Right click JPopupMenu on JTabbedPane

I have a JTabbedPane with a custom tab component. I want to be able to right click anywhere on the tab and show a JPopupMenu. The problem I'm having is that there is dead space on each tab where the JPopupMenu does not appear with a right click. I believe it is because I'm attaching the listener to a JPanel that is acting as the Tab Component, but the JPanel isn't "filling" the whole tab.

Is there a way to attach a mouse listener to the whole tab?

Here is an example to illustrate what I'm seeing. In the yellow area of the tab, I can right click and get a popup menu, but in the gray area of the tab the right click is not intercepted.

public class TabExample {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {

            @Override
            public void run() {
                JFrame frame = new JFrame();
                frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

                frame.setBounds(100, 100, 1024, 768);

                JTabbedPane pane = new JTabbedPane();

                for (int i = 0; i < 15; i++) {
                    JPanel panel = new JPanel();
                    JLabel label = new JLabel("Panel " + i);
                    panel.add(label);
                    pane.addTab("", panel);

                    final JPanel tabComponentPanel = new JPanel(new BorderLayout());

                    final JLabel tabComponentLabel = new JLabel("My Tab " + i);

                    final JLabel tabComponentImageLabel = new JLabel();
                    ImageIcon icon = new ImageIcon(getImage());
                    tabComponentImageLabel.setHorizontalAlignment(JLabel.CENTER);
                    tabComponentImageLabel.setIcon(icon);

                    tabComponentPanel.add(tabComponentImageLabel,BorderLayout.CENTER);
                    tabComponentPanel.add(tabComponentLabel,BorderLayout.SOUTH);

                    tabComponentPanel.setBackground(Color.YELLOW);

                    tabComponentPanel.addMouseListener(new MouseAdapter() {

                        @Override
                        public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {

                            if (e.getButton() == MouseEvent.BUTTON1) {
                                pane.setSelectedComponent(panel);
                            } else if (e.getButton() == MouseEvent.BUTTON3) {
                                JPopupMenu jPopupMenu = new JPopupMenu();
                                JMenuItem menuItem = new JMenuItem("Menu Item");
                                jPopupMenu.add(menuItem);
                                menuItem.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {

                                    @Override
                                    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
                                        System.out.println("Clicked ");

                                    }
                                });

                                jPopupMenu.show(tabComponentPanel, e.getX(),
                                        e.getY());
                            }
                        }

                    });

                    pane.setTabComponentAt(pane.indexOfComponent(panel),
                            tabComponentPanel);
                }

                frame.add(pane);

                frame.setVisible(true);

            }

        });
    }

    private static BufferedImage getImage() {
        BufferedImage bimage = new BufferedImage(16, 16,
                BufferedImage.TYPE_BYTE_INDEXED);

        Graphics2D g2d = bimage.createGraphics();

        g2d.setColor(Color.red);
        g2d.fill(new Ellipse2D.Float(0, 0, 16, 16));
        g2d.dispose();

        return bimage;
    }
}

Is there a way to attach a mouse listener to the whole tab?

You could add the MouseListener to the JTabbedPane.

Then on a MouseEvent you can use the getUI() method to get the BasicTabbedPaneUI class. This class has a getTabBounds(...) method.

So you can iterate through all the tabs to see if the bounds of any tab matches the mouse point.

Edit:

BasicTabbedPaneUI has a tabForCoordinate(...) method, which removes the need for the iteration logic.