<p>I cannot figure out a way to disable a container AND its children in Swing. Is Swing really missing this basic feature?</p>

<p>If I do setEnabled(false) on a container, its children are still enabled.</p>

<p>My GUI structure is pretty complex, and doing a traversion of all elements below the container is not an option. Neither is a GlassPane on top of the container (the container is not the entire window).</p>

JXLayer
might be what you're looking for, according to
this post
:
Wrap your container with the JXLayer and call
```
JXLayer.setLocked(true)
```
after that - all components inside will be disabled
alt text http://www.java.net/download/javadesktop/blogs/alexfromsun/2007.06.25/LayerDemo.PNG