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Announcing JavaFX 2.1

Jonathan Giles — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 20:01:48 +0000

JavaFX 2.1 was released yesterday right on schedule, along with the JavaFX 2.1 release notes, and a huge number of new articles on the JavaFX documentation site. From the Oracle press release, here are the key improvements in JavaFX 2.1 (aside from fixing a whole heap of bugs):

Available for Windows and Mac OS X (with Linux support currently as preview release) (See also Henrik Stahl’s blog on Mac OS)
Includes playback of MPEG-4 multimedia containing H.264/AVC video and AAC audio
New WebView support for JavaScript to Java method calls, which enables JavaScript content to leverage Java for demanding operations
Support for enhanced font rendering on LCD displays, including sub-pixel rendering
Additional UI enhancements such as combo box, stacked chart, and application-wide menu bar
Bundled with the Java 7u4 release
Oracle has started the OpenJFX project in OpenJDK as part of the plan to open source JavaFX

Now – onward with JavaFX 2.2!

Announcing JavaFX Scene Builder Public Beta

Richard Bair — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:19:59 +0000

Hello from JavaOne Japan, where Jasper, Jonathan and I find ourselves seated in the opening keynote of the morning. One of the big announcements is the public beta of the JavaFX Scene Builder, our new tool for laying out and creating JavaFX content. The Scene Builder is the start of a more comprehensive RAD (rapid application development) tool for JavaFX, with drag-and-drop GUI building and eventually data binding.

At its heart, the Scene Builder is really a layout tool. One of the most difficult aspects of building apps (and something we see very frequently in the JavaFX OTN Forums) is doing layout and constructing the UI, and this is what Scene Builder needs to be really, really good at.

Our experience of the last six months has been that the scene builder in general is very stable and the team has done a lot of work on usability. We’re really hoping for feedback on the user experience, especially as you attempt to use it anger. We’ve done a lot of work trying to figure out what you might naturally want to do when building a form, but really it is your feedback and experience that will either validate that design or give us the input we need to make the tool even better.

The SceneBuilder is basically an editor for FXML files. We’ve been working with the NetBeans team as well so that when you double click an FXML file in NB it should open up the scene builder and allow you to edit it. The FXML file is essentially our documented serialization format for the UI. Your event handlers and so forth will be in the Java Controller associated with the FXML file.

From a technical perspective, SceneBuilder is built entirely in JavaFX. A new stylesheet for Scene Builder was developed that we think looks quite nice . It really shows what you can do with JavaFX!

You can download the Scene Builder on OTN, and read more about it on the JavaFX Docs page. To give us feedback on JavaFX Scene Builder, go ahead and leave comments here on this blog and we’ll let you know when we’ve got an official channel setup!

Announcing JemmyFX

Richard Bair — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:30:08 +0000

Yesterday our SQE (Software Quality Engineering) team pushed our JavaFX functional test suite, JemmyFX to OpenJFX! They also pushed some tests for Ensemble, our samples application. JemmyFX is based on Jemmy, a visual testing framework for Java used in NetBeans for many years. JemmyFX contains extensions which make it possible to write visual tests for JavaFX. Although JemmyFX is in the openjfx repo, you can download it and use it for writing visual tests for your own JavaFX applications.

For those folks who have been looking at contributing code to JavaFX, this is great news, because it means you can accelerate adoption of your specific features by also writing the tests necessary to ensure correctness, either as JUnit tests or now as functional tests using Jemmy. All you guys working on DatePicker, I’m looking at you

More of the JavaFX Scenegraph open sourced

Jonathan Giles — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 22:00:29 +0000

I’m very pleased to blog about the availability of more JavaFX source code being out in the wild. We’ve just put out the ‘javafx-ui-common’ project, which contains the vast majority of the JavaFX scenegraph API. You can check the code out from OpenJFX – it is in the rt repository. You can learn more about the javafx-ui-common project in a post by Richard Bair.

The javafx-ui-common project contains the following packages:

javafx.animation
javafx.application
javafx.geometry
javafx.scene
javafx.scene.effect
javafx.scene.image
javafx.scene.input
javafx.scene.layout
javafx.scene.paint
javafx.scene.shape
javafx.scene.text
javafx.scene.transform
javafx.stage

Once you’ve read that be sure to go and check it out!

LCD Text support in JavaFX 2.1 Developer Preview

Jonathan Giles — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 02:43:16 +0000

Phil Race has posted a blog post over at the JavaFX Blog on the addition of LCD text support in the latest JavaFX 2.1 developer preview.

LCD sub-pixel text has become a must-have for many Windows desktop users, who have become accustomed to its superior legibility and less blocky appearance at smaller point sizes over hinted black and white text, and being sharper than grey scale anti-aliased text at the same size.

Java SE has supported LCD subpixel text on AWT heavyweights and also on Swing components using Java 2D for many years. However up until now, JavaFX has supported only more Mac OS X-like grey scale smoothed text.

For the JavaFX 2.1 release we’ve added the ability to use Windows-style LCD sub-pixel rendering. All the JavaFX UI controls will be LCD-text enabled by default on Windows, as will “WebView”, the Webkit-based node for rendering Web content.

Applications can also opt-in to use LCD text on the low-level scenegraph “Text” node by a new API : Text.setFontSmoothingType(FontSmoothingType.LCD));

JavaFX 2.1 Dev Preview build 09 available for Windows, Mac and Linux

Jonathan Giles — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:52:08 +0000

I’ve been waiting for a while to say this, but we now have JavaFX 2.1 developer preview builds available for Windows, Mac and Linux. From here on out we’ll be putting out developer preview builds for all three platforms. Hopefully that pleases everyone who has been asking for Linux support

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

Jonathan Giles — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:05:15 +0000

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 2.0.2 Released

Jonathan Giles — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 23:08:03 +0000

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, . Also new is a mechanism for passing images to the task. Use to pass icons for various purposes or to pass a splash screen image for Web Start applications.

Relevant links:

It’s Alive! OpenJFX is kicking off

Jonathan Giles — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:39:37 +0000

A very brief blog post to mention that just now the OpenJFX website and the openjfx-dev mailing list both appeared online. I’d recommend everyone interested in OpenJFX developments sign up for the mailing list.

Sometime soon the source code for UI Controls will appear in the mercurial repo. UI Controls are the first part of JavaFX to be open sourced, followed by the rest of the toolkit over the coming months. All development being done on UI controls will appear in this repo, as it happens. The source code that will appear shortly is based on the 2.1 release of JavaFX. This means that soon you will be able to build development snapshots of OpenJFX as it progresses towards each official release. This is exciting for me as it gives you early access to our APIs, allowing you to give us feedback (via our Jira tracker), which in turn allows for us to improve the API before it is released (and set in stone).

It is exciting times – I hope you all get involved! We have much more to discuss, but that can wait for another day.

JavaFX 2.0 beta build 38 available now

Jonathan Giles — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 02:57:35 +0000

Just a quick post to announce that yet another JavaFX 2.0 beta build has rolled out, this week taking us to build 38. This brings another weeks worth of bug fixes, performance tweaks and necessary API changes (based in no small part on your feedback to our Jira tracker). As always, I look forward to hearing your feedback on this latest release. The best place to discuss JavaFX 2.0 is at the OTN forum, where many of the JavaFX team lurk. However, file your bug reports / request for enhancements directly to our Jira tracker if you want to maximise your chances of being heard!