New to Java

Hi,
I'm taking an introductory course in Java, and am creating a GUI typing test program for a final project. The program is not fully complete as you can see; my next step is to make a timer to countdown from 60 seconds to 0. I can't seem to find how to do this anywhere and the code I have found is too complicated to understand.

What I want to do is, when a button (startBTN) is pressed, it will start the timer and the time will be displayed in a JTextField. All the timer has to do is dynamically show the time going down from 60 to 0. When it gets to zero, it will stop and then I plan to have a JOptionPane window come up with stats about how the user did in the typing test.

This is the program so far in case you're interested.

import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import javax.swing.JOptionPane;
public class TypingTest extends JFrame {

	JButton startBTN;
	JTextArea areaTA;
	JMenu fileM;
	JMenuItem exitMI, restartMI;
	JTextArea toCopyTA;
	JLabel timeLBL;
	JTextField timeTF;
	JLabel errorsLBL;
	JTextField errorsTF;
	JLabel speedLBL;
	JTextField speedTF;
	JLabel blankLBL;
	String typed;
	
	public TypingTest()
	{
	startBTN=new JButton("Start Test");
	startBTN.addActionListener(new startButtonHandler());
	areaTA=new JTextArea(12,35);
	areaTA.setLineWrap(true);
	areaTA.setWrapStyleWord(true);
	areaTA.setEditable(true);
	fileM=new JMenu("File");
	exitMI=new JMenuItem("Exit");
	restartMI=new JMenuItem("Restart Test");
	toCopyTA=new JTextArea("Text to be typed");
	toCopyTA.setLineWrap(true);
	toCopyTA.setWrapStyleWord(true);
	toCopyTA.setEditable(false);
	timeLBL=new JLabel("Time: ");
	timeTF=new JTextField("");
	timeTF.setEditable(false);
	speedLBL=new JLabel("Words Per Minute: ");
	speedTF=new JTextField();
	speedTF.setEditable(false);
	errorsLBL=new JLabel("Errors: ");
	errorsTF=new JTextField();
	errorsTF.setEditable(false);
	blankLBL=new JLabel("");
	fileM.add(exitMI);
	fileM.add(restartMI);
	
	Container pane=getContentPane();
	pane.setLayout(new GridLayout(3, 2));
	JPanel panel=new JPanel();
	panel.add(toCopyTA, BorderLayout.CENTER);
	pane.add(panel);
	JPanel panel1=new JPanel(new FlowLayout());
	panel1.add(timeLBL);
	panel1.add(timeTF);
	pane.add(panel1);
	JPanel panel2=new JPanel();
	panel2.add(areaTA, BorderLayout.CENTER);
	pane.add(panel2);
	JPanel panel3=new JPanel(new FlowLayout());
	panel3.add(speedLBL);
	panel3.add(speedTF);
	pane.add(panel3);
	JPanel panel5=new JPanel(new FlowLayout());
	panel5.add(blankLBL);
	pane.add(panel5);
	JPanel panel4=new JPanel(new FlowLayout());
	panel4.add(startBTN);
	pane.add(panel4);
	setTitle("Typing Test");
	setSize(800, 625);
	setVisible(true);
	setDefaultCloseOperation(EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
	}

	private class startButtonHandler implements ActionListener
	{
		public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent arg0)
		{
			//need to start countdown timer when button is clicked
			//code below happens when the time equals 0
				 typed=areaTA.getText();
				 String[] words=typed.split(" ");
				 JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Your average speed: "+(words.length/60)+"/n Words typed: "+words.length);
		}
	}
	public static void main(String[] args) 
	{
	TypingTest run=new TypingTest();
	}

}

Any advice on how to create a working timer would be greatly appreciated. I've been trying to figure this out for two days and have gotten nowhere.

Charles

Message was edited by:
CJ426
Updated code