One of my Gantt chart users wanted to use as much real estate on the screen as possible and asked if the scrollbars could be removed. But how do you navigate without scrollbars? Ok, there are all kinds of keyboard shortcuts and of course the usual mouse drag already supported by FlexGanttFX, but a visual control like a scrollbar is something most users would still expect to see these days (at least on desktops).
So here is the solution: I used to have a manager who when asked “do you want me to do this or that?” would always reply with “both!”. So I followed in his footsteps and implemented scrollbars that only appear when you need them and in order to support this I had to write another control for the ControlsFX project. The control is called HiddenSidesPane and supports four (initially hidden) side nodes. These nodes become visible when the user moves the mouse cursor close to the edges of the primary content node. They will slide-in with a little animation and slide-out when the mouse cursor leaves them. A side node can also be pinned, so that it stays visible.
The video below shows the control in action. I have commited it to the ControlsFX repository today and hope that it will be included in the 8.0.5 release.
The second video shows how the pane is used within FlexGanttFX:
