Adding space between buttons in VBox

Question

I have a collection of buttons:

VBox menuButtons = new VBox();
menuButtons.getChildren().addAll(addButton, editButton, exitButton);

I want to a

Answer 1

As others have mentioned you can use setSpacing().

However, you can also use setMargin(), it is not for the pane (or box in your words), it is for individual Nodes. setPadding() method is for the pane itself. In fact, setMargin() takes a node as a parameter so you can guess what it's for.

For example:

HBox pane = new HBox();
Button buttonOK = new Button("OK");
Button buttonCancel = new Button("Cancel");
/************************************************/
pane.setMargin(buttonOK, new Insets(0, 10, 0, 0)); //This is where you should be looking at.
/************************************************/
pane.setPadding(new Insets(25));
pane.getChildren().addAll(buttonOK, buttonCancel);
Scene scene = new Scene(pane);
primaryStage.setTitle("Stage Title");
primaryStage.setScene(scene);
primaryStage.show();

You could get the same result if you replaced that line with

pane.setSpacing(10);

If you have several nodes that should be spaced, setSpacing() method is far more convenient because you need to call setMargin() for each individual node and that would be ridiculous. However, setMargin() is what you need if you need margins(duh) around a node that you can determine how much to each side because setSpacing() methods places spaces only in between nodes, not between the node and the edges of the window.