> Apparently such a container is non-existent and preferredWidth and > preferredHeight has to be used.
What makes you think that? There are plenty of containers that you could use for this: Border GridPane StackPane TablePane TabPane Window You have to set an explicit preferred size *somewhere*, but that is generally done at the top level on Window, either via the "maximized" flag or via the pref. size properties. > I think I'll just have to listen to width and height changes and then set the > preferred sizes manually. You can do that, but as I said, it's really not the "right" way to do it.
