Non-modal Swing Dialogs

Abstract

JOptionPane provides various methods to easily create message dialogs in Swing. A limitation to this, is that all dialogs created from JOptionPane are modal.

JOptionPane dialogs are modal because the UI thread needs to wait for a user input in order for processing to continue -- this is especially true for confirm dialogs.

In some applications, a UI component launched outside of Swing's Event Dispatch Thread (EDT) may cover an active modal dialog -- this will render the UI inaccessible, making the application seem hanging.

The purpose of this library is to address this limitation to JOptionPane by providing a class (NonModalDialogs) which provides various methods for creating non-modal message dialogs in Swing.

NonModalDialogs works by handling the user input on a separate thread, asynchronous to the application thread.

Details on this class are available via Javadoc.

Maven

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.jramoyo</groupId>
  <artifactId>non-modal-swing-dialog</artifactId>
  <version>1.2</version>
</dependency>

Example

The below code brings-up a non-modal Yes-No-Cancel confirm dialog. Depending on the option selected, the corresponding Runnable will be executed asynchronously.

NonModalDialogs.exectuteOnYesNoCancelConfirmDialog("Are you ready?",
	new Runnable() {
		// 'Yes' action
		@Override
		public void run() {
			JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Let's go!");
		}
	}, new Runnable() {
		// 'No' action
		@Override
		public void run() {
			JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null,
				"I'll wait for you then.");
		}
	}, new Runnable() {
		// 'Cancel' action
		@Override
		public void run() {
			JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Nevermind.");
		}
	});

Starting version 1.1, the Runnable actions are executed on Swing's EDT. To ensure liveliness of the UI, execute long-running tasks on a separate thread (ideally via SwingWorker).