JTextPane with background color

Thursday, 1 December 2011

JTextPane and his ancestors JEditorPane and JTextComponent won't respect the color defined with setBackground(Color) since they display a "styled document" and expect the background color to be defined in the content. You'll always see a white background.

To change the background color (without modifying the content) you have to define attributes for the document:

    JTextPane textPane = new JTextPane();
    textPane.setContentType("text/html"); // or any other styled content type
    textPane.setText("White text on a red background");
 
    textPane.setForeground(Color.white); // Works as expected
    textPane.setBackground(Color.red); // Obsolete, no affect
 
    // Define a default background color attribute
    Color backgroundColor = Color.red;
    SimpleAttributeSet background = new SimpleAttributeSet();
    StyleConstants.setBackground(background, backgroundColor);
    textPane.getStyledDocument().setParagraphAttributes(0, 
            textPane.getDocument().getLength(), background, false);
 
    // And remove default (white) margin
    textPane.setBorder(BorderFactory.createEmptyBorder());
 
    // Alternative: Leave a 2px border but draw it in the same color
    textPane.setBorder(BorderFactory.createLineBorder(backgroundColor, 2));