Make a BorderPane region go over another - javafx

Question

I've been trying for days and days now to get a BorderPane region go over another region...
The problem is as follow: My app is set in a BorderPane root, With:
A header in its TOP region
A menu in its LEFT region
The content, depending on the page, in it's CENTER
And an optional panel on its RIGHT region
That right region is the problem. It should appear/disappear when clicking on a "notification button" that is in the TOP region. So far so good. The thing is that the app doesn't use the RIGHT region, so I'm trying to make the RIGHT region that contains an AnchorPane go over the CENTER region. The normal state of the app is without the RIGHT region and I don't want to resize the whole app when opening the noitifications. Tried several things, such as:
When clicking the notification button, send the CENTER part toBack() and set the RIGHT width to the 300 wanted pixels
Sending the RIGHT region toFront()
Sending the whole BorderPane toFront()
None of them work, as they all either not show, or resize the center part which I don't want. I'd like the RIGHT to float above the CENTER region when the notification menu is showing.... Is there any way to do that? Or maybe another idea to trigger a container that would show above the CENTER part? Of course, I go design the panel in every CENTER pane and make it visible or not, but my app is about 15 different center windows so it would be really bad in terms of modifications...

Answer 1

I think you should not be trying to make the borderpane do this for you or you will end up with behavior you do not want like the center NOT resizing when the application is resized while the panel is visible.
Remember that JavaFX is really 3D. How about you try to wrap the BorderPane inside of an AnchorPane, GridPane or ScrollPane (whichever makes sense) instead of trying to get the right insert to do your thing. e.g. add an ScrollPane (your Slider) to the containing AnchorPane and bring that to the front and anchor it's top, right and bottom.
This should give you a right-aligned ScrollPane on top of your borderpane.
Then of course if you want it to be fancy with an animated slide you can try this out : https://gist.github.com/jewelsea/1437374
or this:
http://blog.physalix.com/javafx2-borderpane-which-slides-in-and-out-on-command/
Here is a very rough example to show the idea:
public class JavaFXApplication2 extends Application {
ScrollPane slider;
AnchorPane root;
#Override
public void start(Stage primaryStage) {
Button btn = new Button();
btn.setText("Slide in");
btn.setOnAction(new EventHandler<ActionEvent>() {
#Override
public void handle(ActionEvent event) {
root.getChildren().add(slider);
AnchorPane.setRightAnchor(slider, 0.);
AnchorPane.setTopAnchor(slider, 0.);
AnchorPane.setBottomAnchor(slider, 0.);
slider.toFront();
}
});
Label l = new Label();
l.setText("Test Label to Show inside content");
Label l2 = new Label();
l2.setText("Peek-a-Boo");
slider = new ScrollPane();
slider.setStyle("-fx-border-color: orangered;");
slider.setContent(l2);
root = new AnchorPane();
root.getChildren().add(btn);
root.getChildren().add(l);
AnchorPane.setRightAnchor(l, 0.);
Scene scene = new Scene(root, 300, 250);
primaryStage.setTitle("Hello World!");
primaryStage.setScene(scene);
primaryStage.show();
}
/**
* #param args the command line arguments
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
launch(args);
}
}