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From: Knute Johnson <september@knutejohnson.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.gui
Subject: Re: Anybody know how to set the color of the text in a disabled JMenuItem?
Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:06:20 -0700
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On 8/18/2011 2:38 PM, markspace wrote:
> On 8/18/2011 11:39 AM, Knute Johnson wrote:
>> I assume what I'm trying to find is in AbstractButton somewhere. I need
>> a disabled JMenuItem with brighter text. One can set the background of a
>> disabled JMenuItem but not the foreground.
>
>
> I don't see anyway to differentiate the foreground color of a menu item
> when it's enabled vs when it's disabled. You could use a change
> listener, which will fire whenever the state is changed from enabled to
> disabled or vice-versa.
>
> JMenuItem jMenuItem2 = ...
>
> jMenuItem2.addChangeListener(new javax.swing.event.ChangeListener()
> {
> public void stateChanged(javax.swing.event.ChangeEvent evt) {
> jMenuItem2StateChanged(evt);
> }
> });
>
> ...
>
> private void jMenuItem2StateChanged(
> javax.swing.event.ChangeEvent evt)
> {
> System.out.println( "jMenuItem2StateChanged - "+ evt );
> JMenuItem jm = ((JMenuItem)evt.getSource());
> System.out.println( "Enabled: "+jm.isEnabled() );
>
> if( jm.isEnabled() ) {
> jm.setForeground( Color.red );
> } else {
> jm.setForeground( Color.yellow );
> }
>
> }
>
> This seemed to work reliably for me, changing the menu text color from
> red when enabled and yellow ("brighter") when disabled. You could
> encapsulate this into a new kind of JMenuItem if you need it really
> frequently, I suppose.
>
>

Thanks for that but apparently I asked the wrong question.  Why can't I 
change the foreground color on my JMenuItem like you can?  I'm running 
1.7 on Windows XP.  It may be something different with the LookAndFeel.

-- 

Knute Johnson