HTML with Swing Components

**John** · 09-23-2007, 07:59 PM

One useful feature of Swing GUI's many people overlook is the ability to use simple HTML tags within swing components. This tutorial assumes you know how to create a GUI in swing and add components. If you do not know how to do this, it is a good idea to read one of my previous tutorials. You can view my Tutorial Index here: http://forum.codecall.net/java-tutor...ial-index.html

Lets first create a basic GUI with a JButton and JLabel:

Code:

package tutorials;

import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;

public class HTMLJButton {
	
	public HTMLJButton(){
		JFrame mainFrame = new JFrame("HTML");
		mainFrame.setLayout(new java.awt.FlowLayout());

		JButton button1 = new JButton("JButton Text");
		JLabel label1 = new JLabel("JLabel Text");
		
		mainFrame.add(button1);
		mainFrame.add(label1);
		
		mainFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation(mainFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
		mainFrame.setVisible(true);
		mainFrame.pack();
	}
	
	public static void main(String[] args){ 
		new HTMLJButton();
	}
}

But what if you want the text on the button to be a different color? You can use the HTML font tags inside the JButton string parameter.

Such as:

Code:

JLabel label1 = new JLabel("<html><font color='#FF0000'>Red Text</font>" +
		"<br /><font color='#00FF00'>Blue Text</font></html>");

Not only can you modify fonts, you can also insert images:

Code:

JLabel label1 = new JLabel("<html><img src='http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif'></img></html>");

There is much more you can do with HTML, just note, when you do insert HTML into a componnents string paramater, you need to surround the HTML with the opening and closing HTML tags <html></html> and you need to use single quotes since the entire string is bound by double quotes.

Code:

package tutorials;

import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;

public class HTMLJButton {
	
	public HTMLJButton(){
		JFrame mainFrame = new JFrame("HTML");
		mainFrame.setLayout(new java.awt.FlowLayout());

		JButton button1 = new JButton("<html><font color='#FF0000'>JButton Text</font></html>");
		JLabel label1 = new JLabel("<html><font color='#FF0000'>Red Text</font>" +
				"<br /><font color='#00FF00'>Blue Text</font>" +
				"<br /><font color='#0000FF'>Green Text</font>" +
				"<br /><font color='#000000'>Black Text</font>" +
				"<br /><font color='#FFFFFF'>Blue Text</font></html>");
		
		mainFrame.add(button1);
		mainFrame.add(label1);
		
		mainFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation(mainFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
		mainFrame.setVisible(true);
		mainFrame.pack();
	}
	
	public static void main(String[] args){ 
		new HTMLJButton();
	}
}

Originally posted as HTML with Swing Components