Tool Windows
You know a tool window when you see one. It’s basically a helper window that you want to keep around while you perform a task in the IDE. You could think of a tool window as a glorified modeless dialog box (meaning you can click other UI elements outside of the window) with additional functionality that makes it a tool window, such as the ability to dock and autohide.
At a high level, a tool window can be in one of five states: dockable, autohiding, tabbed document, floating, or hidden. These states can be combined and put into special cases to cause the tool window to be in interesting hybrid states, as illustrated in Tip 4.16: You can use docking targets to dock tool windows in new and crazy ways. But for now, we’ll explore the most ...
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