floater wrote:
The reason is that you are using the same thread for swing event dispatching *and* ftp. So you have to fire off ftp from a different thread.
There are several ways:
1. SwingUtilities in swing
2. Sun also has a Thread worker class(do a search at sun.com)
3. A simple embedded as follows(My own woking code, but use it freely)

if ((e.getClickCount() == 2) && SwingUtilities.isLeftMouseButton)
{
debugLine("Left mouse double selected. Go get data!");
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
//This will start a new thread so it won't block the
//Event Dispatch Thread.

Thread worker = new Thread()
{
public void run()
{
//This sets the progress bar
StockChart.getFrame().setProgressBar(true);
//do whatever you want

//This reset the progress bar
StockChart.getFrame().setProgressBar(false);
}
};
worker.start();
}

...
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae){
    //start fetching ftp data
    try{
        Worker.post(new Task(){
            public Object run() throws Exception{
                // Here write the time-consuming ftp code to get the data
            }
        });
    }catch (Exception x){
        // Handle the exception thrown by the Task
    }  
}

snowbug wrote:
I've been using a small library called foxtrot for a while in my swing related programming. It made my life so much easier. Basically, it allows you to invoke a time-consuming task but not block the swing UI (so the button, progress bar, .. , will still be responsive), with an added benefit of being able to catch the exception from the time-consuming task the same way you do in regular java code. Plase read the short documentation from the site to get a full idea.

http://foxtrot.sourceforge.net

floater wrote:
I think Timer could also be used for this purpose.