Placing a JLabel at a specific x,y coordinate on a JPanel

Question

I'm trying to place a series of JLabels at specific X and Y coordinates on a JPanel (and set its height and width, too). No matter what I do, each label winds up immediately to the right of the previous label and has the exact same size as all of the others.

Right now, my Jpanel is in a Grid Layout. I've tried Absolute Layout (illegal argument exception results), Free Design (no labels appear), Flow Layout (everything just gets squeezed to the center), and a few others.

Not sure what I need to do to make this work. Can anyone help? Thanks!

JLabel lbl1 = new JLabel("label 1");
JLabel lbl2 = new JLabel("label 2");
JLabel lbl3 = new JLabel("label 3");
JLabel lbl4 = new JLabel("label 4");
JLabel lbl5 = new JLabel("label 5");

myPanel.add(lbl1);
myPanel.add(lbl2);
myPanel.add(lbl3);
myPanel.add(lbl4);
myPanel.add(lbl5);

lbl1.setLocation(27, 20);
lbl2.setLocation(123, 20);
lbl3.setLocation(273, 20);
lbl4.setLocation(363, 20);
lbl5.setLocation(453, 20);

lbl1.setSize(86, 14);
lbl2.setSize(140, 14);
lbl3.setSize(80, 14);
lbl4.setSize(80, 14);
lbl5.setSize(130, 14);

Answer 1

You have to set your container's Layout to null:

myPanel.setLayout(null);

However is a good advise also to take a look at the Matisse Layout Manager, I guess it is called GroupLayout now. The main problem with absolute positioning is what happens when the window changes its size.

Answer 2

1. Set the container's layout manager to null by calling setLayout(null).

2. Call the Component class's setbounds method for each of the container's children.

3. Call the Component class's repaint method.

Note:

Creating containers with absolutely positioned containers can cause problems if the window containing the container is resized.

Refer this link: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/none.html