Re: Anybody know how to set the color of the text in a disabled JMenuItem?

From:

markspace <-@.>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.gui

Date:

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 14:38:35 -0700

Message-ID:

<j2k0p5$5ru$1@dont-email.me>

On 8/18/2011 11:39 AM, Knute Johnson wrote:

I assume what I'm trying to find is in AbstractButton somewhere. I need
a disabled JMenuItem with brighter text. One can set the background of a
disabled JMenuItem but not the foreground.

I don't see anyway to differentiate the foreground color of a menu item
when it's enabled vs when it's disabled. You could use a change
listener, which will fire whenever the state is changed from enabled to
disabled or vice-versa.

   JMenuItem jMenuItem2 = ...

   jMenuItem2.addChangeListener(new javax.swing.event.ChangeListener()
   {
       public void stateChanged(javax.swing.event.ChangeEvent evt) {
           jMenuItem2StateChanged(evt);
       }
   });

....

   private void jMenuItem2StateChanged(
                javax.swing.event.ChangeEvent evt)
   {
     System.out.println( "jMenuItem2StateChanged - "+ evt );
     JMenuItem jm = ((JMenuItem)evt.getSource());
     System.out.println( "Enabled: "+jm.isEnabled() );

     if( jm.isEnabled() ) {
         jm.setForeground( Color.red );
     } else {
         jm.setForeground( Color.yellow );
     }

   }

This seemed to work reliably for me, changing the menu text color from
red when enabled and yellow ("brighter") when disabled. You could
encapsulate this into a new kind of JMenuItem if you need it really
frequently, I suppose.