Game/Application menu as a central part of the game/application

Question

I am developing a Java application, well, it's actually a small game. I want to build up the application as follows: when it starts, a window should appear which has a menu with four choices: 'Start game', 'Options', 'Highscores' and 'Quit'. If you then click game, the game starts, preferrably in the same window, if you click options, well you know the drill.

How should I program this? At the moment, I'm considering using a CardLayout, but I'm not sure this is the right way to do this.

Do you guys maybe have another proposition?

Answer 1

Functionally you can do this with any LayoutManager you choose. The only difference is going to be aesthetics. This is a very open ended question and GUI programming is a complex area. The best way to get better is with practice. Try it out with CardLayout and when you run into specific problems make sure to ask them.

Answer 2

Basically you have four different views: the menu view, the game view, the options view and the highscores view. And you want only one to be displayed at any time. CardLayout fulfills that requirement - only one panel is visible at a time and you can switch between panels (like from menu to highscores, back to menu, then to game). Looks fine to me.