Building a Code Editor Control in JavaFX

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

JavaFX doesn’t ship with a code-editor control, and TextArea isn’t built to grow into one — no per-character styling, no gutter, no virtualization tuned for thousands of lines. Building a real one means going back to Control + Skin and constructing the editor surface yourself. This post walks through several pieces of a custom editor control.

The core idea: two virtualized lists, not one

The instinctive design is a single ListView<String>, one row per line, with each row containing both the line number and the code. This approach has a drawback: when the user scrolls horizontally, the line numbers disappear.

Announcing 'Skinning JavaFX Applications'

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If you’ve ever tried to make a JavaFX application look like Microsoft or JetBrains, you know that CSS is not enough. Skinning JavaFX Applications is my attempt to close that gap — a practical, code-first book built from years of shipping real desktop business applications.

The main purpose of this book is to cover the Control-Skin architecture, so you can create your own custom controls and skins. We’ll cover how to implement custom window chrome, runtime theme switching, Fluent Design materials like Mica and Acrylic, and a full set of micro-interactions.

Libán Bande González on foojay.io - Friends Of OpenJDK

Building a Code Editor Control in JavaFX

The core idea: two virtualized lists, not one

Announcing 'Skinning JavaFX Applications'