MouseEvents for a JTabbedPane Tab component are not bleeding through

Question

I have a JTabbedPane with a custom tab component. That component contains a JLabel (To display the tab title) and a JButton (A close button). When I change the text in the JLabel the JLabel stops receiving mouse events and I can no longer select that tab when I click directly on the label instead if I click around the label then I can select the tab. Any ideas?

A snippet of the code:

class ShellPanelTabComponent extends JPanel implements ActionListener{

    private ShellPanel panel;
    private JLabel label;

    public ShellPanelTabComponent(final ShellPanel panel){
      super(new FlowLayout(FlowLayout.LEFT, 0, 0));
      this.panel = panel;
      setOpaque(false);

      label = new JLabel(panel.getTitle());
      label.setFocusable(false);
      add(label);
      label.setBorder(BorderFactory.createEmptyBorder(2,0,0,5));

      //now the button
      CloseButton closeButton = new CloseButton(panel);
      add(closeButton);
      closeButton.addActionListener(this);
    }

    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae) {
      panel.getShell().removeShellPanel(panel);
    }

    /**
     * @return the label
     */
    public JLabel getLabel() {
      return label;
    }
  }

Answer 1

I don't recall seeing such a problem in the TabComponentsDemo, discussed in How to Use Tabbed Panes. You might compare your code with that example as a reference.

Addendum: Re-factoring ButtonTabComponent to include getLabel(), this version of runTest() in TabComponentsDemo adds a button that evinces the desired behavior. In particular, each time the button is pressed, the tabs are redrawn to display the enlarged title.

Update: Modify correct tab component after pane.remove().

public void runTest() {
    pane.removeAll();
    for (int i = 0; i < tabNumber; i++) {
        final int titleIndex = i;
        String title = "Tab " + titleIndex;
        final JButton button = new JButton("Relabel tab");
        button.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {

            @Override
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
                int index = pane.indexOfComponent(button);
                ButtonTabComponent btc = (ButtonTabComponent)
                    pane.getTabComponentAt(index);
                JLabel label = btc.getLabel();
                pane.setTitleAt(index, label.getText() + titleIndex);
                label.invalidate();
                pane.repaint();
            }
        });
        pane.add(title, button);
        initTabComponent(i);
    }
    tabComponentsItem.setSelected(true);
    pane.setTabLayoutPolicy(JTabbedPane.WRAP_TAB_LAYOUT);
    scrollLayoutItem.setSelected(false);
    this.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(500, 200));
    this.pack();
    this.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
    this.setVisible(true);
}

Answer 2

I seem to remember a question like this recently although I can't find the posting. I believe the problem is that the "custom component" receives the mouse event so it is not passed on to the tabbed pane. The solutin suggested was to use the dispatchEvent(...) methdo to redispatch the mouse event to the proper tab.

Answer 3

The problem is related to the one that I posted here after I did more digging: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3198037/workaround-for-settooltiptext-consuming-mouse-events