The CardLayout
is unusual. It breaks the applet into a
deck of cards, each of which will normally have a panel with its
own LayoutManager
. Only one card appears on the screen at a time.
You then flip between cards, each of which shows a different set of
components. The common analogy is with an installer wizard.
This might be used for a series of
data input screens, where more input is needed than can comfortably
be fit on one screen. Conversely, you can use a
CardLayout
for a slide show, where there's more data to be
presented than will fit on one screen.
For example, this CardTest
applet, one of Sun's standard demo
applets, uses a CardLayout
to flip between different
layouts for the same five buttons: