Noob question: How to make smooth window changes?

[fr33d4n]

Hi,

I'm a starter in Java Swing and I have over 5 years of experience in Java. Today I was trying to write a Java Swing GUI witch has to have multiple screens. I mean, like when you are going through a form, witch has many steps. I coded 5 different screens into separate JFrames using NetBeans and finally I created a main class, witch was calling them one by one using ActionEvents, etc.

The problem I have is that when I change from one screen to another I "dispose()" the first screen and then I create the new one, and the transition looks awful. It seems like the first screen closes and then the second screen pops up. I wanted to make it like only the contents of the Frame are changing but I couldn't find a good way to do it.

Can anyone, please, tell me some hints or somewhere to look?
Thx in advance.

[KevinWorkman]

Sounds like a job for CardLayout.