JavaFX 8 - Positioning Text Vertical Center of HBox

Question

I am having a very difficult time positioning Text in an HBox. I am able to set the Horizontal Alignment of the Text, but I am not able to set the Vertical Alignment of the Text. I am trying to set the Text in the Vertical Center of the Hbox, however it is appearing at the top.

Any help would be much appreciated.

// Create The Updates Progress Bar At The Bottom Of The Window
HBox checkUpdatesBar = new HBox();
checkUpdatesBar.setId("checkUpdatesBar");
checkUpdatesBar.setPrefSize(CHECK_PANE_WIDTH, CHECK_PANE_HEIGHT);
checkUpdatesBar.setMinSize(CHECK_PANE_WIDTH, CHECK_PANE_HEIGHT);
checkUpdatesBar.setMaxSize(CHECK_PANE_WIDTH, CHECK_PANE_HEIGHT);

// Create The 'Check For Updates...' Text
Text checkForUpdates = new Text();
checkForUpdates.setFont(Font.font("Arial Black", FontWeight.BLACK, 15));
checkForUpdates.setWrappingWidth(CHECK_PANE_WIDTH / 2.8);
checkForUpdates.setFill(Color.WHITE);
checkForUpdates.setTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER);
checkForUpdates.setText("Checking For Updates ...".toUpperCase());

checkUpdatesBar.getChildren().add(checkForUpdates);

My code produces the following: http://puu.sh/ccEkp/41a26038a4.png

I like my Horizontal Positioning. I know its not in the middle because I set it to be that way. However, I just care about the Vertical Positioning.

I have tried the following separately:

checkForUpdates.setLayoutY(20);
checkForUpdates.setY(20);

I chose the number 20 because I wanted to move the Text 20 pixels down from the top of the HBox. I calculated this value in Photoshop. Though if there is a better way for setting the Text to the Vertical Center of the HBox, please do enlighten me.

Thanks again for all the help!

Answer 1

If you just want to position the text in the center of the HBox, you can use the alignment property of the HBox to do it.

Set the alignment as CENTER_LEFT, to place the children, starting for the CENTER of the HBox's vertical space

checkUpdatesBar.setAlignment(Pos.CENTER_LEFT);