Thanks,

I thinks subclassing JTabbedPane requires more work so ill stick with
just adding everything to a JPanel.

Another problem im having at the moment, is that i have written a
subclass of JPanel that displays and image on itself, then i want to
put this ImagePanel onto a Tab in a JTabbedPane. The problem is that
the JTabbedPane is not resizing to fit the ImagePanel, so you only see
half or some of the image.

Here is the code for ImagePanel.java

import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.Graphics;
import java.awt.Graphics2D;
import java.awt.Image;
import java.awt.Insets;
import java.awt.MediaTracker;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
import java.awt.image.*;

public class ImagePanel extends JPanel
{
  /**
   * This member variable holds the currently displayed image.
   */
  private BufferedImage mImage;

  public ImagePanel()
  {
     this.mImage = null;
     this.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(410, 50));
  }

  /**
   * loadImage() loads an image, using a MediaTracker to ensure
   * that the image
   * data is fully loaded. Then it converts the image to a
BufferedImage.
   * Finally, it adjusts the window size and placement based on the
new
   * image
   * size.
   *
   * @param fileName   The path of the image to load.
   * @return A BufferedImage object containing the loaded image.
   */
  public BufferedImage loadImage(String fileName)
  {
     // Use a MediaTracker to fully load the image.
     Image image = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getImage(fileName);
     MediaTracker mt = new MediaTracker(this);
     mt.addImage(image, 0);
     try
     {
        mt.waitForID(0);
     } catch (InterruptedException ie)
     {
        return null;
     }
     if (mt.isErrorID(0))
        return null;
     // Make a BufferedImage from the Image.
     mImage = new BufferedImage(image.getWidth(null),
image.getHeight(null),
           BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);

     Graphics2D g2 = mImage.createGraphics();
     g2.drawImage(image, null, null);

    //this.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(image.getWidth(null)
                                                          ,
image.getHeight(null)));
     validate();
     repaint();

     return mImage;
  }

  public void paintComponent(Graphics g)
  {
     super.paintComponent(g);
     if (mImage == null)
        return;
     Insets insets = getInsets();
     g.drawImage(mImage, insets.left, insets.top, null);
  }

}