Getting User Input to Drawing Shapes

[mlfatty]

Hi I am developing a program that allows users to draw shapes like Rectangle, Oval, Triangle on a JFrame. The user will select a shape from a menu items and then I am supposed to ask the user to enter specifications of the shape he selected like: location, size and color of the shape. I have JMenu that deals with the shape selection but I dont know how to present a input form so that the user can enter specifications of the shape. I tried JOptionPane's ShowInputDialog but I cant handle that. Does anyone know the best/easier way of getting input form the user??? I also want to know how I will be able to identify the color the user entered in the input form because there are a whole bunch of colors the user can type in the form. I will end up changing the location and size to ints or doubles(most probably ints).
Thanks.

[Steve11235]

First, never draw, etc. directly in a JFrame, even though it seems to allow it. The convenience methods actually write on the RootPane's ContentPane. Instead, always add a container to the ContentPane, such as a JPanel, and draw, etc., on that.

Now that you are drawing on a JPanel, you can add a JDialog. Use that to get the user input.

[mlfatty]

Thanks. I am moving forward with this program.