Displaying Large JLIST formatted as HTML

Question

I have a java applet in which I have to display a large amount of items (dictionary entries). The user needs to be able to select individual items in the list, hence it is implemented as a JList. Generating the list was very quick until I decided to make the display more asthetically pleasing by formatting the individual items using HTML. Now the list looks pretty but it takes between 10 and 15 seconds to generate it each time the user accesses the dictionary (without formatting it occurs almost instantly). I suppose I could take the performance hit up front by generating the list when the user first enters the application and just hiding and unhiding the list as needed. But, I'm wondering if there is a better way. Perhaps a more efficient way to generate the list.

Here is the section of code where the slow down occurrs (Between the display of C and D):

DefaultListModel dictCodeModel =  new DefaultListModel();
System.out.println("C");
while (e.hasMoreElements()) {
String currentEntry = "";
DEntry dentry = (DEntry) e.nextElement();
if (!filter)                 
  dictCodeModel.addElement(dentry.theToken); // tokens have embedded html tags

}
System.out.println("D");

As you can see it is pretty simple. When "theToken" is formatted as HTML, I get a real performance hit. Any ideas of what I can do to get around this?

Thanks,

Answer 1

What kind of HTML formatting are you using? If it's just some text styling (font, color), you can use a JLabel, set its properties accordingly and set it as ListCellRenderer for the JList.