Java Swing GUI hour glass

Question

There is a JTabbedPane In my Swing program. When user clicks on a tab, the program takes a while to get the data and process the results, then shows the results in the selected tab.

How can I display a hour glass, or something of that effect so that user knows it's processing data? Not to click on the tab again before it finishes it job.

score 26 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 14 '13 at 23:39

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The simplest way is to just call setCursor on the appropriate component (probably the top-level window) with the appropriate Cursor.

component.setCursor(Cursor.getPredefinedCursor(Cursor.WAIT_CURSOR));

And then set it back when you are done.

component.setCursor(Cursor.getDefaultCursor());

edited Mar 14 '13 at 23:39

Nathan

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answered Dec 21 '09 at 16:21

Dan Dyer

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Great, it's simple and effective. – Frank Dec 21 '09 at 17:10
This helped a lot. Thank you. – Radu Murzea May 09 '13 at 19:20

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 21 '09 at 16:12

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A JProgressBar (possibly in indetermiante mode) sounds right - put that on the tab until the data has been fetched. A well-designed UI shouldn't force the user to wait for long-running tasks to complete and instead allow them to do something else inbetween.

answered Dec 21 '09 at 16:12

Michael Borgwardt

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To that end, I would hope that the long-running task is done in a separate thread. – Powerlord Dec 21 '09 at 16:24
I'll try this, makes sense, so user will know how long to wait. – Frank Dec 21 '09 at 17:11

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 21 '09 at 16:24

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setCursor(int) is deprecated. This is probably a bit cleaner:

setCursor(Cursor.getPredefinedCursor(Cursor.WAIT_CURSOR));

answered Dec 21 '09 at 16:24

Hermann Hans

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 21 '09 at 19:14

As the other answers mention, you can set a wait cursor, but you also mention preventing additional mouse clicks. You can use a glass pane to prevent clicks on components until the long operation is finished. In addition to the Sun tutorials on the glass pane, there is a nice example at http://www.java2s.com/Code/Java/Swing-JFC/DemonstrateuseofGlassPane.htm

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Dec 28 '09 at 08:55

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I would as other mentioned

Change the cursor
Use a SwingWorker
Display the progressbar or an animated image in the glasspane
Hide the glasspane when the task is completed
Restore the default cursor

answered Dec 28 '09 at 08:55

John Doe

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Java Swing GUI hour glass

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