JavaFX links of the week, May 21

by Jonathan Giles | May 20, 2012 | Links

Welcome to this weeks links roundup. I’ve got plenty of good JavaFX links this week, so enjoy! 🙂

• JavaFX 2.2 build 8, and Scene Builder 1.0 build 38 are now available for download for testing.
• If you’re new to Scene Builder, check out the developer preview of the ‘getting started with JavaFX Scene Builder‘.
• Eric Bruno has an article up on Dr. Dobbs about the Scene Builder application that was recently made available as a developer preview.
• Patrick Martin has been very busy working on a new tool called Data Explorer, or Dex for short. This tool allows for data import and visualisation, and looks like it has huge potential. Check out the link, if even just for the screenshots (many of which use external non-JavaFX libraries).
• Gerrit Grunwald has blogged about exporting content from Adobe Fireworks CS6, and using the content in JavaFX (by copying the provided SVG, and slightly modifying the provided CSS).
• For those that couldn’t attend Stephen Chin’s talks at JustJava Brazil, he has now posted the translated slide decks online for you to check out.
• Thierry Wasyl has put up part two and three of his posts on his TweetWallFX application. Part two covers the creation of the business objects and use of FXML and controller classes, whilst part three covers transitions and animations, as well as tips on using the FXMLLoader class.
• Anton Epple continues to refine his JavaFX pinball game, adding features such as ball tracking (that is, zooming in and translating the view to follow the ball around the screen) and custom pinball node renderers. He also demonstrates the improved NetBeans support for Scene Builder that is coming in NetBeans 7.2.
• Will Hoover has posted sample code to create dialogs in JavaFX.
• Thomas Bolz has posted an applet version of his SudokuFX application which you can play online.
• Mark Anro Silva has posted code online to show how easy it is to create a loading indicator in JavaFX.

Catch you again next week 🙂

JavaFX links of the week, April 29

by Jonathan Giles | Apr 29, 2012 | Links

Hi all. The links for this week are up a day early because I have an early flight to catch tomorrow on my way to JavaOne Hyderabad. Conversely, next weeks links will be a day or three late as I will be traveling back home. Therefore, I think everything balances out 🙂 Let’s get on with the links.

Oh – by the way – if you’re at JavaOne Hyderabad next week and you spot me, come up and say hello. I really love chatting to people, but I can’t pick the JavaFX fans from the Java EE people….and I have nothing to say to Java EE people 🙂

• JavaFX 2.1 was released this week. Along with the release, the JavaFX team included release notes, and a huge number of new articles on the JavaFX documentation site.
• I interviewed Peter Zhelezniakov regarding his work in the JavaFX team on the WebView component.
• Angela Caicedo has released part three of her video series on building your first JavaFX application.
• Kai Wähner asked (and then attempted to answer) ‘When to use JavaFX 2 instead of HTML5 for a Rich Internet Application (RIA)?’
• Andy Moncsek has blogged about how to use JavaFX 2.1 from a local maven repository (on OS X).
• Jeff Friesen has got an article up on JavaWorld about ‘pixel graphics and JavaFX‘.
• Roberto Marquez has explored the animation features in JavaFX, and has a post up discussing the early stages of using these to create a game.

Catch you all next week! 🙂

JavaFX links of the week, April 23

by Jonathan Giles | Apr 22, 2012 | Links

Welcome to this weeks links roundup. I hope you all find something useful or interesting 🙂

• There is a heap of discussion and review requests going on over at the openjfx-dev mailing list – if you are interested you should consider joining. Some topics of interest to readers include talk of adding a canvas node to JavaFX, to allow for immediate mode painting (e.g. Java2D), deployment ideas, and requests for a CSS object model. Also, if you subscribe to this list, you get notification of all changesets to the public code, so you’ll get a heads-up on what is coming in JavaFX 2.1 and JavaFX 2.2.
• Jeff Friesen has got up on his soapbox and posted an article over at JavaWorld asking people to please stop the Java desktop FUD.
• Jim Weaver has posted about best practices for JavaFX 2 enterprise applications.
• Terrence Barr notes something odd: client apps are becoming sexy again! He has a heap of links for you to peruse.
• Stephen Chin and Luc Duponcheel recently presented about using JavaFX with Scala. You can check out their slides if you’re interested.
• Carl Dea has updated his JavaFX game tutorial to include a link to his source code at Github.
• Adam Bien has a code snippet to show how to set the main Stage of a JavaFX application to be transparent.
• Geertjan Wielenga has two posts this week. Firstly, he asks whether JavaFX can be used for corporate desktop applications. Secondly, he asks for someone to step up and provide a JavaFX-based music sheet component.

That’s all for this week. Feel free to send me a link if you think you’ve done something that your peers may be interested in. Catch you all next week 🙂

JavaFX links of the week, April 16

by Jonathan Giles | Apr 15, 2012 | Links

Hey everyone – I’m back in the chair this week having just returned from Japan where I presented at JavaOne and then took a vacation. Thanks to Carl Dea for stepping in for me the last two weeks to keep the links flowing, and for also finding a bunch of links for this weeks post. I apologise if your link has been missed (please let me know), and I also apologise if I repeat a link that has already been posted. With that, let’s get into the links! 🙂

• Jasper Potts was interviewed by the Java Spotlight podcast whilst we were in Japan. He talks extensively about the recent developer preview release of Scene Builder.
• Adam Bien has blogged about building JavaFX 2 using Maven 3.
• Tom Schindl has two blog posts up regarding JavaFX and Eclipse xtend being a perfect match, and a sensationally perfect match 🙂
• Software4Java.com has got three interesting blog posts about creating custom CSS styling for Mac OS and iOS. This is very cool and I would love to see more people working together in a project to create ‘native’ looks for JavaFX.
• Jason Lee will show you how to get Java 7, NetBeans, and JavaFX 2 running on Mac OS X. Well written instructions to get you on your way.
• Carl Dea has posted part two of his JavaFX 2 game tutorial.
• Sai Dandem of e-Zest blogs about creating a custom calendar control and how to use JavaFX animations to transition regions. (It’s all about clipping). Another blog entry about creating a custom JavaFX TableColumn allowing you to adjust column widths using a percentage similar to a Html table tag element.
• Anton Epple has created an A Hello World example in JavaFX and JBox2D. He then has a follow-up blog entry that goes on to demonstrate a way to apply a custom renderer onto nodes called a NodeProvider interface.  Another post talks about adding custom components to FXML using BuilderFactory. He then begins experimenting with adding extensibility to the FX Experience tools application, which he then updated in a separate post. Finally, he talks about using Scene Builder to create the desired node designs that he can then use in his pinball application.
• introjava posts a very nice example of how to create a ribbon component similar to Microsoft Office applications using JavaFX.

Catch you all next week! 🙂

JavaFX links of the week, April 9

by Jonathan Giles | Apr 8, 2012 | Links

How’s it going everyone? This is Carl Dea (@carldea) filling in for Jonathan Giles who is/was presenting at JavaOne in Tokyo, Japan. Below are this week’s links of the week. The links aren’t in any particular order except for the first one which is about the amazingly cool Scene Builder tool.

• Richard Bair (chief architect for the Client Java Platform at Oracle) happily shares the good news about the very cool Scene Builder tool announced during the keynote at JavaOne Tokyo Japan. Here is Oracle’s official site to download the preview release.
• William Antonio discusses his first impressions of the latest preview release of the Scene Builder Tool.
• Halfway around the globe Jonathan Giles managed to present at JavaOne and interview Java Champions Jim Weaver and Stephen Chin. (Jonathan’s from the future) 🙂
• Manoj Debnath blogs about Animation in JavaFX vs. Flash. Manoj only details JavaFX 2.x and mentions little of Adobe Flash to contrast the two technologies.
• Java Champion Joshua Marinacci asks kindly if you are a GUI designer or Developer to please take Leonardo Sketch out for a spin (test). Leo Sketch is a full featured vector drawing tool very much like a scene builder tool. I believe the new JavaFX 2 FXML export feature may be available (ask him). It is a great tool for mocking screens, presentations, and more.
• A nice book review by Jason Lee on the recently released book “Pro JavaFX 2: A Definitive Guide to Rich Clients with Java Technology”
• Java-Buddy (mystery person) creates easy to follow tutorials. Java-Buddy begins to create an app to free draw using the mouse, and a set of tutorials to transform shapes using rotation, translation, scale, and shear.
• The JavaFX teams released a recent developer preview build of JavaFX 2.2 build b03. It’s nice to see it available for all the major platforms (Windows, MacOS, and Linux). Be on the lookout for the release notes for all the hard work that has been done.
• Narayan has blogged about form field validation using CSS styling.
• introjava (aka Gregg Setzer) has posted a Ribbon control to his blog. It would be nice to see this in JFXtras at some point soon!

Well, that’s it for this week I hope you enjoyed the links (I sure did). Keep up the great work! I want to thank Jonathan for allowing me to share with you all about the possibilities on the Java platform especially on the desktop.

-Carl