JAVA SWING - Creating Animation using Swing Timer

I am trying to setup a program that enables the user to display a transition when clicking the next and previous button. When pressing next, the swing timer should trigger and start the animation. When transitioning, there should be a flag that states it is in the transition period. The Swing timer should fire once every tenth of a second and essentially last 1 second.

public class guiCreation {
static Timer timer;
static boolean flag = false; 
private static void guiInterface() {
next.addActionListener(new ActionListener(){
            timer = new Timer(1000, this);
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){
                nextGest();
            }
        });
        //should go to the next tab
        previous.addActionListener(new ActionListener(){
            //if the list gets to the beginning, disable button
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){
                prevGest();
            }
        });
}
public static void nextGest() {
        timer.start();
        previous.setEnabled(true);
        next.setEnabled(true);
        //if the list gets to the end, disable button
        if (cardLayout.isNextCardAvailable()) {
            status.setText(" Next button has been clicked");
            //System.out.println("This is the" + size);
            cardLayout.next(cardPanel);
            next.setEnabled(cardLayout.isNextCardAvailable());
        }
    }
    public static void prevGest() {
        if (cardLayout.isPreviousCardAvailable()) {
            timer.start();
            next.setEnabled(true);
            previous.setEnabled(true);
            status.setText(" Previous button has been clicked");
            cardLayout.previous(cardPanel);
            previous.setEnabled(cardLayout.isPreviousCardAvailable());
        }
    }

}

Solution

This: "The Swing timer should fire once every tenth of a second ..." -- does not agree with this: timer = new Timer(1000, this); Your Timer is firing once every second, not every 10th of a second.

Instead, you should:

Create a new Timer(100, ...), one that fires every 10th of a second
Store in an instance field the start time in msecs when the Timer begins (likely do this in your button's ActionListener)
Within the Timer's ActionListener get the current mSecs and use this to check the elapsed time
Stop the Timer via ((Timer) e.getSource()).stop(); once 1 full second has elapsed
No need for a flag, since all you need to do is to check if the Timer isn't null and if it .isRunning(). e.g., if (timer != null && timer.isRunning()) { -- then the animation is proceeding.

Unrelated suggestion:

Get out of the static world and into the instance world. You're programming in Java, a language that is built to use OOPs from the ground up, and you don't want to fight against the OOPs paradigm.