NetBeans Platform: Carefull with Matisse and FocusTraversalPolicy (aka Focus subsystem)

Matisse is a really nice GUI editor. But it doesn't seem to be quite up-to-date with the Java Focus Subsystem.

JComponent.setNextFocusableComponent() is deprecated since 1.4 ! And yet, this is all Matisse has to offer.

The right way to specify focus cycles since 1.4 is via FocusTraversalPolicy. You just set Container.setFocusCycleRoot(true) and then install your FocusTraversalPolicy subclass.

The problem is that setNextFocusableComponent has priority over the focus policy:

Overrides the default FocusTraversalPolicy for this JComponent's focus traversal cycle by unconditionally setting the specified Component as the next Component in the cycle, and this JComponent as the specified Component's previous Component in the cycle. (quote from Javadoc, emphasys mine).

So, if you try to define in Matisse some focus cycle the old fashion way (the only way possible right now) but then you want to use a FocusTraversalPolicy you have to go back and remove all the nextComponents otherwise it will break everything !

My advice: don't use nextFocusable on Matisse ! Do it by hand with FocusTraversalPolicy and wait for the 6.0 release when this should be fixed.