阻止Java的JTextField扩展到适合面板？

Question

I'm making an RPG to practice my novice programming abilities. I want to create a bunch of options for character creation in a 1x4 grid, with a confirm button underneath.

My problem here is that I want the JTextField to stop looking like it was designed to consume any and all text the world might possess. See here:

[Okay, well I can't post images yet.]

But it's a giant text field, which I believe is its way of trying to fill the entire panel. I just want to it be roughly the same height as the JLabel next to it.

I've tried setBounds(), setSize(), setPreferredSize()...how can I make that text field appropriately sized?

Edit: Sorry for not posting the relevant code:

package practice;

import java.awt.GridLayout;

import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JTextField;

public class Main {

    /**
     * @param args
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        JFrame failFrame = new JFrame();
        JPanel failPanel = new JPanel();
        failPanel.setLayout(new GridLayout(0, 4));

        failPanel.add(new JTextField());
        failPanel.add(new JPanel());
        failPanel.add(new JTextField());
        failPanel.add(new JPanel());

        failFrame.add(failPanel);
        failFrame.setSize(800, 800);
        failFrame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
        failFrame.setVisible(true);
    }

}

This causes the text fields to be far taller than I want them to be. Is it possible to use a gridLayout and make their height lower?

Answer 1

Maybe a LayoutManager could help. If the textfield and the label should have the same size you could think about a gridlayout.

see: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/visual.html