Swing, Java and multithreading, and coloring buttons

Question

Yes, this is homework. Yes, I am completely stuck.

Here is the gist. I have created a JFrame. There are 3 panels (top, middle, bottom). In the bottom panel are 3 buttons

Answer 1

Without giving away too much, this example illustrates a way to deal with color and buttons that ignore setBackground(). Examples here and here demonstrate how to fade the color. As both rely on a javax.swing.Timer thread, neither is a solution, but the techniques may prove useful.