Adding Actions to Containers

JMenu, JToolBar and JPopupMenu accept actions with their add() methods (See Fig. ).

When the action is added:

• The container automatically creates a GUI component which can be customised with add(). I.e.
  • JMenu or JPopupMenu creates and returns a JMenuItem from an Action
  • ToolBar creates and returns a JButton

The Action is then paired with the New component in 2 ways(See Fig. ):

• The component registers a PropertyChangeListener -- for example if the action is disabled Both components will be disabled (visually greyed).
• The Action object registers an ActionListener on all associated components.