why is the actionEvent greyed out

bnStart.setEnabled(true);

greyed out? Where? In your editor?

That would depend on your IDE. If it compiles, yes, possibly. If it doesn't, maybe it's not imported

What editor/IDE do you use?

>> If it doesn't, maybe it's not imported

If new ActionListener () complies (means it is imported), then so should ActionEvent.... are you using Netbeans?

>>If new ActionListener () complies (means it is imported), then so should ActionEvent

Why so?

mayank probably means that if you have

import java.awt.event.*;  

both ActionListener and ActionEvent are known

But mayank, you could of course have

import java.awt.event.ActionListener;

Because they are in the same package? Unless he imported java.awt.event.ActionListener instead of event.* .... :)

Anyway, most IDEs still recognize the classes and show a colour regardless of whether it was imported or not (of course, on compiling you would know the error).... ;)

>>Unless he imported java.awt.event.ActionListener instead of event.* .... :)

Most decent IDEs will encourage precisely that good practice ( as opposed to import x.* )  ;-)

CEHJ, I'm interested in the reason why it would be good/better practice to have

import java.awt.event.ActionListener;

instead of

import java.awt.event.*;

Because it announces precisely what classes are being used (unless a declaration is redundant [a good ide will warn about that too]) which is useful for maintenance

Mmmm. That's the argument I always hear.
But so far, I don't experience any (maintenance)problems with using *

Good point. Personally, I use import java.awt.event.* to reduce the number of import-lines (for some reason, if there are many import lines, it doesn't look good to me and I get anxious to see where the real code of the class starts ;-)). If there are any classes with the same name and in multiple packages (like java.util.Date and java.sql.Date), then I use the full package-name in the code. Luckily - my company's coding-standard does not have a problem with that and does not enforce me to use import java.awt.event.ActionListener instead of * (phew~!) :-)

Does it have any advantage on the compile-time though?

I feel excatly like you mayank.

>> Does it have any advantage on the compile-time though?
No afaik.

I'm back, thx for all your comments.

The only reason I've been using import java.awt.event.ActionListener instead of * is to help in the initial learning.
Just to help me build up the method of using java.

>>bnStart.setEnabled(true);

do I need to do this for the action to work? I don't think i do so whats it for?

Any questions left?

>> whats it for?
Forget that. I first thought you meant that the button the action was linked to was greyed out.

> do I need to do this for the action to work? I don't think i do so whats it for?

no

>>sounds like a reasonable assumption

but surley i am using it if the start button works d8-)