PhillyRunner

Request from a humble newbie...

I have been working on a gui with, among other elements, a JPanel that serves as an active panel for asking and answering questions. To the left of this active panel is another JPanel with a JTree that is used to navigate through the questions, the presentation of which is formatted on an instance of a JPanel and passed to the active panel.

I have created a method in the active panel class to which I pass this other panel with the content that I want to have displayed in the active panel. From testing the gui, I know that the panel is being properly passed and loaded into the active panel; but I can't seem to get the desired content to appear. (How do I know it is being passed properly? Well, if I maxmize the window after calling this method, the panel displays the proper information; but if I don't do this, I can see it.) I am guessing that, by maximizing the window, I am causing the program to repaint the panel and to display the information; but when I try to repaint the panel manually, it doesn't work. In short, this is the relevant code:

public class ActivePanel extends JPanel {
...
public ActivePanel() {

BevelBorder activeBorder = new BevelBorder( 1 );
setBorder( activeBorder );

setLayout(new BoxLayout(this, BoxLayout.PAGE_AXIS));
add( pnlTemp );
setPreferredSize( new Dimension( 600, 600 ) );
}

public void setPanel( JPanel panel ) {
// Clear existing contents of the panel
removeAll();
// Add the new panel
add( panel );
}
}

public class WelcomeHandler {
...
public void actionPerformed( ActionEvent e ) {
if( e.getSource() == application.mainMenu.fileNew ) {
... application.activePanel.setPanel( new WelcomePanel() );
}
}
}

public class WelcomePanel extends JPanel {
// Create and lay out properties of WelcomePanel
}

any help for a newbie monkeying around with this stuff?