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.

JavaFX links of the week, December 28

Sorry for the delay in this post – with Christmas I managed to relatively disconnect from the web for a few days. Now that things are getting back to normal, I have a heap of links to share. Enjoy! 🙂

I hope you found something useful 🙂 Catch you in a weeks time!

JavaFX 2.1 early access for Windows (build 06) now available

It has been a hectic few months for JavaFX releases recently (and before that it was a hectic year of development building up to JavaFX 2.0!). Today we have another announcement, but first, a quick timeline:

  • JavaFX 2.0 for Windows, and JavaFX 2.0 developer preview for Mac OS shipped at JavaOne in early October.
  • In mid-October we shipped JavaFX 2.0.1 for Windows. This was a security-only release.
  • Earlier this month JavaFX 2.0.2 was released, which included a huge number of bug fixes, optimisations, some new API, and an improved redistribution license.

Today we are proud to announce that JavaFX 2.1 early access is available for Windows. It has been available for Mac OS for quite some time from the same page…

The reason why I say we’re proud: we’re hitting all the targets we’re talking about, and the releases just keep getting better and more featured. JavaFX 2.1 is going to be a more substantial release, and I’m so pleased we can get you early versions of it so soon.

Now, a word of warning: don’t use the early access releases in production – it is pre-beta code and will be more buggy than 2.0.2. We’re putting this out for public use so people may test the new features and provide feedback.

As with all other releases I’ve announced:

  • Go to the forums to discuss JavaFX questions you have,
  • Sign up to the openjfx-dev mailing list if you’re interested in our open source developments,
  • File bug reports over at our Jira issue tracker.

Happy testing!

JavaFX links of the week, December 19

Here we go again…..enjoy! 🙂

  • JavaFX 2.0.2 was released this week, bringing with it a heap of bug fixes, as well as a number of new features including SWT interoperability, and improved mouse scroll APIs. Additionally, the license was updated to allow for redistribution.
  • A new JavaFX 2.0 Developer Preview release has been made available for Mac OS X.
  • Coinciding with the release of JavaFX 2.0.2, the JavaFX Documentation team put out a number of new articles, covering topics such as JavaFX menus, styling charts with CSS, handling events, and others.
  • The JavaFX roadmap has been updated to give more detail about future releases.
  • Tom Schindl has announced the release of e(fx)clipse 0.0.9, as usual it comes with bug fixes and a few new features, including improved wizards, improvements to his fxgraph DSL, and early FXML support.
  • Sven Reimers and Geertjan Wielenga have announced the eFX project, which is a JavaFX RCP based on the NetBeans RCP.
  • John Smith has blogged about having a code editor in JavaFX by embedding the JavaScript CodeMirror editor inside a JavaFX WebView.
  • Pedro Duque Vieira has blogged about using ContextMenu in both JavaFX, and when embedded within a JFXPanel inside Swing.
  • Dustin Marx has blogged “Hello JavaFX 2.0: Introduction by Command Line“.

JavaFX 2.0.2 Released

The JavaFX 2.0.2 release is now available for download. Along with a heap of bug fixes, notable improvements include:

  • Interoperability with the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT).
  • New scroll event that handles scrolling on two axes and replaces the MouseEvent.MOUSE_WHEEL_ROTATED event.
  • Change of license, which enables third party developers to redistribute the JavaFX Runtime with their applications in accordance with the Oracle Binary Code License Agreement for the Java SE Platform Products and JavaFX.
  • Updated doclet for the Javadoc tool that is used to generate JavaFX API documentation in HTML format.
  • Updated NetBeans projects for the JavaFX samples for use with the NetBeans 7.1 release.

The JavaFX documentation team has also put out more documentation to explain a number of areas, including:

  • Styling Charts with CSS describes how to alter the visual appearance of charts in your application. Using the various CSS classes and properties you can set an alternative color scheme, add images and graphical effects, modify the chart legend and plot, and even invent new chart symbols.
  • The Menu chapter of the JavaFX UI Controls tutorial describes how to build a menu bar in your application, add menu items, assign specific actions to each item, and set a context menu for a node.
  • Handling JavaFX Events describes how to create and use event handlers and event filters to process user interactions with your application.
  • Using a Doclet with JavaFX describes how to use the Javadoc doclet that was created for use with JavaFX source code. Using the doclet with the Javadoc tool produces customized HTML documentation.
  • Deploying JavaFX Applications describes a new JavaFX Ant helper parameter, <fx:argument>. Also new is a mechanism for passing images to the <fx:deploy> task. Use <fx:icon> to pass icons for various purposes or <fx:splash> to pass a splash screen image for Web Start applications.

Relevant links: