<p>My current problem is that I have a JFrame with a 2x2 GridLayout. And inside one of the squares, I have a JPanel that is to display a grid. I am having a field day with the java swing library... take a look</p>

<p><a href="http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/9683/frameow2.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Image</a></p>

<p>Java is automatically expanding each JLabel to fit the screen. I want it to just be those blue squares (water) and the black border and not that gray space. Is there a way I can just set the size of that JPanel permanently so that I don't have to go through changing the size of the JFrame a million times before I get the exact dimension so that the gray space disappears?</p>

<p>I also would like to set the size of those buttons so they are not so huge (<code>BorderLayout</code> is being used for the buttons and TextField)</p>

If you can
```
setResizeable( false )
```
on the top level frame you can then set your layout manager to null and hard code each location and size via setBounds. This is how I would do it (contingent on resizing of course).