..

..

Yep.. guilty.  (silly grin)  

Sorry if it offended you Thomas, I did not mean it seriously
(well ..not _that_ seriously - *some* of the suggestions for
GUI's I see on c.l.j.p. make my skin crawl!).

tnx for the hints.

i got now two buttons, one button is just for a single action and a
second button to show a jpopupmenu beneath the first button.
i only need to put them/stitch them together so they look like one
button. i'm also looking in the abstractbutton source now to see where
the mouseover effect is of a button.. i need to disabled that :S, its
giving a ugle border effect, especially if they need to be seen as one.

Here's one that works - an interesting exercise.

It uses the glass pane to intercept events.  When you click button1 (left mouse button) on the right
hand 25% of the history button, it intercepts the mouse pressed event and pops up a menu.  When
you release button1 in the same place, it discards the event.  When you do the invoke-popup-menu
mouse action (button3 on Windows) anywhere over the history button, it invokes the pop up menu.  
This is pretty much the same as an Internet Explorer back or forward button.  Any other mouse
events are passed to the underlying component.

I put my history button in a JToolBar.  To get a down arrow on the right hand side, I just screen-
dumped IE and put the image from the Back button on the JButton using a .png.

In your code to initialise your frame (e.g. JFrame constructor), do this:

     getGlassPane().addMouseListener(
         new HistoryButtonMouseAdapter(getContentPane(),
                                       popupMenu,
                                       getGlassPane(),
                                       backButton,
                                       menuBar));
     getGlassPane().setVisible(true);

class HistoryButtonMouseAdapter extends MouseInputAdapter
{
 // Copyright (C) Tom N 2005
 // Permission granted to use without restriction, provided these
 // 3 lines stay in the source code.
 private Container contentPane;
 private JPopupMenu popupMenu;
 private Component glassPane;
 private JButton historyButton;
 private JMenuBar menuBar;
 /**
  * Handle a history button.  Typical calls is as follows (from within
  * a JFrame constructor).
  *       getGlassPane().addMouseListener(
  *           new HistoryButtonMouseAdapter(getContentPane(),
  *                                         popupMenu,
  *                                         getGlassPane(),
  *                                         backButton,
  *                                         menuBar));
  *       getGlassPane().setVisible(true);
  *
  * @param contentPane result of getContentPane on the frame
  * @param popupMenu the history menuu to pop up.
  * @param glassPane result of getGlassPane on the frame
  * @param historyButton the button we want history facility on
  * @param menuBar menu bar or null if there is none.
  */
 HistoryButtonMouseAdapter(Container contentPane, JPopupMenu popupMenu,
                           Component glassPane, JButton historyButton,
                           JMenuBar menuBar)
 {
   this.contentPane = contentPane;
   this.popupMenu = popupMenu;
   this.glassPane = glassPane;
   this.historyButton = historyButton;
   this.menuBar = menuBar;
 }
 public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e)
 {
   redispatchMouseEvent(e);
 }
 public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent e)
 {
   redispatchMouseEvent(e);
 }
 public void mouseExited(MouseEvent e)
 {
   redispatchMouseEvent(e);
 }
 public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e)
 {
   redispatchMouseEvent(e);
 }
 public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e)
 {
   redispatchMouseEvent(e);
 }
 private void showPopup(MouseEvent e)
 {
   popupMenu.show(e.getComponent(),
                    e.getX(), e.getY());
 }
 private void redispatchMouseEvent(MouseEvent e)
 {
   Point glassPanePoint = e.getPoint();
   Point containerPoint = SwingUtilities.convertPoint(
                                   glassPane,
                                   glassPanePoint,
                                   contentPane);
   boolean handled = false;
   if (containerPoint.y < 0)
   { // We're not in the content pane so we're probably in the menu bar
     // so we have to redispatch the event.
     if (menuBar != null && containerPoint.y + menuBar.getHeight() >= 0)
     {
         //The mouse event is over the menu bar.
         containerPoint = SwingUtilities.convertPoint(
           menuBar,
           glassPanePoint,
           menuBar);
         if (containerPoint.y >= 0)
         {
           Component component =
               SwingUtilities.getDeepestComponentAt(menuBar,
               containerPoint.x,
               containerPoint.y);
           Point componentPoint = SwingUtilities.convertPoint(
               menuBar,
               glassPanePoint,
               component);
           component.dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent(component,
               e.getID(),
               e.getWhen(),
               e.getModifiers(),
               componentPoint.x,
               componentPoint.y,
               e.getClickCount(),
               e.isPopupTrigger()));
       }
     }
   }
   else
   { // The mouse event is possibly over thing we are interested in.
     // Find out exactly which component it's over.
     Component component =
         SwingUtilities.getDeepestComponentAt(
         contentPane,
         containerPoint.x,
         containerPoint.y);
     Point componentPoint = SwingUtilities.convertPoint(
         glassPane,
         glassPanePoint,
         component);
     if (component == historyButton)
     {
       // Check events over backbutton
       if (e.isPopupTrigger())
       {
         // Popup menu button (varies with platform) operates anywhere
         // on history button.
         handled = true;
         showPopup(e);
       }
       else if (e.getButton() == e.BUTTON1)
       {
         // Look for right hand 25% of button being clicked on.
         int minX = (historyButton.getWidth() >> 2) +
                    (historyButton.getWidth() >> 1);
         if (componentPoint.x > minX)
         {
           if (e.getID() == e.MOUSE_PRESSED)
           {
             handled = true;
             showPopup(e);
           }
           else if (e.getID() == e.MOUSE_RELEASED)
           {
             handled = true;
           }
         }
       }
     }
     if (! handled)
     {
       //Forward events (note menu bar events forwarded above).
       component.dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent(component,
                                            e.getID(),
                                            e.getWhen(),
                                            e.getModifiers(),
                                            componentPoint.x,
                                            componentPoint.y,
                                            e.getClickCount(),
                                            e.isPopupTrigger()));
     }
   }
 }
}