Java GridBagConstraints

Question

I have 5 components in a JPanel. Everything is looking smooth with the first 4 component\'s I\'ve added. However, when I try adding a 5th component to the JPanel, the spacing be

Answer 1

The reason that the last JLabel is not aligned with the previous 2 is that all labels are center aligned and appear in the same column. When there are only 2 labels, they appear aligned due to the happy coincidence that their FontMetric widths are equal. Add a third and the labels appear staggered.

To fix, you can anchor the labels to counter this effect by anchoring the components to GridBagConstraints.WEST and set the weight along the x axis:

gbc.weightx = 1;
gbc.anchor = GridBagConstraints.WEST;

This has the effect of left aligning component within their GridBagLayout "cells".