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.

Amazing news everyone, SceneBuilder 2.0 is released today. It has many cool new features and was a complete rewrite from the ground up so that it can be split into parts and embedded in your favorite IDE.

Download

Mo has put up a great video tutorial for SceneBuilder 2 on YouTube: Watch

Scene Builder 2

Whats New

  • JavaFX Scene Builder Kit. JavaFX Scene Builder Kit is an API that allows the integration of Scene Builder panels and functionalities directly into the GUI of a larger application, or a Java IDE, such as NetBeans, IntelliJ, and Eclipse. See Working with the JavaFX Scene Builder Kit for more details.
  • Ability to add custom GUI components to the Library. Custom components imported from a third party JAR file can now be added permanently to the Library of available GUI components. See Adding Custom Components to the Library for more information.
  • Support for new JavaFX 8 UI components. The new UI components, TreeTableView, DatePicker, and SwingNode, that were introduced in the Java SE 8 are now supported in Scene Builder 2.0. To see the list of JavaFX 8 UI components that are available, type FX8 in the Library panel’s search text field.
  • 3D Support. FXML documents containing 3D objects can now be loaded and saved in the Scene Builder tool. You can view and edit properties of the 3D objects using the Inspector panel. You can not, however, create new 3D objects using the Scene Builder tool. See JavaFX Scene Builder User Guide for more information.
  • Support for Rich Text. A new container, TextFlow, is now available in the Library of GUI components. You can drag multiple text nodes and other types of nodes, into the a TextFlow container. You can also directly manipulate the text nodes to re-arrange them in the container. Inline and property editing features are also available for each text node.
  • Library Panel Improvements. The default viewing option for the Library panel is a new feature that gives you the option to view all the component categories as collapsible sections.
  • Hierarchy Panel Improvements. It is now more flexible to re-parent objects from one container to another container. It is also possible to drag and drop an object from the Hierarchy Panel to the Content Panel, and vice versa. You can also now select multiple objects in the Hierarchy Panel in order to re-parent them.
  • Content Panel Improvements. You can now manipulate the components of an HBox, VBox, FlowPane, or Toolbar container directly in the Content Panel to re-order them. You can also insert a new component at any position in the container. Note that this direct manipulation is currently not available for the TilePane container.
  • Inspector Panel Improvements. Many property editors in the Inspector panel use the Suggested List dialog window, which displays a list of selectable values from which you can make a selection instead of manually entering them. For example, the CSS Style editor provides a list of applicable CSS properties, based on the currently selected object(s). List handling has also been simplified. Multi-selection of components of different types (i.e. Button + TextField) is now supported. In addition, the usability of many of the property editors, such as AnchorPane Constraints, Rotate, and Padding, have been improved.
  • Preview Window Improvements. The content in the Preview window is now automatically refreshed as the current FXML document is being edited. Hence, there’s no need to use the Refresh command in order to preview the modified UI layout.
  • Change in the Include FXML Command. When you click File from the Menu bar and then click Include, you can only select the FXML menu item if the current FXML document you are editing is saved on your system’s disk and is not empty.