Archives for category: Links

Welcome to another week! :-) There is a heap of good links this week – it seems the quality of blog posts is certainly increasing these days! Keep it up folks :-) As always, I hope you enjoy some of the links below, and always feel free to email me links to include.

  • I mentioned last week that the ThingsFX Swing-in-JavaFX project didn’t support key events, but that it was coming soon. In actual fact, I was wrong – it is already supported.
  • Speaking of ThingsFX, one of the members of that team, Roman Kennke, blogged elsewhere about the Swing in JavaFX integration, and even put up a demo applet that shows the current implementation. As you’ll note, it is a little slow, but it shows a lot of promise once faster options are made available.
  • Tom Schindl has released e(fx)clipse 0.0.8, and now e(fx)clipse also has an official website. This project is very exciting, so if you are an eclipse user and want top-notch JavaFX tooling support, you should check this out and provide feedback.
  • Zonski continues blogging about his research and development with JavaFX 2.0. This week he talks about file downloading in JavaFX 2.0 (over HTTP).
  • Johan Vos has blogged about visualizing REST XML data in JavaFX controls, making use of the DataFX project.
  • Tom Eugelink follows up his JavaFX 2.0 bubblemark explorations after being told of a runtime switch for JavaFX 2.0 that removes the 60fps limit that JavaFX imposes.
  • The slide deck that Stephen Chin and Peter Pilgrim used at Devoxx 2011 for their “JavaFX 2.0 – A Developer’s Guide” session is available online for those interested.
  • Patrick Champion blogged about extending a JavaFX 2.0 control to add functionality. I should probably add that their are simpler ways to doing this in many cases, which I covered in a JavaOne talk called “Custom UI Controls and Charts with JavaFX 2.0“.
  • Andre Hogenkamp has posted a second blog post about running JavaFX 2.0 in Linux (whilst awaiting official support from Oracle).
  • Scott Hommel has blogged about using the JavaFX Screen API to determine the dimensions of the users screen.
  • Eric Bruno blogged about JavaFX 2.0 binding APIs. Whilst it is a good blog to cover the main concepts of binding in JavaFX, it skips over some simpler options that are possible for the specific use case mentioned in the post. For example, rather than bind the TableView width/height to the scene width/height properties (and place them inside a Group layout), if a StackPane is used instead the TableView will grow automatically without needing any bindings. Similarly, some controls have their max width/height set to the pref width/height, so it is simply a matter of calling, say, button.setMaxHeight(Double.MAX_VALUE) to have them grow automatically when placed in a relevant layout.
  • I’ve come across two JavaFX-related projects on GitHub that people may be interested in, but unfortunately no related websites for further details. Firstly, user ‘nahi’ has JRubyFX, and user ‘skrb’ has SVGLoader. Fortunately the project names are fairly self-explanatory :-)

Keep up the great work folks. Catch you all in a weeks time.

Here we go again – this week there are a heap of JavaFX links, so I’m just going to get right in to it – enjoy! :-)

Well, that’s it for another week. Hope you found something useful. Catch you in a weeks time! :-)

Another week, another round of links from the JavaFX world. I hope you all find something of interest. Enjoy! :-)

That’s all for another week. Keep up the great work folks and I’ll be back in a weeks time to highlight everything you’ve been up to! :-)

Here we go for another week! :-) It seems the number of JavaFX links is really starting to pick up after JavaOne. The most notable news this week was that Oracle has started the open source discussion. Find all the details, and plenty of other interesting links, in this weeks JavaFX links roundup!

Hope you all enjoyed the links – catch you all in a weeks time! :-)

Having been traveling for the last three weeks, I’ve not been able to post the weekly JavaFX links roundup. Today I’m trying to make up for this by posting all the links I gathered as I was traveling (and on vacation). There are two problems with this approach: 1) what follows is basically information overload, and 2) I almost certainly missed links. I hope you can all forgive me for this one time, and I also hope you find a heap of interesting links in this post (it took me a looonnggg time to write this week!).

Whilst I’m here, I must note that it was great meeting so many people at JavaOne. The number of times I was speaking to someone who didn’t know me, only to see my name badge and know exactly who I was because of this blog was actually very impressive. I’m surprised so many of you read this blog! Anyway, with that (and because this post is already long enough) let’s get straight into it… :-)

Phew! That’s that for another week. I’ll get back into the regular schedule starting next week, so hopefully next weeks posting won’t be as great an ordeal (for you and me!) next week. Catch you all in a weeks time folks :-)

One of the projects I worked on leading up to JavaOne 2011 was the DataFX project, which, as I wrote on the website, “is an open source project that intends to make retrieving, massaging, populating, viewing, and editing data in JavaFX UI controls easier. It’s all that boring kludge work you have to do between getting user requirements and delivering a rich user experience.”

DataFX is a project Johan Vos and I have been working on for many months now, and it has gone through a number of iterations in that time. At JavaOne 2011 we put out a first release (let’s call it version 0.0.1 for lack of an official version number), and today I want to briefly introduce it for those of you who didn’t attend JavaOne. However, even if you didn’t attend JavaOne, we’ve put the slides online.

To be very clear, DataFX is not an Oracle project! Johan and I both developed this in our own time, and it does not necessarily represent the future plans of the official JavaFX project. This project was built to make many of the UI controls I develop easier to work with by filling in the gaps as of the current JavaFX 2.0 release. Oracle may or may not have future plans in the same area as DataFX, but for now DataFX exists to fill the gap. For more details, check out the DataFX FAQ.

To make things easier to understand let’s conceptually split DataFX into two sub-projects which attack a common problem from two different angles.

(more…)

I’ve just returned back from three weeks in the US, and one thing I was asked very frequently during JavaOne was if I’d be making my slides available. It turns out that I don’t even need to upload the slides manually this year – Oracle has put them all up online already. If you want to find slides for (I assume) any of the JavaOne sessions, you can search the content catalog.

However, for those interested in my sessions, the three talks I gave were the following:

  1. UI Controls and Charts: Drag-and-Drop, Filtering, Sorting, Table Hookup with Charts.
    Paru Somashekar and Jonathan Giles.
    Download slides.
  2. JavaFX Datasources: Getting Real-World Data into JavaFX Controls.
    Johan Vos and Jonathan Giles.
    Download slides. For more information, visit the DataFX website.
  3. Custom UI Controls and Charts with JavaFX 2.0.
    Jasper Potts and Jonathan Giles.
    Download slides.

Here’s a special edition of Java desktop links for folks. I thought, given the fact I’ve accumulated a few good links this week already, and that I’ll be super-busy next week and probably won’t be able to share any links, that I’ll get a post out before I fly out to JavaOne. Enjoy :-)

  • Mean words are being said, battle lines are drawn, and full-on war is nearing…at least in the vicious GroovyFX vs ScalaFX battle for minds and hearts. Stephen Chin started it with his post introducing ScalaFX. He may not have said it, but I’m sure you could tell he was suggesting that ScalaFX was the better choice over GroovyFX….
  • Naturally, Dean Iverson wasn’t going to take this lying down, so he fired up his blog and posted a stinging GroovyFX rebuttal.
  • Backing Dean was Jim Clarke, co-developer of the GroovyFX library along with Dean. Jim has just started a series of blog posts on getting started with GroovyFX.
  • Of course, I’m sure both Stephen and Dean are toiling away on their own implementations. They’ll be meeting head-to-head for a winner-takes-all battle at their JavaOne session next week: ‘JavaFX 2.0 with Alternative Languages’. Unfortunately, this session conflicts with a session I’m giving on ‘JavaFX Data Sources’, but alas, I’m sure you’ll all make the right call.
  • Speaking of the JavaFX Data Sources talk I am co-presenting with Johan Vos, we just put up a website for the related project: DataFX. It is two projects in one: a series of data source adapters to make bring data into JavaFX UI Controls simpler, and a number of pre-built cell factories to make rendering data simpler and richer. Downloads will be enabled next week once we’ve presented our talk.
  • Final warning: next week Peter Pilgrim will be presenting his ‘Progressive JavaFX 2.0 Custom Components‘ JavaOne talk at the Silicon Valley JavaFX Users Group. It’s on Thursday, October 13, 2011, at 6:00 PM. As per usual, it’ll be live streamed for those that can’t attend in person. For the first time, I’m hoping to finally be able to attend in person this month.
  • Tom Schindl has put up a blog post on ‘How to author FXML‘, which demonstrates some work he has done to make developing JavaFX interfaces simpler in his e(fx)clipse project.
  • In another post, Tom has just announced the release of e(fx)clipse 0.0.6. This release incorporates the FXML authoring support mentioned in the previous link, as well as updated CSS support, improved OSGi bundling support, and the beginnings of runtime components (including layout APIs and OSGi support).

Ok, that’s it for this week. I apologise in advance for any lapses in links postings for the next few weeks. I’ll try my best, but I’m really hoping you folks make it easier for me by emailing me any new and wonderful links you may find. Also, as I said last week, I’m really looking forward to catching up with you all next week at JavaOne. If you see me, please come up and chat – the hallway track is by far the most fun part of JavaOne.

Until next time, have a great week, enjoy JavaOne, and I’ll see you on the other side! :-)

Here we are: one week to go until JavaOne starts. There are a number of links this week, but I’m sure there will be a lot of good news coming in the next few weeks. I’ll try my best to get blog posts out whilst I’m traveling, but I can’t guarantee it. I’m away for three weeks from October 1 to October 23.

For those of you coming to JavaOne, I’m really looking forward to catching up with you – if you spot me please come up and chat! :-)

Catch you all at JavaOne, or in another links roundup as soon as I can create it! :-)

Another week, and a lot of good links. Not long now until JavaOne, when I’m sure there will be plenty of interesting news coming out. Let’s get into the news.

  • JavaFX 2.0 beta b45 came out this week. Grab it while it’s hot.
  • The JavaFX documentation team is doing a great job of tracking what is changing between beta builds, and keeping you in the loop. Find out what changed in b44 and b45 over at the JavaFX documentation blog.
  • The Silicon Valley JavaFX Users Group has a session the week following JavaOne, on Thursday, October 13. This month the presentation is by Peter Pilgrim, repeating a presentation he is also giving at JavaOne. The talk is titled “Progressive JavaFX 2.0 Custom Components“. For the first time, I’ll be able to attend in person, and given that this session talks about custom controls, it’s right up my alley. For those of you who can’t  be there in person, remember it is also live-streamed via UStream.
  • Dean Iverson tweeted that he has released version 0.2 of the Griffon JavaFX 2.0 plugin.
  • The in-development NetBeans 7.1 contains much greater support for JavaFX 2.0, including support for FXML, CSS3, preloaders, and project configuration.
  • Randahl Fink Isaksen, a frequent and valuable reporter of JavaFX 2.0 bugs, has written a post titled “JavaFX eats HTML UIs for breakfast“.

That’s that for another week. Hope you all found something useful! :-)