Another short tip: Swing provides a layout manager called CardLayout, which manages a set of components (cards) inside a container but always only shows one of them. The method CardLayout.show(Container, String) allows to switch between the components / the cards.
The same behaviour can be accomplished in JavaFX by using the StackPane, adding several children (each using the entire width and height of the pane) and calling the Node.toFront() method to switch between the children. However, there is one big difference: the StackPane will always layout all of its children, independent of wether they are currently showing or not. This might result in bad performance of your application and can be noticed when resizing the window that contains the pane.
My advice: manage your “cards” by adding them to or removing them from the scene graph. These operations are fast and flicker-free (this is JavaFX in Java 8, not Swing before Java 6).
| Reference: | JavaFX Tip 14: StackPane Children – Hidden But Not Gone from our JCG partner Dirk Lemmermann at the Pixel Perfect blog. |
Well, imagine that one of your “card” is a form. If you switch between the “cards” during completing this form, you loose your data if remove the card during switching.
Only remove the cards from the SceneGraph, do not delete / dispose them.