMenuEvent e ) {
button.setSelected(false);
}
}
);
menu.addPropertyChangeListener(
“visible”,
new PropertyChangeListener() {
public void propertyChange ( PropertyChangeEvent e ) {
if ( Boolean.FALSE.equals(e.getNewValue()) )
button.setSelected(false);
}
}
);

// Install a special client property on the button to prevent it from
// closing of the popup when the down arrow is pressed.
JComboBox box = new JComboBox();
Object preventHide = box.getClientProperty(“doNotCancelPopup”);

button.putClientProperty(“doNotCancelPopup”, preventHide);

return button;

}

You can use pop-down menus in a variety of places. For example, Apple’s Keynote (and various other iApps) use pop-down menus in the toolbar. Apple’s Finder also uses pop-down menus to access things like the current path and miscellaneous actions.

If you want to create the Keynote style of pop-down menu using Mac Widgets for Java, use the MacButtonFactory.makeUnifiedToolBarButton(AbstractButton button). The icon that you supply should already include the drop down arrow.

Your right, though, in that this is somewhat like having menus at the frame level.

Thanks for the quick answer. I’m aware of Werner’s great Quaqua project, but I stopped using it when switching to Java 6.

After some more hacking, I came up with an easy solution that solves both the issues: Use AWT PopupMenus.

I created a thin wrapper for JPopupMenu that delegates to AWT, so it may be set as the ComponentPopupMenu.

It looks much better!

.k

I’m not sure why this isn’t documented…it took me a while to discover it the first time.

Re. JCheckBoxMenuItem: I haven’t looked into fixing the JCheckBoxMenuItem check-mark image, though maybe Werner Randelshofer has in his Quaqua project. If not, it would be worth requesting an enhancement from Apple here.

Re. JPopupMenus with rounded corners: I’ve filed an enhancement request with Apple for this. Unfortunately, I’m not aware of any reasonable workarounds for this one.

-Ken

I once tried to fix a similar problem in a project. After half an hour I decided it wasn’t worth the time..
I wonder why this isn’t documented?

Some follow up questions that I’ve been trying to figure out lately, kind of related:
– How can we have the JCheckBoxMenuItem check icon look like the check icon in the menu bar? Is there a better way than using two pngs?
– Do you know of a way to have JPopupMenus with rounded corners (and less transparency), like the rest of OS X?

Anyway, thanks a lot for a great blog!

.k