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How to create with Intellij and swing interface tab like functionality?

I have a task to create a desktop app and I decided to use Swing as I have some experience with it. Also I am using Intllij and I noticed it have a form creator visual interface so I want to use it because its easier.
Samples of my interface is attached here. Its not hard but I dont know which controls to use in order to make something like this. On startup I need to have some text on the right side of the window, then on press on different button on the left to change that text with some other controls like fields labels check boxes etc. Its bit like tabs but I cannot use the JTabbedPane because it become with too different design. Could you advice me which controls to use and how to use them in order to achieve this design ?
Here is the design:

Also I am using Intllij and I noticed it have a form creator visual interface so I want to use it because its easier.
It isn't easier as you end up spending time learning the IDE instead of learning Swing. Any code that is generated will not be maintainable if you ever need to switch to a different IDE.
Learn how to create/maintain the GUI forms manually.
, then on press on different button on the left to change that text with some other controls like fields labels check boxes etc
Start with the standard BorderLayout for the frame. Then you create a panel with your buttons to display on the left. You create a second panel that uses a CardLayout in the CENTER of the BorderLayout. Then when you click a button you swap the panel that is displayed in the CENTER.
Read the section from the Swing tutorial on Layout Managers. There are sections on:
How to Use BorderLayout
How to Use CardLayout
to get your started with working examples.

If you are creating a commercial application(rather then as a leaning experience) consider using JIDE Common Layer as the MultiplePageDialog provides the functionality you seem to be describing:
In this case a series of buttons on the left controlling a panel on the right

Custom Swing "Tabbed Pane"

I'm trying to build a custom UI to practice my interface development.
What I would like to do is create a 'sidebar' on a JFrame, which acts as a tabbed pane for a number of JPanels that I would like to be able to switch between.
Currently, I have a 'sidebar' consisting of a number of buttons, and through clicking a button - I would 'hide' one panel, and 'swap in' another (although I am yet unsure of how best to do this). The panels I am creating are the same size, but I do not know how to swap a panel in one position on my UI with another panel, in that same position.
As a result of this I have researched tabbed panes, and these seem like they could be perfect for what I'm trying to implement. I know I can set each pane to display my own JPanel, but I would like the actual tabs to be represented by the custom buttons I have made.
Is this possible with the JTabbedPane class? Or should I continue figuring out how to swap in and out my panels using the button action listener?

Revamp Panel Based UI to JTabbed Panes

I have developed a simple music player in Java which can play any given playlist or simple mp3 song.
For now i have worked all things out in plain JPanels. GUI doesn't look neat.
I need to revamp the GUI using tabbed pane. How this can be achieved using existing JPanels without affecting current functionality?
Also, i am not able to figure out shall i go for Tabbed Pane or Card Layout?
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/card.html
Because a tabbed pane provides its own GUI, using a tabbed pane is simpler than using the CardLayout class.

"Also, i am not able to figure out shall i go for Tabbed Pane or Card Layout?"
It really depends on your preference of the look of your program. The two layouts perform very similarly, though CardLayout is a little bit more code, though at all not difficult. If you don't want the tab look, which I don't see why you would, for a game, then go with CardLayout
"How this can be achieved using existing JPanels without affecting current functionality? "
You need to create separate JPanel for each containment of whatever components you want in each tab. Then just add those JPanel to the JTabbedPane. It shouldn't break any functionality, just the look. Components from another panel should not be affected, you just won't be able to see any changes made, unless that other panel is in view.
If you want to go with CardLayout you can look at the tutorial

Bypass layout for a component in Swing without null layout

Is there a way to bypass the layout manager for a given component in Swing? Something similar to position="absolute" in CSS. Null layout is not an option.
I have an existing GUI which I can't modify and uses different kinds of layouts and I need to add a button a the top right corner of the screen.

If you can't modify the existing GUI, including the top-level containing JFrame, you might be out of luck.
If you can modify the root container, you can achieve what you want with a layered pane. You can put your existing JTabbedPane in a lower layer, and add your button on a higher layer (and there you can use a null layout + setLocation()).

Is there a way to hide the tab bar of JTabbedPane if only one tab exists?

I want a behavior similar to e.g. Firefox where the list of available tabs does only show up if at least two tabs exist.
I wasn't able to find anything like that, yet.
The best idea I had was changing the layout manually:
in case of one component, just add that to the surrounding panel
if a component is added, remove the component from the surrounding panel, add a JTabbedPane instead and add both the previous and the new component to that pane.
if a component is removed and only one component is left in the pane, remove the pane and add the contained component instead.
While this would probably work it feels like a hack or workaround...
Any better idea?
A solution should ideally work in both Java 1.5 and 1.6... but I'd be happy about a 1.6-only solution, too.

You can override the UI method that calculates the height for the tab button area, forcing the height to 0 when there's only one tab:
tabbed_pane.setUI(new BasicTabbedPaneUI() {
#Override
protected int calculateTabAreaHeight(int tab_placement, int run_count, int max_tab_height) {
if (tabbed_pane.getTabCount() > 1)
return super.calculateTabAreaHeight(tab_placement, run_count, max_tab_height);
else
return 0;
}
});

You may be better off simply using CardLayout.

I believe you'll have to do it manually. Apparently it has been done before, but only as a small bit of a system which seems to not be available.
Your approach looks good to me. I would do it just like you laid it out, and wrap all that logic in a custom JComponent so it will feel less hackish.

Yes, there is a way. Took me four hours to find at the oracle website:
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/javax/swing/JTabbedPane.html#setTabLayoutPolicy()
Simply use this:
//declare
private JTabbedPane editor = new JTabbedPane ();
//construct like this:
editor.setTabLayoutPolicy(JTabbedPane.SCROLL_TAB_LAYOUT);
//just add components and see how it goes.
editor.addTab("", newPanel);

Another option would be to customize the L&F delegate (either BasicTabbedPaneUI or WindowsTabbedPaneUI depending on the platforms you care about) used by the JTabbedPane. This would allow you to customize the behavior of the tabbed pane in the case where only a single tab was being shown.
This is another way of doing things however I would say it's quite an undertaking and doing what Michael said will get you where you want to go with a lot less effort. I just wanted to post this as an answer in case you weren't aware of this option.

I think this can be achieved using tab bar and a card layout,
add the tab bar and card layout to a grid bag layout so that they
re-size automatically
the max height of the tab bar should be the height of the tab
add a listener to tab bar so that when certain tabs are clicked it
will switch the card layout to show appropriate content
hide the tab bar if it has only one tab
and this should do the job.

jTabbedPane1.removeTabAt(0); seems to work after initComponents();