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

From:
Knute Johnson <september@knutejohnson.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.gui
Date:
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:06:20 -0700
Message-ID:
<j2k5te$5lp$1@dont-email.me>
On 8/18/2011 2:38 PM, markspace wrote:

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.


Thanks for that but apparently I asked the wrong question. Why can't I
change the foreground color on my JMenuItem like you can? I'm running
1.7 on Windows XP. It may be something different with the LookAndFeel.

--

Knute Johnson

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