Q:

Resize JTextArea

What I'm trying to do is really simple, but I can't find a solution to it.
I have a JTextArea added to a JPanel and I want to JTexArea to resize when I resize the JPanel. I was able to get the JPanel to resize when I resize the JFrame, but it doesn't seem to work the same way for the JTextArea. Any ideas? Here's the code I used.
    public HelpPanel( Map<ComponentType, String> compMap ) {
    super();
    this.componentMap = compMap;
    compDescription = new JTextArea();
    setSize(300, 300);

    JScrollPane scroll = new JScrollPane(compDescription);
    add( scroll );
    compDescription.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(getSize()));
    compDescription.setLineWrap(true); //Wrap the text when it reaches the end of the TextArea.
    compDescription.setWrapStyleWord(true); //Wrap at every word rather than every letter.
    compDescription.setEditable(false); //Text cannot be edited.
    displayDescription();
}

A:

Change super(); to super(new BorderLayout());.
JPanel uses FlowLayout by default, which doesn't try to force the size of its components to fill the space. By switching to a BorderLayout, the center component (the scroll pane) will be forced to match the size of the panel.

