Making a game menu using Canvas?

Question

I am already familiar with JButtons, JLabels and such, but I want to start making a game a very "colorful" menu. Is there a way to do this using Canvas (like adding a mouse listener and make some buttons in PhotoShop and detect if the mouse hovers over and clicks the button), or is there a better way?

Answer 1

Since you're already familiar with JButtons, you may find it easier (and more practical) simply to extend the existing JButton and modify its appearance, so that it looks like an image rather than the traditional grey button.

Amongst other things, it means you get all the standard button behaviour for free, including special cases, and in exchange all you have to do is override a couple of methods.

Have a read through the accepted answer for the following question, which explains pretty much exactly how to do that:

Creating a custom button in Java