I'm currently trying to figure out the best techniques for organizing GUI view hierarchies, that is dividing a window into several panels which are in turn divided into other components.

I've given a look to the Composite Design Pattern, but I don't know if I can find better alternatives, so I'd appreciate to know if using the Composite is a good idea, or it would be better looking for some other techniques.

I'm currently developing in Java Swing, but I don't think that the framework or the language can have a great impact on this.

Any help will be appreciated.

---------EDIT------------

I was currently developing a frame containing three labels, one button and a text field. At the button pressed, the content inside the text field would be searched, and the results written inside the three labels.

One of my typical structure would be the following:

MainWindow
    |
    Main panel
       |
       Panel with text field and labels.
       |
       Panel with search button

Now, as the title explains, I was looking for a suitable way of organizing both the MainPanel and the other two panels.
But here came problems, since I'm not sure whether organizing them like attributes or storing inside some data structure (i.e. LinkedList or something like this).

Anyway, I don't really think that both my solution are really good, so I'm wondering if there are really better approaches for facing this kind of problems.

Hope it helps