— Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems Chairman, President and ceo

// with the color button and the other with the label button
} 
} 
// close class
class ColorButtonListener implements ActionListener {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) {
frame.repaint();
}
}
class LabelButtonListener implements ActionListener {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) {
label.setText(“That hurt!”);
}
}
Problem! This class has no reference to the variable ‘label’
Won’t work! This class doesn’t have a reference to 
the ‘frame’ variable of the MyGui class
multiple 
listeners
How do you get action events for t wo different buttons, 
when each button needs to do something different?

---

getting 
gui
you are here
4
375
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you 
could have two different listener classes, 
but the listener classes could access the 
instance variables of the main GUI class, 
almost as if the listener classes 
belonged 
to the other class. Then you’d have the best 
of both worlds. Yeah, that would be dreamy. 
But it’s just a fantasy...

---

376
 
chapter 12
You can have one class nested inside another. It’s easy. 
Just make sure that the definition for the inner class is 
inside the curly braces of the outer class.
Inner class to the rescue!
class MyOuterClass {

class MyInnerClass {
void go() {
}
} 
} 
Simple inner class:
class MyOuterClass {
private int x;