At <http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/awt/Dialog.html> you'll
see the API Javadocs which contain the following statement:

A dialog can be either modeless (the default) or modal. A modal dialog
is one which blocks input to all other toplevel windows in the
application, except for any windows created with the dialog as their
owner.

So if the owner of your JDialog is the underlying JFrame rather than the
JDialog creating it, that's still going to block access to the creating
JDialog.  JDialog already has separate constructors for ownership by a
Dialog or Frame.

There's a hitch, though, that I've seen on Windows systems in some
situations.  If you switch applications, the wrong JDialog can sometimes
come to the top when you switch back, thus making it unclear why you
can't seem to interact with anything.  That is an operational reason for
doing what I consider the preferred way anyway, which is that every
modal JDialog should be owned by the one creating it and not some other
parent.  It makes the "hierarchy" more clear.

= Steve =