The
Panel
class is a general-purpose Container subclass.
You can use it as-is to hold Components,
or you can define a subclass
to perform special functionality,
such as event handling
for the objects the Panel contains.
The
Appletclass is a Panel subclass
with special hooks to run in a browser or other applet viewer.
Whenever you see a program
that can run both as an applet and as an application,
chances are that it defines an Applet subclass
but doesn't use any of the special Applet capabilities,
relying instead on the methods it inherits from the Panel class.
Here's an example of using a Panel instance
to hold some Components:
Panel p1 = new Panel();
p1.add(new Button("Button 1"));
p1.add(new Button("Button 2"));
p1.add(new Button("Button 3"));
[Point to more Panel subclass examples.]
