Unable to bring down the size of a panel

[raghavan20]

1. I am new to Swing and I am trying to put a JButton in to a JPanel. The JPanel is configured to work with BorderLayout. I want the panel to exactly fit the size of the button but I could not do it. The panel is large and there is ugly space sorrounding it.

2. I am trying to set the rows and columns of the text area. After I set them using setRows and setColumns of JTextArea methods, it shows in the console that they are set when I see them using getRows and getColumns but I could not actually see the text area widening up. It also affects the sizes of the labels...

Here is the Java code for the Interface.java file

import java.io.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;


class JavaFrame extends JFrame{

	JPanel newPanel1 = new JPanel();
	JPanel newPanel2 = new JPanel();
	JPanel newPanel3 = new JPanel();

	JTextArea requestTextArea = new JTextArea();
	JTextArea responseTextArea = new JTextArea();

	JLabel requestLabel = new JLabel("Send commands to the mail server");
	JLabel responseLabel = new JLabel("Received response from the mail server");

	JButton sendRequest = new JButton("Send to server");

	public JavaFrame(String title){
		super(title);
		this.setDefaultLookAndFeelDecorated(true);
		this.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

	}

	void addLabels(){

		//set sizes for labels
		requestLabel.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(600, 50));
		responseLabel.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(600, 50));

		//set colors for labels
		requestLabel.setOpaque(true);
		responseLabel.setOpaque(true);
		requestLabel.setBackground(Color.YELLOW);
		responseLabel.setBackground(Color.YELLOW);

		//set labels for textareas
		requestLabel.setLabelFor(requestTextArea);
		responseLabel.setLabelFor(responseTextArea);
		
		//add labels to panels
		newPanel1.add(requestLabel);
		newPanel3.add(responseLabel);
		
	}

	void addButtons(){
		newPanel2.add(sendRequest, BorderLayout.WEST);
	}

	void addTextAreas(){
		//set colors for textareas
		requestTextArea.setBackground(new Color(200, 100, 100));
		responseTextArea.setBackground(new Color(200, 100, 100));		
		requestTextArea.setForeground(Color.WHITE);
		responseTextArea.setForeground(Color.WHITE);	

		//set rows and columns for textareas
		requestTextArea.setRows(15);
		System.out.println(requestTextArea.getRows());
		System.out.println(requestTextArea.getColumns());

		//add textareas to panels
		newPanel1.add(requestTextArea);
		newPanel3.add(responseTextArea);
	}

	void addComponentsToFrame(){
		//set layouts and sizes for panels
		newPanel1.setLayout(new GridLayout(2,0));
		//newPanel2.setLayout(new GridLayout(0,1));
		newPanel3.setLayout(new GridLayout(2,0));
		newPanel2.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(400, 0));
		System.out.println(newPanel2.getSize().toString());

		//Frame's layout and its components
		
		this.getContentPane().add(newPanel1);
		this.getContentPane().add(newPanel2);
		this.getContentPane().add(newPanel3);
	}
}


class Interface{
	public static void main(String args[]){
		JavaFrame newFrame = new JavaFrame("Mail Client");
		
		//set frame's layout
		newFrame.setLayout(new GridLayout(3,0));

		//add all components to panels and panels to frame
		newFrame.addLabels();
		newFrame.addButtons();
		newFrame.addTextAreas();
		newFrame.addComponentsToFrame();
	
		//frame's visibility and size
		newFrame.setVisible(true);
		newFrame.pack();
	}
}

[srekcus]

Have you tried a null layout? You can set the exact size and location of nearly any swing object.