Set the Background Color for JTabbedPane

Question

I am using Nimbus Look and feel. I needs to change the Background color and foreground color of the tab in JTabbedPane but the color doesn't set in JTabbedPane. I tried setForeground(), setForegroundAt(), setBackground() and setBackgroundAt() methods but it isnt works.This is my code


public class TabbedPaneDemo extends JFrame
{
    TabbedPaneDemo()
    {
        try
        {
            UIManager.setLookAndFeel("com.sun.java.swing.plaf.nimbus.NimbusLookAndFeel");
        }
        catch(Exception ex) {}

    setLayout(new BorderLayout());
    setBounds(100, 100, 800, 500);
    setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

    JTabbedPane jt = new JTabbedPane();
    jt.addTab("Tab1", new JPanel());
    jt.addTab("Tab2", new JPanel());
    jt.addTab("Tab3", new JPanel());
    jt.addTab("Tab4", new JPanel());

    for( int i = 0; i < jt.getComponentCount(); i++)
    {
        jt.setForegroundAt(i, Color.RED);
        jt.setBackgroundAt(i, Color.BLACK);
    }

    add(jt);

    setVisible(true);
}

public static void main(String args[])
{
    new TabbedPaneDemo();
}

}

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 24 '10 at 23:38

There are a few different things you can do, depending upon how much control you want over the exact color. The easiest way is to change some of the properties in the UIManager to change the colors that Nimbus derives its other colors from. I played around a little with your code, and found that if I put the following code after the call to UIManager.setLookAndFeel(), it would approximate the red-on-black look you attempted in your example:

     UIManager.put("nimbusBase", new ColorUIResource(0, 0, 0));
     UIManager.put("textForeground", new ColorUIResource(255, 0, 0));

I'll leave it to you to experiment. For more information to experiment with, there is a good article on configuring Nimbus here. Be sure you look at his link titled "Nimbus UIDefaults Properties List". Outside of just massaging the colors to something similar to what you want, you'll have to start doing messy things like implementing Painter classes that do custom painting.

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 23 '10 at 20:28

I hate to break it to you, but you're going to have a very hard time getting the foreground and background colors changed. Unlike many basic components (JTextField, JLabel, etc), the JTabbedPane ignores the foreground and background colors when setting up to paint. Instead it allows the UI delegate (as determined by the current Look and Feel) to choose the colors.

Some Look and Feels allow for color themes (Substance comes to mind), but Nimbus seems to have those color values hard coded into the paint delegates.

More than likely you'll need to implement your own UI delegate based off of Nimbus's. See here for more information. It's going to be a major pain, so ask yourself how much you want those colors changed.

Lastly, if anyone tells you to simply subclass JTabbedPane and set the colors in your own "paintComponent" method, ignore it. You then becomes responsible for the painting of the entire component, and will lose any Nimbus-like visual attributes.

I second Jason - I have spent days trying to get JTabbedPane in Nimbus to show the Tabs a bit darker (because they get nearly white when you specify light base colors). Extremely frustrating, you would need a degree in Nimbus internals... — Philippp, Sep 21 '11 at 03:33

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 15 '10 at 07:17

2

JTabbedPane works when you add components to it, e.g add 5 JPanels and they will be tabbed.

answered Mar 15 '10 at 07:17

Halo

1,524
3
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I have added the panels to JTabbedPane. This is my code JTabbedPane jt = new JTabbedPane(); jt.addTab("Tab1", new JPanel()); jt.addTab("Tab2", new JPanel()); jt.addTab("Tab3", new JPanel()); jt.addTab("Tab4", new JPanel()); jt.setForeground(Color.RED); jt.setBackground(Color.BLACK); jf.add(jt); //adding JTabbedPane to JFrame – Ram Mar 15 '10 at 07:22

score 2 · Answer 4 · edited Jan 20 '12 at 09:42

2

Sorry for my english.

I tried resolve this problem 2 days.. There are "work around" solve.

Need set tab component. And then set color for this component.

/*
  ...
  Setting LAF Nimbus
  ...
*/

JTabbedPane tp = new JTabbedPane();

/*
   ...
   add tabs in TabbedPane
   ...
*/

then for specified tabs need do:

        JLabel title = new JLabel(tp.getTitleAt(tabIndex));
        title.setForeground(Color.RED);
        tp.setTabComponentAt(tabIndex, title);

OMG!! its work!

edited Jan 20 '12 at 09:42

Jon Egerton

40,401
11
97
129

answered Jan 20 '12 at 09:39

Serge Maslyakov

1,410
1
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23

+1 Nice one - but note that it doesn't work for the background colour. – DNA Mar 27 '12 at 11:06

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 30 '12 at 15:24

Actually not true

new JTabbedPane().setUI(new YourUI());

and then you create your simple UI

public class YourUI extends BasicTabbedPaneUI{

.....

private class ScrollableTabPanel extends JPanel implements UIResource {
public ScrollableTabPanel() {
    setLayout(null);
}

public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {

super.paintComponent(g);

g.setColor(Color.red);
g.fillRect(tabPane.getBounds());            

        }
    }

....

}

Jan Cajthaml

There is how it should look like (don't mind the QuadSpline tabs and close bars thats another add-ons of my UI implementation), my reputation here is none so there is a link to the image

http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/166028_2974620064454_896181702_n.jpg

For anyone wondering how to actually implement this, I achieved it here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/60856384/1762224 — Mr. Polywhirl, Mar 25 '20 at 19:55

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 15 '10 at 07:27

If you want to change the actual content, there are two useful methods of the tabbed pane: setForegroundAt and setBackgroundAt. You can just loop through all the tabs and call these:

for (int i = 0; i < pane.getTabCount(); i++) {
    pane.setForegroundAt(i, foregroundColor);
    pane.setBackgroundAt(i, backgroundColor);
}

You can also use getComponentAt as well, similarly:

for (int i = 0; i < pane.getTabCount(); i++) {
    pane.getComponentAt(i).setForeground(foregroundColor);
    pane.getComponentAt(i).setBackground(backgroundColor);
}

The latter approach is more flexible--you can later do more complex things to all the components using code like this.

Set the Background Color for JTabbedPane

6 Answers6

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