Custom Border for Callout Popup

[Richard Bair]

I think what I would have done would be to extend from PopupControl. Then write a new Skin for your Callout. The skin would add the path as one of its children, and whatever content is added to the content would then be added after the path. The path would have "managed" set to false. Then, in the layoutChildren() method of your Callout, you would reposition the path based on the current bounds and then call super.layoutChildren() which would position and layout the content.

So something like:

public class Callout extends PopupControl {
...
}

// Doh! SkinBase is a private class, but you can copy/paste it into your code if it is GPL+classpath..., otherwise just see what it does and write a fresh Skin that does the same
public class CalloutSkin extends SkinBase<Callout> {
    private Path path;
    ...
}

Richard



On May 7, 2012, at 12:32 PM, Werner Lehmann wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I am creating a popup for a callout. The callout is basically a rectangle with a small arrow/tail on the top right corner and a single node for its content. That node may resize later and the callout has to adjust. http://i49.tinypic.com/21crux3.jpg
> 
> First I tried to do this with -fx-shape and an svg path but without luck: could not make this work, never saw that shape. Unfortunately I also did not find any example... I suppose even an SVG path border would not resize automatically when the content changes - otherwise this would be exactly what I need ;-)
> 
> Plan B is to use a Popup with a Path in the appropriate shape. This works but I am battling two things:
> 
> 1. I have to know the popup content layout bounds before I can position the popup "right aligned". Currently solved by showing the popup offscreen (at -10000, 0) to get valid layoutBounds. Then I move it to the correct position. Is there a better way to get layoutBounds before showing a window?
> 
> 2. When the content size changes, a similar problem arises: now I have to determine the new popup size, change the border Path to match the new size (PathElement binding might work here) and reposition the window. A resize animation would be nice, and some clipping will be needed also...
> 
> This is when I got an idea: is it possible to create and use a custom border class? Looks as if I could extend com.sun.javafx.scene.layout.region.Border... In this way I would get content clipping and resizing (position of arrow/tail must be adjusted) for free.
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> Thanks.
> Werner
>