FX Experience Has Gone Read-Only

I've been maintaining FX Experience for a really long time now, and I love hearing from people who enjoy my weekly links roundup. One thing I've noticed recently is that maintaining two sites (FX Experience and JonathanGiles.net) takes more time than ideal, and splits the audience up. Therefore, FX Experience will become read-only for new blog posts, but weekly posts will continue to be published on JonathanGiles.net. If you follow @FXExperience on Twitter, I suggest you also follow @JonathanGiles. This is not the end - just a consolidation of my online presence to make my life a little easier!

tl;dr: Follow me on Twitter and check for the latest news on JonathanGiles.net.

LCD Text support in JavaFX 2.1 Developer Preview

LCD Text support in JavaFX 2.1 Developer Preview

Phil Race has posted a blog post over at the JavaFX Blog on the addition of LCD text support in the latest JavaFX 2.1 developer preview.

LCD sub-pixel text has become a must-have for many Windows desktop users, who have become accustomed to its superior legibility and less blocky appearance at smaller point sizes over hinted black and white text, and being sharper than grey scale anti-aliased text at the same size.

Java SE has supported LCD subpixel text on AWT heavyweights and also on Swing components using Java 2D for many years. However up until now, JavaFX has supported only more Mac OS X-like grey scale smoothed text.

For the JavaFX 2.1 release we’ve added the ability to use Windows-style LCD sub-pixel rendering. All the JavaFX UI controls will be LCD-text enabled by default on Windows, as will “WebView”, the Webkit-based node for rendering Web content.

Applications can also opt-in to use LCD text on the low-level scenegraph “Text” node by a new API : Text.setFontSmoothingType(FontSmoothingType.LCD));

JavaFX links of the week, January 30

These intros become harder as the weeks go by. The core message is always the same: Enoy! 🙂

JavaFX

These conclusions are equally difficult. The core message is always the same: I hope you enjoy what I just linked to, and I hope it was good enough to see you again in a weeks time (where hopefully my introductions and conclusions are slightly more considered!) 🙂

Extending PathBuilder

I came across the interesting blog “JavaFx and HTML5 differences” by Chika Okereke. Looking at the example code and comparing to the HTML Canvas version I thought the Java code could be made less verbose and easier to read.

Original Code

Path path_4 = new Path();
ObservableList shape_4 = path_4.getElements();
shape_4.add(new MoveTo(50,50));
shape_4.add(new LineTo(150,50));
shape_4.add(new LineTo(150,150));
shape_4.add(new LineTo(50,150));
shape_4.add(new LineTo(50,50));
path_4.setStrokeWidth(2);
path_4.setStroke(Color.rgb(255,0,0));

So I hacked together a Extended version of the PathBuilder that ships with JavaFX 2.0 adding methods for all of the path elements like moveTo() etc. The end result seems much cleaner code to me, what do you think?

Code with new Builder

Path path4 = PathBuilderExtended.create()
        .moveTo(50, 50)
        .lineTo(150, 50)
        .lineTo(150, 150)
        .lineTo(50, 150)
        .closePath()
        .strokeWidth(2)
        .stroke(Color.RED)
        .build();

This seemed a lot cleaner and simpler to read. I have filed a feature request RT-19266 in JIRA to add this to the platform. Feel free to comment on the bug if you any feedback or better suggestions. Also I have attached a implementation of this builder to the bug so you can see how it would be implemented or use it with your code today.

JavaFX links of the week, January 24

A heap of links this week (partly because I’m a day and a half late with this post!). Hopefully something for everyone 🙂

Catch you all in a weeks time.