In my weird software called The Console I decided to introduce tabs - a mechanism similiar to tabs that exist in web browsers. Here’s a (not really) brief story about it and why Dijkstra was right.

Today I present a few snippets around JavaFX WebView that I use in The Console:

• load style sheet
• set style or class of element
• scroll page to the bottom
• check whether the page is scrolled down to the bottom
• handle adding DOM elements while web engine loads
• remove some elements from document
• style scrollbar in the document

Rich text component is a user interface component that displays text by styling various parts of it differently. Very often Rich Text components are used for editors. An example may be any code editor that supports highlighting. I needed such UI component for my latest application - The Console so now I’ll shortly discuss a comparison between few options:

• e(fx)clipse Runtime StyledTextArea
• RichTextFX
• JavaFX built-in TextFlow
• JavaFX built-in WebView

Applications that are launched in Windows OS are by default listed on taskbar. For a utility software like The Console it is not the case. It shouldn’t pollute our task bar or even tray. It should be available under hotkey and that’s it.

Problem is, JavaFX won’t allow us. Previously presented line stage.initStyle(StageStyle.UNDECORATED)  gives us undecorated window but collides with stage.initStyle(StageStyle.UTILITY) which makes window’s task not visible in taskbar but window itself is then decorated.

Between workarounds I’ve found a solution. TL;DR initialize window using Swing.

Some time ago I made this project https://github.com/Namek/TheConsole_POC for Windows OS. It’s usage goes like this: hit CTRL+TILDE and on the top of the screen will open a Quake 3 Arena thingie that’ll enable you to type in some commands. Commands are JavaScript’able and that’s the power of the tool. I did some hacks here and there so I decided to change some techs and remake whole beauty to improve efficiency of use.