JavaFX – Some Clarifications

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JavaFX Script, puh! What a hype you might think, as I thought some weeks ago. I have some tears in my eyes while reading that Sun is not really improving good old Swing. Instead they push a lot of energy and money into JavaFX.

Are this bad news?

I will put here some facts, my notes, my thoughts and some links to give you a basis for your next JavaFX program.

Some Facts

  • JavaFX 1.0 is still not released. It should be released on 2nd December (integrated in NetBeans 6.5). (I am a bit confused about the versioning terms but the current version should be 1.0 pre1)
  • You will be happy with the current version of JavaFX only if you use NetBeans 6.1 (!), Java 1.6 and Windows or Max OS for development. But this means: your clients will need a jvm like they do for Swing!
  • The current version of JavaFX is under GPL
  • JavaFX is not Java but you can mix it with Java. See the language introduction. JavaFX is a declarative programming language. E.g. the initialization is in the style of json (->yaml).
  • Be sure you read the migration guide before googling for examples! And use the shipped examples in the current version as starting point. (They switched from interpreter version to OpenJFX compiler)
  • Project Nile tries to exports a layered graphic from Adobe Illustrator (into JavaFX code). The projects offers libraries to import the exported files as well. It also provides a SVG converter.

The first intention of JavaFX is to improve Swing (not only in my opinion, see from page 22). But Swing could be improved only in two ways

  1. improve the library and merge awt, swing, java2d and more (1,2) into one consistent library WITHOUT breaking backward compatibility
  2. and enhance the language to provide such nice features like property binding (via bind)

Nice features in the programming language JavaFX or the API

  • ruby style durations: Duration t = 2m + 20s;
  • C# style operations: insert, delete … and this is nice:
    for (element in group where element.length() < 4) {
    println({element});
    }
  • // localization
    var localizer = StringLocalizer{ key: “Hello, World!” };
    // This prints localized text for “Hello, World!” for the default locale
    System.out.println(localizer.localizedString);
  • javafx can still be used as interpreted language: FXEvaluator().eval(String)
  • … a lot more!

Some drawbacks of JavaFX (only the current version?):

  • GPL
  • no tables or tableNodes!? use this. Where is the Table and TableColumn gone?
  • println(String); does not work although documented in the api. You will need to use System.out.println(String) + import java.lang.System.
  • The Photoshop exporter is not properly working for me. The .fx file does compile and even after I changed some lines the created UI looks damaged.

Conclusion

JavaFX is a great language which offers some nice features. But the current version is far from perfect and you should wait until the final release in December. But then: try it out! Hopefully they will made a linux version for me 😉

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