Disable a stage, dialog, window to prevent user actions

Question

Dear all,
I'am developing an application with JAVA8 b96 and I'm asking myself how to prevent the user from doing user actions.
I have long running Tasks (e.g. 3sec. to load detail data) and would like to disable the gui (prevent user from pressing other buttons, show wait Cursor, etc.). The StackPane approach is not realy working, because it does not prevent the user from using the tab and space key to e.g. use Buttons (it only supresses mouse clicks).
Thank you in advance, Tim

Answer 1

Just experimented with this a bit; I don't really claim to fully understand this (at least, not at this time of night). It looks like you need to consume key events from the scene using an event filter. You can consume mouse events by placing an overlay over the entire scene (using something like a transparent rectangle) with the mouseTransparent property set to false.
Something like the following seems to do the trick; there may be a much easier way I'm not seeing.
import javafx.animation.KeyFrame;
import javafx.animation.Timeline;
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.beans.binding.Bindings;
import javafx.event.ActionEvent;
import javafx.event.EventHandler;
import javafx.scene.Cursor;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.Button;
import javafx.scene.control.Label;
import javafx.scene.control.TextArea;
import javafx.scene.control.TextField;
import javafx.scene.input.KeyEvent;
import javafx.scene.layout.BorderPane;
import javafx.scene.layout.HBox;
import javafx.scene.paint.Color;
import javafx.scene.shape.Rectangle;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
import javafx.util.Duration;
public class InputConsumerExample extends Application {
  @Override
  public void start(Stage primaryStage) {
    final BorderPane root = new BorderPane();
    final HBox top = new HBox(5);
    final Button showTextButton = new Button("Show text");
    final TextField textField = new TextField();
    final TextArea textArea = new TextArea();
    top.getChildren().addAll(textField, showTextButton);
    showTextButton.setOnAction(new EventHandler<ActionEvent>() {
      @Override
      public void handle(ActionEvent event) {
        System.out.printf("textField has %s%ntextArea has%n%s%n",
            textField.getText(), textArea.getText());
    root.setTop(top);
    root.setCenter(textArea);
    final Rectangle mouseConsumer = new Rectangle();
    mouseConsumer.setFill(Color.TRANSPARENT);
    mouseConsumer.setMouseTransparent(false);
    mouseConsumer.setX(0);
    mouseConsumer.setY(0);
    mouseConsumer.widthProperty().bind(root.widthProperty());
    mouseConsumer.heightProperty().bind(root.heightProperty());
    mouseConsumer.setVisible(false);
    final Button pauseButton = new Button("Pause UI");
    pauseButton.setOnAction(new EventHandler<ActionEvent>() {
      @Override
      public void handle(ActionEvent event) {
        final EventHandler<KeyEvent> keyEventConsumer = new EventHandler<KeyEvent>() {
          @Override
          public void handle(KeyEvent event) {
            event.consume();
        pauseButton.getScene().addEventFilter(KeyEvent.ANY, keyEventConsumer);
        pauseButton.getScene().setCursor(Cursor.WAIT);
        mouseConsumer.setVisible(true);
        Timeline pause = new Timeline(new KeyFrame(Duration.seconds(8),
            new EventHandler<ActionEvent>() {
              @Override
              public void handle(ActionEvent event) {
                mouseConsumer.setVisible(false);
                pauseButton.getScene().removeEventFilter(KeyEvent.ANY, keyEventConsumer);
                pauseButton.getScene().setCursor(Cursor.DEFAULT);
        pause.play();
    HBox pauseButtonContainer = new HBox(10);
    Label state = new Label();
    state.textProperty().bind(
        Bindings.when(mouseConsumer.visibleProperty()).then("Paused")
            .otherwise("Available"));
    pauseButtonContainer.getChildren().addAll(pauseButton, state);
    root.setBottom(pauseButtonContainer);
    root.getChildren().add(mouseConsumer);
    primaryStage.setScene(new Scene(root, 600, 400));
    primaryStage.show();
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    launch(args);