The Use of Multiple JFrames Good or Bad Practice

Question

I m developing an application which displays images  and plays sounds from a database  I m trying to decide whether or not to use a separate JFrame to add images to the database from the GUI    I m just wondering whether it is good practice to use multiple JFrame windows

User · Answer

If the frames are going to be the same size, why not create the frame and pass the frame then as a reference to it instead.

When you have passed the frame you can then decide how to populate it. It would be like having a method for calculating the average of a set of figures. Would you create the method over and over again?

User · Answer

It is not a good practice but even though you wish to use it you can use the singleton pattern as its good  I have used the singleton patterns in most of my project its good

User · Answer

The multiple JFrame approach has been something I ve implemented since I began programming Swing apps  For the most part  I did it in the beginning because I didn t know any better  However  as I matured in my experience and knowledge as a developer and as began to read and absorb the opinions of so many more experienced Java devs online  I made an attempt to shift away from the multiple JFrame approach  both in current projects and future projects  only to be met with    get this    resistance from my clients  As I began implementing modal dialogs to control  child  windows and JInternalFrames for separate components  my clients began to complain  I was quite surprised  as I was doing what I thought was best-practice  But  as they say   A happy wife is a happy life   Same goes for your clients  Of course  I am a contractor so my end-users have direct access to me  the developer  which is obviously not a common scenario   So  I m going to explain the benefits of the multiple JFrame approach  as well as myth-bust some of the cons that others have presented    Ultimate flexibility in layout - By allowing separate JFrames  you give your end-user the ability to spread out and control what s on his her screen  The concept feels  open  and non-constricting  You lose this when you go towards one big JFrame and a bunch of JInternalFrames  Works well for very modularized applications - In my case  most of my applications have 3 - 5 big  modules  that really have nothing to do with each other whatsoever  For instance  one module might be a sales dashboard and one might be an accounting dashboard  They don t talk to each other or anything  However  the executive might want to open both and them being separate frames on the taskbar makes his life easier  Makes it easy for end-users to reference outside material - Once  I had this situation  My app had a  data viewer   from which you could click  Add New  and it would open a data entry screen  Initially  both were JFrames  However  I wanted the data entry screen to be a JDialog whose parent was the data viewer  I made the change  and immediately I received a call from an end-user who relied heavily on the fact that he could minimize or close the viewer and keep the editor open while he referenced another part of the program  or a website  I don t remember   He s not on a multi-monitor  so he needed the entry dialog to be first and something else to be second  with the data viewer completely hidden  This was impossible with a JDialog and certainly would ve been impossible with a JInternalFrame as well  I begrudgingly changed it back to being separate JFrames for his sanity  but it taught me an important lesson  Myth  Hard to code - This is not true in my experience  I don t see why it would be any easier to create a JInternalFrame than a JFrame  In fact  in my experience  JInternalFrames offer much less flexibility  I have developed a systematic way of handling the opening  amp  closing of JFrames in my apps that really works well  I control the frame almost completely from within the frame s code itself  the creation of the new frame  SwingWorkers that control the retrieval of data on background threads and the GUI code on EDT  restoring bringing to front the frame if the user tries to open it twice  etc  All you need to open my JFrames is call a public static method open   and the open method  combined with a windowClosing   event handles the rest  is the frame already open  is it not open  but loading  etc   I made this approach a template so it s not difficult to implement for each frame  Myth Unproven  Resource Heavy - I d like to see some facts behind this speculative statement  Although  perhaps  you could say a JFrame needs more space than a JInternalFrame  even if you open up 100 JFrames  how many more resources would you really be consuming  If your concern is memory leaks because of resources  calling dispose   frees all resources used by the frame for garbage collection  and  again I say  a JInternalFrame should invoke exactly the same concern     I ve written a lot and I feel like I could write more  Anyways  I hope I don t get down-voted simply because it s an unpopular opinion  The question is clearly a valuable one and I hope I ve provided a valuable answer  even if it isn t the common opinion   A great example of multiple frames single document per frame  SDI  vs single frame multiple documents per frame  MDI  is Microsoft Excel  Some of MDI benefits    it is possible to have a few windows in non rectangular shape - so they don t hide desktop or other window from another process  e g  web browser  it is possible to open a window from another process over one Excel window while writing in second Excel window - with MDI  trying to write in one of internal windows will give focus to the entire Excel window  hence hiding window from another process it is possible to have different documents on different screens  which is especially useful when screens do not have the same resolution   SDI  Single-Document Interface  i e   every window can only have a single document      MDI  Multiple-Document Interface  i e   every window can have multiple documents

User · Answer

I m just wondering whether it is good practice to use multiple JFrames    Bad  bad  bad  practice      User unfriendly  The user sees multiple icons in their task bar when expecting to see only one   Plus the side effects of the coding problems   A nightmare to code and maintain    A modal dialog offers the easy opportunity to focus attention on the content of that dialog - choose fix cancel this  then proceed   Multiple frames do not  A dialog  or floating tool-bar  with a parent will come to front when the parent is clicked on - you d have to implement that in frames if that was the desired behavior       There are any number of ways of displaying many elements in one GUI  e g     CardLayout  short demo    Good for    Showing wizard like dialogs  Displaying list  tree etc  selections for items that have an associated component  Flipping between no component and visible component   JInternalFrame JDesktopPane typically used for an MDI  JTabbedPane for groups of components  JSplitPane A way to display two components of which the importance between one or the other  the size  varies according to what the user is doing  JLayeredPane far many well   layered components  JToolBar typically contains groups of actions or controls   Can be dragged around the GUI  or off it entirely according to user need   As mentioned above  will minimize restore according to the parent doing so  As items in a JList  simple example below   As nodes in a JTree  Nested layouts    But if those strategies do not work for a particular use-case  try the following   Establish a single main JFrame  then have JDialog or JOptionPane instances appear for the rest of the free-floating elements  using the frame as the parent for the dialogs   Many images  In this case where the multiple elements are images  it would be better to use either of the following instead    A single JLabel  centered in a scroll pane  to display whichever image the user is interested in at that moment   As seen in ImageViewer  A single row JList  As seen in this answer   The  single row  part of that only works if they are all the same dimensions   Alternately  if you are prepared to scale the images on the fly  and they are all the same aspect ratio  e g  4 3 or 16 9

User · Answer

It s been a while since the last time i touch swing but in general is a bad practice to do this  Some of the main disadvantages that comes to mind     It s more expensive  you will have to allocate way more resources to draw a JFrame that other kind of window container  such as Dialog or JInternalFrame  Not user friendly  It is not easy to navigate into a bunch of JFrame stuck together  it will look like your application is a set of applications inconsistent and poorly design  It s easy to use JInternalFrame This is kind of retorical  now it s way easier and other people smarter   or with more spare time  than us have already think through the Desktop and JInternalFrame pattern  so I would recommend to use it

User · Answer

I think using multiple Jframes is not a good idea   Instead we can use JPanels more than one or more JPanel in the same JFrame   Also we can switch between this JPanels  So it gives us freedom to display more than on thing in the JFrame   For each JPanel we can design different things and all this JPanel can be displayed on the single JFrameone at a time   To switch between this JPanels use JMenuBar with JMenuItems for each JPanelor  JButtonfor eachJPanel    More than one JFrame is not a good practice  but there is nothing wrong if we want more than one JFrame     But its better to change one JFrame for our different needs rather than having multiple JFrames

User · Answer

I d like to counter the  not user friendly  argument with an example that I have just been involved with   In our application we have a main window where the users run various  programs  as separate tabs  As much as possible we have tried to keep our application to this single window   One of the  programs  they run presents a list of reports that have been generated by the system  and the user can click on an icon on each line to pop open a report viewer dialog  This viewer is showing the equivalent of the portrait landscape A4 page s  of the report  so the users like this window to be quite big  almost filling their screens   A few months ago we started getting requests from our customers to make these report viewer windows modeless  so that they could have multiple reports open at the same time   For some time I resisted this request as I did not think this was a good solution  However  my mind was changed when I found out how the users were getting around this  deficiency  of our system   They were opening a viewer  using the  Save As  facility to save the report as a PDF to a specific directory  using Acrobat Reader to open the PDF file  and then they would do the same with the next report  They would have multiple Acrobat Readers running with the various report outputs that they wanted to look at   So I relented and made the viewer modeless  This means that each viewer has a task-bar icon   When the latest version was released to them last week  the overwhelming response from them is that they LOVE it  It s been one of our most popular recent enhancements to the system   So you go ahead and tell your users that what they want is bad  but ultimately it won t do you any favours   SOME NOTES    It seems to be best practice to use JDialog s for these modeless windows Use the constructors that use the new ModalityType rather than the boolean modal argument  This is what gives these dialogs the task-bar icon  For modeless dialogs  pass a null parent to the constructor  but locate them relative to their  parent  window  Version 6 of Java on Windows has a bug which means that your main window can become  always on top  without you telling it  Upgrade to version 7 to fix this

User · Answer

Bad practice definitely  One reason is that it is not very  user-friendly  for the fact that every JFrame shows a new taskbar icon  Controlling multiple JFrames will have you ripping your hair out   Personally  I would use ONE JFrame for your kind of application  Methods of displaying multiple things is up to you  there are many  Canvases  JInternalFrame  CardLayout  even JPanels possibly   Multiple JFrame objects   Pain  trouble  and problems

User · Answer

Make an jInternalFrame into main frame and make it invisible  Then you can use it for further events   jInternalFrame setSize 300 150   jInternalFrame setVisible true

[java] The Use of Multiple JFrames: Good or Bad Practice?

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