JavaFX Composer Out !

I was not looking at JavaFX for a few months and the latest rumors on the potential death of the RIA product under the new owner did not make me spend time learning more, even I believe it might be the missing piece for some boring Java (Swing) enterprise applications. Yesterday the plugin that finally supports the visual creation of JavaFX was released. (Go for plugins,reload catalog and select the version 1.0 of JavaFX plugin)

JavaFX Plugin

Once the download is finished you can start creating JavaFX applications

New JavaFX Project

JavaFX Skeleton Project

I cant judge yet the composer or rather non-manual (full control) way to create a fx stage. The composer creates the code (similar to Swing) in the background and you cant touch it without screwing the fx file. I will try on a few samples.

First Remark: The preview pane renders useless now, it does not work with the composer anyway.

More infos on the JavaFX Composer

• wiki.netbeans.org/JavaFXComposer
• Screencast by Lukas Hasik

JavaFX News

• JavaFX is not yet available for Linux and OpenSolaris, at least officially. Still some fokls foud ways to get it up and running. Have a look at:
  >> OpenSolaris (link) and
  >> Linux (link)
• Android, the Google Mobile Phone phone OS, is running on a Java platform, but not supporting JavaME applications. There is no official Netbeans plugin, but a Kenai project (link) that helps the NB folks to use their sweet environment. And you are wondering if JavaFX is going to run on Android ?
  Last year Johnathan Schwartz and Rich Green at  JavaOne:

  
  (Besides this video I could not trace any information how to do it. Am I paranoid ? but SUN and Google not really collaborating on such topics ?

• More info on the JavaFX Mobile launch (link)
• Updating Netbeans JavaFX plugin 1.1  and getting this ?
  

  Netbeans Network Error

  You are not alone ! I try to get the update for the last few days and always get this error. The only really annoying thing in NB at the moment (for me).

JavaFX 1.1 released

Earlier than I expected it, but the new SDK version was released yesterday. Now shipping with the new JavaFX Mobile Support.

More infos at www.javafx.com (link) or Netbeans Website (link).

If you are a Netbeans user and download the earlier version of the plugin, just visit your plugin page and reload available plugins.

Netbeans JavaFX plugins

Future of JavaFX

I guess 2009 will be a very important year for JavaFX to get rolling faster. Most important milestones for this year:

• JavaFX for Solaris and Linux (no news on this since about 2 months on this, link).
• JavaFX 1.1 with the first version of JavaFX Mobile (planned to be released in February at Mobile World Congress, link)
• JavaFX 2.0 (at JavaOne 2009?)

You noticed there are hardly (new) books on JavaFX ? I guess publishers want to avoid sitting on books like Silverlight 1.0 which is pretty useless once newer version were released. Some titles are announced for mid year release.

Starting with JavaFX

For 2009 I decided one of the new technologies to poick up would be JavaFX. Always interested in RIA, only now I can stay in the Java family creating fancier applications than with Swing only. JavaFX is not matured yet, even it is released for production as version 1.0. I guess there is lot of stuff coming up with future releases. On of the catches currently is th elack of IDE that lets you visually creates JavaFX applications, you still need to create more or less manually the objects (buttons, textbox,..) on the screen. But I am 100% sure that some upcoming release of Netbeans or a plugin will allow this similar to place javabeans on a JSF page.

How to get started ? There are some pages with downloads and tutorials that I already listed in earlier posts (JavaFX 1.0 released, JavaFX Get Started ). Today I want to highlight 2 additional resources that are worth visiting.

• James Weavers JavaFX Blog (link)
• The JavaFX Online Seminar (free) by Sang Shin and James Weaver on Javapassion.com (link).
  A very different approach of training because it is rather online and not with fancy webinars or webcasts, but providing all materials allowing you work at your own pace anytime. I will try this !

JavaFX 1.0: Get Started

The few steps it took me to get started with JavaFX. I am using Netbeans 6.5, so the only thing to do is to select the plugins under Tools and reload the catalog for available plugins. Search for “javafx” and install the 4 plugins/packages.

Install JavaFX Plugins

You might run into this network related problem. It can be annoying because you eventually have to start the 45MB download again (and again), but that applies to all plugins.
Not all of the plugins have been successfully donwloaded..

Network Problem

After downloading and restarting the IDE you find 2 new sections in the “new peoject” screen. One for a skeleton JavaFX application and under samples a rather big number of preloaded samples to get you running.