I started writing an article about how to write new UI controls for OpenJFX using all the internal APIs and architecture and so forth. But then I discovered that the control I was writing as a proof of concept was not using any private API at all, and actually was implementing the Skin differently than I had imagined previously, and I thought I ought to blog about it. Behold, the MoneyField!
I was inspired by Dean Iverson’s tweet with a audio equalizer in JavaFX:
#JavaFX rocks. Literally. An example from our upcoming Pro JavaFX 2 book: pic.twitter.com/tSI4Vry4
and the equalizer view from that Pro JavaFX 2 example app: pic.twitter.com/T6jxvrf9
. updated pic.twitter.com/FqzgVimG
So wanted to have a go at doing one my self, so little while later I have a design and built a working application. Demo video after the break.
A number of people have asked me recently can I create this look or that look using CSS in JavaFX. Or they have said that you could never do that! So I thought I would do a little experiment and try recreating a bunch of common button styles purely using CSS. So without further ado, here is the result:
One thing I see asked a lot (either directly via email, or in the rather excellent JavaFX Forums) is why does TableView (and ListView) look like this in JavaFX 2.0:
A TableView control using default styling and API as provided in JavaFX 2.0.
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.
We’ve introduced a SplitPane control in JavaFX 2.0, and today I thought I’d point out an interesting subtlety in the API. For the longest time our SplitPane API primarily consisted of the normal ‘left’ and ‘right’ (or ‘top’ and ‘bottom’) properties (indeed, the JavaDoc as of today still refers to this API). These were synonomous – if you set ‘top’ and ‘bottom’, they were literally copied to the ‘left’ and ‘right’ code, and our SplitPaneSkin just knew to draw with the items stacked vertically, rather than to lay them out horizontally.
The CheckBox in JavaFX can be configured for two states (selected, or not) or three states (selected, unselected, or indeterminate). This indeterminate state is often useful when a checkbox is being used in a TreeView, for example. You might be implementing a tree view showing which features are installed, and need to toggle to an indeterminate state for the branch of some of the children are selected, and some are not.
Something that you see more and more with client applications at the moment is embedded map components. This blog will show you how to embed Google, Yahoo or Bing maps in your JavaFX application.
Google Maps in JavaFX 2.0
Download a copy of the application and try it out. The jar file is linked below, just download it and double click. This requires you to have the JavaFX 2.0 beta runtime installed.
One of the things that would be really nice to have in the virtualised ListView and TreeView JavaFX controls, not to mention future controls like TableView, is multiple selection. Certain kinds of apps just can not exist without multiple selection in fact.
So, unsurprisingly, today I got an email from a user of JavaFX, who claims to be a fan of FX Experience (hi Keith!), who was needing multiple selection for his work. I didn’t actually think it could be done very easily (and one of my main jobs is working on these controls, so I should know), but I spent a bit of time looking into it, and it turns out that it’s actually quite possible, with a number of warnings and rough edges, and also the use of a little bit of unpublished API. As long as you’re promising to not tell anyone, I thought I’d share this code….but just with you, so shhh 
Ok, I know we’ve been going on about custom cells / cell factories a bit recently, but I wanted to do one more post about a very useful topic: caching within cell content.
These days ‘Hello World’ has been replaced by building a Twitter client, so I’ve decided to frame this topic in terms of building a Twitter client. Because I don’t actually care about the whole web service side of thing, I’ve neglected to implement the whole ‘real data’ / web services aspect of it. If you want to see an actual running implementation with real data, have a look at William Antônio’s Twitter client, which is using this ListCell implementation.
