Layout Managers

If you've worked with Visual Basic or any other tools that support GUI code generation, you may be accustomed to laying out components on a form and specifying their size and position in pixels. (A pixel is 1/20 inch.) The problem is, of course, that you may develop your application on a 25-inch monitor, and then someone will try to use it on a 12-inch monitor, leaving half the GUI off the screen. This problem becomes even more pronounced if you have no control over the type of display your GUI will be used on. For these reasons, Java needs a flexible way to display user interfaces on a variety of platforms.

Layout managers provide a way to lay out components in a container with great flexibility, but with flexibility comes greater ...

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