it should appear as a small tab docked on the side of the screen, when u
click on it, it slide/expand into a panel.
This feature exists in lots of applications so I guess there must be
something similar in swing. So far I didn't find anything, if you know
something please help. Baozi will be served :)
Thanks.
I didn't find anything so I decided to make my own.
I used layered pane to put my panel on and animator to slide it.
I also made my panel semitransparent.
it works nicely, however, with lots of work on repaint issues.
we later decided to use splitpane. IMO it not looks as good as the previous
implementation.
just a couple of days ago I come across JDock on web, it seems to be the one
I was looking for. https://swing-bug.dev.java.net/
I didn't look deep into it but it seems their demo works.
install Cairo dock, set unity side bar to autohide, then you can still use
the global menu while get rid of unity side bar. It's a good combination. I
think its better than mint.