Creating a nice "LOADING..." animation [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Pretty alternative to JProgressBar?

I have a process which takes several seconds to load, and I want to create an animation in Java Swing until it finishes loading.

I'd like to avoid using a typical ProgressBar and use a nice modern infinite progress like this one

I'm aware of similar questions but this is strictly Java Swing related. Is there any library or example for this?

Answer 1

Just use a ImageIcon for this task, it automatically animates gifs. The code below produced this screenshot (the ajax-loader.gif was downloaded from http://www.ajaxload.info/):

Code:

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    JFrame frame = new JFrame("Test");

    ImageIcon loading = new ImageIcon("ajax-loader.gif");
    frame.add(new JLabel("loading... ", loading, JLabel.CENTER));

    frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    frame.setSize(400, 300);
    frame.setVisible(true);
}

Answer 2

I'd recommend using the glasspane for this type of activity. The steps involved are:

• Create a JComponent with BorderLayout. Add a JLabel to the CENTER which includes the animated .gif icon of your choice.
• (Optional) Override the paint(Graphics) method to make your GUI appear greyed out (or whited out). To achieve this you need to draw a filled rectangle the size of the component, filling the rectangle with a semi-transparent Color.
• Add the component as the glasspane of your application's root frame.