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copied!<ol> <li><blockquote> <p>Should I completely avoid the use of those methods?</p> </blockquote> <p>Yes for application code.</p></li> <li><blockquote> <p>The methods have been defined for a reason. So when should I use them? In which context? For what purposes?</p> </blockquote> <p>I don't know, personally I think of it as an API design accident. Slightly forced by compound components having special ideas about child sizes. "Slightly", because they should have implemented their needs with a custom LayoutManager.</p></li> <li><blockquote> <p>What exactly are the negative consequences of using those methods? (I can only think adding portability between systems with different screen resolution.)</p> </blockquote> <p>Some (incomplete, and unfortunately the links are broken due to migration of SwingLabs to java.net) technical reasons are for instance mentioned in the <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20110614145256/http://wiki.java.net/twiki/bin/view/Javadesktop/SwingLabsImperialRules?TWIKISID=e1a6667476691b56753dc9b0744828c6#Do_not_use_component_setXXSize" rel="noreferrer">Rules (hehe)</a> or in the <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20100207211337/http://www.jguru.com/faq/view.jsp?EID=237070" rel="noreferrer">link</a> @bendicott found in his/her comment to <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7074514/images-in-jtable-cells-off-by-one-pixel">my answer</a>. Socially, posing tons of work onto your unfortunate fellow who has to maintain the code and has to track down a broken layout.</p></li> <li><blockquote> <p>I don't think any LayoutManager can exactly satisfy all desired layout needs. Do I really need to implement a new LayoutManager for every little variation on my layout?</p> </blockquote> <p>Yes, there are LayoutManagers powerful enough to satisfy a very good approximation to "all layout needs". The big three are JGoodies FormLayout, MigLayout, DesignGridLayout. So no, in practice, you rarely write LayoutManagers except for simple highly specialized environments.</p></li> <li><blockquote> <p>If the answer to 4 is "yes", won't this lead to a proliferation of LayoutManager classes which will become difficult to maintain? </p> </blockquote> <p>(The answer to 4 is "no".)</p></li> <li><blockquote> <p>In a situation where I need to define proportions between children of a Component (for example, child 1 should use 10% of space, child 2 40%, child 3 50%), is it possible to achieve that without implementing a custom LayoutManager?</p> </blockquote> <p>Any of the Big-Three can, can't even GridBag (never bothered to really master, too much trouble for too little power).</p></li> </ol>

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