How can I create a “Drop-Down” menu in a Java Swing toolbar?

Question

I've created a drop-down menu on my Swing JToolBar. But it doesn't create behave the way I want. I'm aiming for it to work like Firefox's "Smart Bookmarks" button.

It disappears when the user selects a menu item: CORRECT!

It disappears when the user presses ESC: CORRECT!

It disappears when the user clicks somewhere in the main frame outside of the menu: CORRECT!

But it doesn't disappear when the user clicks a second time on the button that shows the drop-down menu: INCORRECT... :-(

My question is how can I add this behaviour, that it does disappear when the clicks on the button that shows the menu a second time.

Here's my current code, from Java 6 on the Mac:

import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.event.PopupMenuEvent;
import javax.swing.event.PopupMenuListener;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.ItemEvent;
import java.awt.event.ItemListener;

public class ScratchSpace {

    public static void main(String[] arguments) {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
                JFrame frame = new JFrame("Toolbar with Popup Menu demo");

                final JToolBar toolBar = new JToolBar();
                toolBar.add(createMoreButton());

                final JPanel panel = new JPanel(new BorderLayout());
                panel.add(toolBar, BorderLayout.NORTH);
                panel.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(600, 400));
                frame.getContentPane().add(panel);
                frame.pack();
                frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
                frame.setVisible(true);
            }
        });
    }

    private static AbstractButton createMoreButton() {
        final JToggleButton moreButton = new JToggleButton("More...");
        moreButton.addItemListener(new ItemListener() {
            public void itemStateChanged(ItemEvent e) {
                if (e.getStateChange() == ItemEvent.SELECTED) {
                    createAndShowMenu((JComponent) e.getSource(), moreButton);
                }
            }
        });
        moreButton.setFocusable(false);
        moreButton.setHorizontalTextPosition(SwingConstants.LEADING);
        return moreButton;
    }

    private static void createAndShowMenu(final JComponent component, final AbstractButton moreButton) {
        JPopupMenu menu = new JPopupMenu();
        menu.add(new JMenuItem("Black"));
        menu.add(new JMenuItem("Red"));

        menu.addPopupMenuListener(new PopupMenuListener() {
            public void popupMenuWillBecomeVisible(PopupMenuEvent e) {
            }

            public void popupMenuWillBecomeInvisible(PopupMenuEvent e) {
                moreButton.setSelected(false);
            }

            public void popupMenuCanceled(PopupMenuEvent e) {
                moreButton.setSelected(false);
            }
        });

        menu.show(component, 0, component.getHeight());
    }
}

Answer 1

Well, here is a potential solution that is not without it's drawbacks. Only you can decide if this is acceptable for your application. The issue is that the popup closing occurs before other mouse-handling events are fired so clicking on your More.. button again causes the popup to hide, thus resetting the buttons state to deselected BEFORE the button even gets told it was pressed.

The easy workaround is to add the following call within your main program:

UIManager.put("PopupMenu.consumeEventOnClose", Boolean.TRUE);

The result of this is that whenever a popup menu is closed because of a mouse-pressed event, that mouse event will be consumed at the time the menu is closed and won't be passed on to any other components under the mouse. If you can live with limitation, this is an easy solution.

Answer 2

What's happening is that when you click off the menu, it cancels the popup menu, so you deselect the button, but the next immediate event is clicking the button, and now its deselected so it shows the menu again.

I don't have the exact solution yet, but give me a little bit ...

Answer 3

I don't use Firefox so I don't know what the Smart Bookmarks button looks like, but maybe use a JMenu as the "button". You could try using the Border of a JButton to make it look more like a button.

Answer 4

Well, the listener on the button reacts only when it is pushed down, because you listen for ItemEvent.SELECTED events only. How about adding another if clause to listen for ItemEvent.DESELECTED events here:

    moreButton.addItemListener(new ItemListener() {
        public void itemStateChanged(ItemEvent e) {
            if (e.getStateChange() == ItemEvent.SELECTED) {
                createAndShowMenu((JComponent) e.getSource(), moreButton);
            }
        }
    });

You could either store a reference to the menu somewhere, or you could make the menu itself add another listener to the button. The latter solution could be more straightforward, since you already seem to send a button reference to the menu.