How to make a widget float?

Question

Is there an option or way to make a GUIKit window remain in on top of other application's windows?

In[1]:= Needs["GUIKit`"] 
ref = GUIRun[Widget["Label", { "text" -> "Stay afloat!"}]]

I've looked through the docs and I can't find a way to do this yet.

In[3]:= Options@Widget
Out[3]= {InitialArguments -> None, Name -> None, 
 ExposeWidgetReferences -> Automatic, WidgetLayout -> Automatic}

But I suspect it is possible, because it is based on Java and it is poosible to do in java's Window class.

Window.setAlwaysOnTop(boolean)

If anyone knows what gui libraries that JLink is using under the hood here for GUIKit windows - that would be a really great place to start!

Answer 1

I guess all the important information can be found in the tutorial, specifically in the subsection

• Access to the Java Object Layer

There, you see that you can easily extract the class that is used for widgets

<< GUIKit`
ref = GUIRun[Widget["Label", {"text" -> "Stay afloat!"}]]

First[ref]
(* « JavaObject[com.wolfram.guikit.swing.GUIKitJFrame]» *)

As shown in the tutorial, you can call methods on the java object directly, which makes it possible to do the following

First[ref]@setAlwaysOnTop[True]

On my machine this works and I cannot cover the window with another one any longer.