A heap of links this week, and I’ve already spent long enough writing the links out below, so let’s just get straight into it! 🙂

• JDK 8 b81 is out now for download, and as always contains the latest JavaFX 8.0 bits for you to test out.
• JavaFX Scene Builder 1.1 Developer Preview b22 is now available for download.
• Jasper Potts posted an updated blog post about the new Modena theme that is coming to JavaFX 8.0. It has come a long way since the first post on Modena six weeks ago, and much of the community advice has been listened to to refine the Modena look. Personally I think it is miles ahead of what we shipped in JavaFX 1.x and 2.x (which is known as Caspian).
• Tom Schindl continues to write a number of interesting blog posts detailing his current projects. This week he has three posts. Firstly, he talks about building an intelligent code editor with JavaFX and JDT. Secondly he has announced the release of e(fx)clipse 0.8.1 which includes a number of new features. Finally, he has details of his upcoming talks about e(fx)clipse and JavaFX at EclipseCon next week.
• Speaking of Eclipse, Kai Tödter has blogged about his experiments with GEF4 graphics being rendered using JavaFX Canvas.
• Hendrik Ebbers has started work on a testing framework for JavaFX that he is calling MarvinFX. I hope that this project gains a lot of traction with the community and can grow to encompass fixtures for all UI controls to make testing quicker and easier.
• It’s not for another week yet (so I’ll remind you again in a weeks time), but John Yoon from the JavaFX team at Oracle will be presenting at the Silicon Valley JavaFX Users Group on March 27. As per usual you can attend in person or virtually. What’s cool is that John studied animation at the UCLA Film School, where he received his Master of Fine Arts in Animation/Film. Prior to working at Oracle, John worked in the animation industry as a Character Technical Director at Disney Animation and DreamWorks Animation on such films as “Chicken Little”, “Meet the Robinsons”, “Shrek Forever After”, and “How to Train Your Dragon”.
• It is great to see the JetBrains folks starting to get right behind JavaFX. This week they have posted about their improved support for JavaFX 2 CSS in IntelliJ IDEA 12.1.
• A whitepaper was published over at the Oracle Technical Network about how Integra CCS uses JavaFX to power contact centers around the world.
• Björn Müller has published an article titled Why, Where, and How JavaFX Makes Sense.
• Farrukh Obaid has published another JavaFX skin, this time it emulates the look of the Office Silver look.
• Jens Deters has a post about custom components, where is explores hover effects.
• Jorn Hameister has blogged about how to create a JavaFX dartboard with Shapes (Path, Arc, ArcTo, Circle) and Text.

Keep up all the hard work folks – you’re doing such a great job and it is a pleasure reading what you’re all up to! 🙂