javafx

JavaFX 2009 = Struts 2001?

Josh Fruhlinger — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:23:36 -0400

An interesting post from Peter Pilgrim on JavaLobby on the current state of JavaFX. A lot of it is stuff that's commonplace but still apparently necessary to explain to people -- don't learn JavaFX because it's cool, or not cool, or whatever, learn about it if you think an RIA is the right fit for your project and if JavaFX is the right RIA platform to fit your experience and the project's needs.

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Instancing

Chris Oliver — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:49:12 -0400

To conserve memory and minimize processor cache misses and GPU state changes, we need reasonable ways of "instancing" scene graph elements, meaning reusing the same objects in cases where the same element conceptually appears multiple times in the same scene.

It's possible to implement a transform and bounding volume hierarchy which supports instancing, however the overhead is significant, both in terms of its impact on processing costs and memory-use, as well as on ease-of-use for many use cases.

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Lazy binding and functional programming

Chris Oliver — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 19:25:09 -0400

Functional programming techniques can be used in conjunction with lazy binding to rather easily and compactly express the complex multi-valued dependencies we require.

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The calm in the eye of the binding storm

Chris Oliver — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:13:04 -0400

Here's my attempt to write up a description of the benefits of lazy binding with respect to the construction and composition of 2d shapes. Don't be too surprised by the naming discrepancies compared to analagous classes from javafx 1.x. For the record, this project was no fork, rather its original version predated the release of javafx 1.0 by over a year, in fact it began prior to the start of any actual development of the javafx 1.0 runtime, aka "Reprise" - but that's another story.

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3D Animation and Maya

Chris Oliver — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:55:46 -0400

Although I'm not a world class 3d animation expert, the artist member of our little team was. His name is John Yoon, and he's an amazing guy. He went to MIT with Ken and received a degree in computer science, then worked for a number of years at Alias/Wavefront as an engineer on Maya.

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SwingX, JRuby: Survivors?

Josh Fruhlinger — Thu, 07 May 2009 19:54:46 -0400

Deciding what projects will live and what projects will die once Java has "Property of Oracle" stamped on its behind is, of course, Oracle's job; but predicting those outcomes is good clean fun for everyone, until then! I've already discussed a couple of projects people have been anxious about -- Glassfish and JavaFX; in the last few days, there's been a few peeps about JRuby and Swing.

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Does JavaFX have a future at Oracle?

Josh Fruhlinger — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:29:15 -0400

In my initial reaction to the Sun-Oracle deal, I wrote JavaFX off as dead. After all, JavaFX aims to provide UIs for Java SE and ME apps, whereas for Oracle the holy grail is a Java EE-based all-one-thing appliance. But was I too hasty?

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Introducing an emboss effect to JavaFX

javajeff — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:01:04 -0400

Wikipedia's Embossing entry defines embossing as "the process of creating a three-dimensional image or design in paper and other ductile materials." A few years back, I presented an algorithm for embossing images in my Java Tech: Image Embossing article.

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Deploying Swing and JavaFX applications to the masses

javajeff — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:12:14 -0400

Sun's (and now Oracle's) desires for Java/Swing's and JavaFX's success on the client depend upon how easy it is for the average user to install the appropriate version of Java/JavaFX on their platform. Furthermore, these desires depend upon browsers being able to launch Swing and JavaFX applications without problems.

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Reducing JavaFX's memory footprint via a CustomNode alternative

javajeff — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:11:48 -0400

Much has been written about JavaFX's performance from the perspective of execution speed. Because less has been written about performance in terms of memory footprint, I was interested to discover developer Markus Kohler's JavaFX memory overhead blog post.

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A skinnable button component for JavaFX

javajeff — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:58:33 -0400

JavaFX's CustomNode class lets you create reusable node-based components for your user interfaces. Because these components aren't skinnable, you can't change a component's appearance and/or behavior without rewriting the component. Fortunately, Sun has addressed this limitation by providing the javafx.scene.control package with its two core classes:

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A SwingSpinnerList component for JavaFX

javajeff — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:14:58 -0400

JavaFX 1.0 and 1.1 provide a javafx.ext.swing package of Swing-based component classes that JavaFX scripts can access to build desktop-oriented user interfaces. Although this package contains many useful component classes, it lacks classes for advanced Swing components such as progress bars, trees, and tables. However, it's easy to create classes for these overlooked components.

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Invoking JavaFX functions that don't exist

javajeff — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 14:25:57 -0500

What happens when you try to execute the following Java code fragment?


String s = null;
System.out.println (s.length ());

It's not hard to figure out that a NullPointerException object is thrown. You cannot invoke a method via the null reference.

However, you can get away with something similar in JavaFX Script, which the following code fragment demonstrates:

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JavaFX living the applet dream

Josh Fruhlinger — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 02:16:24 -0500

There's an interesting manifesto on Trephine.org on why applets continue to fail, and why they still matter. The essay ultimately serves to promote Trephine's product, which is essentially an applet that claims to fix the problems the company outlines, but it's still interesting as a glimpse of what was intended to be the medium for Java to interact with end users way back in the mid-90s.

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Java 7 rumbles along

Josh Fruhlinger — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:01:24 -0500

Things have been a bit quiet in the Java world lately, so I might as well point you at a few items of interest regarding the upcoming Java 7 release.

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JavaFX is coming to your phone

Josh Fruhlinger — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 17:27:55 -0500

Oh, hey, I haven't mentioned it but JavaFX 1.1, which includes the much anticipated mobile functionality, has arrived. Sun's Java ME director Eran Davidov gave an interesting interview to the Artima Developer Spotlight Forum on how you can write JavaFX code that works across various platforms. This is the bit that I found most interesting:

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New Java fight: JavaFX vs. Java ME

Josh Fruhlinger — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:09:01 -0500

While we're talking about whether JavaFX is going to replace Swing, maybe we should take a moment to contemplate whether JavaFX is going to replace Java ME. Wait, what? I know, it sounds odd, but that's sure the impression you'd get from this post on Joshua Marinacci's blog. Marinacci waxes rhapsodic about the fact that "There is no JavaFX Mobile. There is only JavaFX."

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Catching up with JavaFX

Josh Fruhlinger — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:57:26 -0500

It's been awhile since I discussed JavaFX's latest exploits, now that it's actually out there in the world, being used, sort of. Not there's really a lot of real-world JavaFX out there, but here's a grab bag of interesting developments:

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Two roads diverge in the Java GUI wood: More Swing vs. JavaFX

Josh Fruhlinger — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:04:39 -0500

We've discussed here before the brewing battle between Swing and JavaFX for the hearts and minds of desktop Java GUI developers. Will the two technologies develop in parallel, each with their own areas of specialization, or will JavaFX come to supplant Swing -- and if the latter occurs, will it be an organized and open effort, or will it happen surreptitiously? There are a couple of blog posts that recently went up on the subject:

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Collada MoonBuggy in JavaFX

Chris Oliver — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:29:14 -0500

Collada MoonBuggy with skin animation in JavaFX.

In the scripting API for this scene graph, animated Collada models are Nodes which are also polymorphic with Timelines. You can "play" them.

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From F3 to JavaFX 1.0 - Effects

Chris Oliver — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:45:53 -0500

An important and impressive innovation between F3 and JavaFX is the Effects framework created by Chris Campbell.

F3 had a simple system of software pixel filters, which could be applied to any Node or group of Nodes in a scene.

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JavaFX: Not just for the RIA space

Josh Fruhlinger — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:46:04 -0500

Continuing to explore the notion that JavaFX may well be Swing 2.0, I came across a couple of interesting how-to articles upon my return from my holiday journeys.

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Data binding in Silverlight and Flex compared to JavaFX...

Chris Oliver — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:59:29 -0500

Silverlight

Flex

Don't be fooled by the naysayers and the hype.

Although JavaFX 1.0 is only a few days old, when it comes to data binding: functionality-wise, usability-wise, and performance-wise it appears to me it's already "no contest".

For those who've never actually tried JavaFX script, let me just say this: any JavaFX script variable may be bound to any expression

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Performance matters, but for whom?

Chris Oliver — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 13:54:09 -0500

Alexander A. Stepanov (inventor of C++ STL):

Computers that were able to deal just with numbers evolved into computers with byte-addressable memory, flat address spaces, and pointers. This was a natural evolution reflecting the growing set of problems that people were solving. C, reflecting the genius of Dennis Ritchie, provided a minimal model of the computer that had evolved over 30 years. C was not a quick hack.

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Moving from Swing to JavaFX through the back door

Josh Fruhlinger — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:02:42 -0500

A few weeks ago I discussed the idea that JavaFX might, in practice, be Swing 2.0, in that it would be Sun's primary Java UI toolkit from here on in. This is interesting and perhaps quite healthy in the long run -- but like all major shifts, it's probably one that should be laid out explicitly for stakeholders so they can start planning for it now.

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