thx Dr John for your reply i actually figured this one out by myself, i had searched the web for ages and not one site had something on it...
I set a string in this case i have called it 'whichButton' to the .getActionCommand(); of action 'e' and then just create a couple of if/else statements so it knows what to do depending on which action(button) the getActionCommand gets (buttons not shown in code).
Code:
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
{
String whichButton = e.getActionCommand ();
if ( whichButton.equals ("Button1"))
{
}
else
}
so it was very similar to what you described,
thx again
Seanneo