Java swing: selecting/deselecting JButton to imitate pulsing

Question

f.e. I have an email client, it receives new message, button with incoming messages starts doing something, until user clicks it to see whats up.

I\'m trying to make but

Answer 1

You should use Swing timers for that. Don't interact with GUI objects from foreign threads.

There's some docs in the Java tutorial: How to use Swing timers.

Here's an example way you could do this playing with the button's icon.

// member var
Icon buttonIcon;
Timer timer;

  // in constructor for example
  buttonIcon = new ImageIcon("resources/icon.png");
  button.setIcon(buttonIcon);

  timer = new Timer(1000, this);
  timer.start();

   // in the actionPerformed handler
   if (button.getIcon() == null)
     button.setIcon(icon);
   else
     button.setIcon(null);

Your class will need to implement ActionListener for this to work like that. Add some logic to stop the flashing when you need it.