Java SE (Java Platform, Standard Edition)

Hey all,

So I am playing around with the focus manager, swing event thread and event queue, etc. Learned quite a bit. I am also playing around with test automation of our UI, using jfcUnit. I have written a few simple apps to play aorund with record/playback, coding tests, etc. What this thread is about though, is figuring out how modal and non-modal dialogs "take over" the event thread/queue? The reason I ask is, if I put a simple test harness like tool embeded in my app as a separate pop-up modal dialog, and from within it there is a GUI that I can use to select a "Test" to run. Now, when I run this test, jfcUnit needs to run on the main window, not within my non-modal dialog. What I am not sure of, however, is that if by using a non-modal dialog all events will go to the main event thread? I mean, I know if I mouse over my second non-modal frame (spawned from the application frame), that events will trigger for that dialog. I remember reading somewhere that modal dialogs "block" the main event queue, all left over events are given to the newly added event queue (presumably by the modal dialog) and existing left-over events get moved to the event queue. If that is the case, I am curious why events for the "old" queue are moved to the new queue if they were orginally intended for the old queue? I would think a "flush" before adding a new queue would be more appropriate so that the old queue can process all of its intended events.

Now, I am just about to try this, but I am hoping a non-modal pop-up will not interfere with the jfcUnit running the UI of the main window. I am guessing, however, that it might. How are non-modal dialogs handled in terms of events and the event queue? Is it the same as modal dialogs? Or is there no blockage of the mainwindow event queue? If there is no blockage, than any sort of automation based on relative positions to a window may occur on the non-modal dialog, in which case it's best to hide the non-modal dialog during running of these tests.

What are your thoughts, or better yet, knowledge of this topic? A decent explanation from a developer standpoint and not from the API's which dont give some of the more detailed info I am seeking is what I am hoping to get out of this.

Thanks.