I finished post-processing and publishing our January talk with Amy Fowler on Parleys.com.

Here is a direct link: JavaFX Layout Secrets with Amy Fowler

I did my best to clean up the audio at the beginning to remove the static that our streaming listeners had to put up with. After the first 10 minutes we swapped mics, which made a huge difference!

Our plan for next month is to upgrade our streaming/recording setup once again so we can directly capture the presenter’s VGA signal for a dual-cast. This should allow us to capture the demos in full resolution and give a much better streaming experience. If you or your company is interested in helping sponsor some of our hardware needs, we can definitely use the help (contact me).

See you next month for Hinkmond’s JavaFX Mobile talk: Hinkmond’s JavaFX Mobile Dojo

Just a quick note. I have added a new page for the Silicon Valley JavaFX User Group live stream in the toolbar above. It contains an embedded movie player, chat window, and link to Google Moderator. The direct url is: http://steveonjava.com/svjugfx/

I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but the live stream is definitely worth the effort to watch. It is the only place you will get to hear the interesting commentary by JavaFX experts such as Jim Weaver, Dean Iverson, Jonathan Giles, and others.

Please also use this post to respond with comments and suggestions about the stream so we can improve it in future meetings.

We will be broadcasting tonight at 7PM PST, so please join us for a great presentation from Amy Fowler!

To bring in the New Year, I did a complete revamp of my blog.  Wordpress.com served me well initially, but the limitations started to cramp my style.  Now I am off the corporate cloud and running on a 100% Open Source platform.

Here are some of the benefits of the new blogging platform:

• Inline JavaFX and Java applets – No need to click a link or launch a web start application to see my latest creations.
• Embedded videos – I can now embed videos from all 3rd party sites, including developer favorites like Parleys.com.
• Unencumbered styling – No limitations on what I can do with styles and themes for the site (although I promise to keep it tame!)

I also spent some doing a minor site redesign.  Some of the new features include:

• Updated site theme – Uses the latest Freshy 2 release from Jidé (I guess I am partial to French designers)
• DZone and Twitter post links – Feel free to vote up (or down) anything you see or retweet it to your followers
• Contact form – Good way to directly poke me in case I am asleep at the wheel (sometimes I need a reminder)

I will be taking advantage of all these and other features of the new platform throughout the rest of 2010.

And finally, some local fireworks from the celebration over San Francisco to enjoy:

Happy New Year!

I am very pleased to have Amy Fowler (Aim) presenting on JavaFX Layouts at our January Silicon Valley JavaFX Users Group (SvJugFx).  For those of you who don’t know Aim, she was a founding member of the Swing team, has done some Rock Star presentations at JavaOne, and is a core member of the JavaFX team focused on all things layout.

If you are doing any JavaFX development at all, this is an event you won’t want to miss.  The presentation is on January 13th and you can sign-up on the SvJugFx website here:

Click to Sign-Up

We will also be streaming the event live from Santa Clara, so if you don’t live nearby make sure to join us online for the event.  I actually think the folks watching it online are at an advantage, because they get all the inside information in the chat window from JavaFX luminaries like Jim Weaver, Dean Iverson, and Jonathan Giles.

For those of you who missed our December event, we just finished posting Richard Bair’s December talk on JavaFX entitled “Intro to JavaFX – A Rich Client Platform for All Screens.”  You can view it on Parleys.com complete with synchronized slides by clicking on the image or link below:

Richard Bair Presenting on JavaFX at the SvJugFx

Click to View Presentation

I hope to see you at our next event!

For those of you who don’t know, SvJugFx stands for the Silicon Valley JavaFX Users Group.  We will be holding our very first meeting this coming Wednesday with a live, streamed presentation from the world renowned Richard Bair (who is now infamous for divulging JavaFX secrets at Devoxx).

Richard Bair Presenting at Devoxx 2009

Yes, I said streamed live…  for those of you who are not fortunate enough to live in Silicon Valley, you can still participate in realtime by doing the following:

1. Sign-up for the SvJugFx meetup group.  This is the primary communication vehicle we will use to announce last-minute changes:
   http://www.svjugfx.org/
   (Note: Everyone can sign up for the group, but please only RSVP for the event if you are physically attending)
2. For the video feed, please go to the following ustream channel:

   http://www.ustream.tv/channel/silicon-valley-javafx-user-group

3. And to participate, please log on to Google Moderator at the following URL:

   http://moderator.appspot.com/#16/e=d528e

The in-person meeting will start on: Wednesday at 6PM PST
The online streaming will start at latest by: 7PM PST (possibly earlier)

Please leave enough time to login on both sites and test your internet and video playback capabilities.  You will be able to watch the live video stream on ustream and respond with your own questions (as well as vote other participant’s questions up and down) via Google Moderator, which we will be monitoring during the presentation.

This is the first time we are trying this format, so we apologize in advance for technical glitches or issues that we are sure will arise.

“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”

–Winston Churchill

The two talks I gave at Devoxx 2009 are now available on the Parleys.com website for online viewing.

I would recommend you start with the University Talk, which is the most in-depth tutorial on the JavaFX Language and Platform available today.  This talk also features a guest appearance by Tor Norbye who demonstrated the new NetBeans JavaFX Designer Tool (which is distinct from the Authoring Tool):

Netbeans JavaFX Designer Demo

http://devoxx.parleys.com/#st=5&id=1636

The second is the JavaFX Enterprise Developer talk, which showcased many of the new JFXtras components that we are about to release in the 0.6 JFXtras release (a preview of which is available today).  It also goes into detail on JavaFX unit testing with FEST-JavaFX, which is a tool any enterprise developer should use regularly:

Pro JavaFX - Developing Enterprise Applications

http://devoxx.parleys.com/#st=5&id=1593

Both talks are available now for a small fee to register, which is well worth it for all the great content at the conference.  There was a lot of preparation work that went into these talks, so I hope you enjoy them!

Happy Thanksgiving from the JFXtras team!  While everyone else is celebrating the holiday with friends and family, we are going to be busy finishing up the 0.6 release.

Wild turkey in LaConner, WA taken by stevevoght

In case you have some spare time between meals and celebration, you can join in the fun too by trying out the JFXtras 0.6 preview release, which can be downloaded here:

http://code.google.com/p/jfxtras/downloads/list

There is a whole slew of new functionality including the following under Common:

• Layouts – Changes to the Grid API in preparation for inclusion in the JavaFX Soma release, and also added animation support to all the layouts.
• Sphere – Pseudo 3D sphere created for the Groovy showdown with Andrey Almiray.
• Gear – New shape from Steve Bixby.
• ManualResizableRectangle – Very useful shape from Yannick’s post.
• JXScene – Pedro’s improved API for Swing integration.
• PaintUtil, HSBColor, new gradients – Liu’s magic paint classes
• Custom Paints – From Jeff Friesen’s excellent article on Custom Paints.
• Custom Cursors – From Jeff Friesen’s excellent article on Custom Cursors.
• Wipe Library – A transition library from Simon Morris’ JavaFX in Action book.
• XMap – A bindable Map implementation for JavaFX.
• XStore – David Armitage’s simple persistence for JavaFX variables using dependency injection.
• ImageCache – Caching of JavaFX images for building high performance applications contributed by Joshua Marinacci.
• XEDT – Simplified event thread mangement for JavaFX infrastructure classes (Warning: Use the JavaFX Task API instead unless you know exactly what you are doing)

And the rest under a new Controls jar:

• XTableView – I am still working on this, but it is very useful already as demonstrated by Jim Weaver’s SpeedReaderFX application.
• XTreeView – Jim Clarke’s Tree Control.
• XCalendarPicker – Tom’s excellent calendar control.
• XPane – A titled region with rounded corners developed by Dean Iverson.
• XPicker – David Armitage did some great work on this…  Check out his demo on the JFXtras website.
• XShelfView – A high performance Display Shelf control implementation with support for reflection, titles, and a scrollbar as showcased on JFXStudio.
• XSpinnerWheel – A prize spinner wheel that makes use of pseudo 3D effects as showcased in the JUG Prize Spinner application.
• XMenu – Pure JavaFX Menu developed by Jonathan Giles (this version will be replaced by the official Sun Menu control when it becomes available).
• XPasswordBox – Control from Liu to create a password field.
• XMultiLineTextBox – Till’s control for editing multiple lines of text.
• XSwingTable – From John Freeman, this gives you all the power of a JTable directly from JavaFX code.

For this release we decided to go with a new naming convention to differentiate our classes from the built-in JavaFX layouts and controls.  Most of the classes are now prefixed with an “X” for jfXtras.  This will make migration slightly more painful now, but prevent future collisions and name changes down the road.

There is also a new version of JFXtras Test.  This is the final version that will be released under this name (it is being merged with FEST-JavaFX), but it required an update to work with the new naming convention and to add some much-needed JUnit Runner support (see my Devoxx Conference Presentation for more details).

I probably missed a few things along the way here.  You can find the definitive list in the online JavaFXDoc:

http://jfxtras.googlecode.com/svn/site/javadoc/release-0.6/index.html

Please feel free to download the jars and give the preview release a try.  We are putting the finishing touches on several of the layouts and controls, so expect a final release in a week or so.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Overall I was very impressed with Devoxx.  Everything including the movie theater venue, quality of the speakers, and professionalism of the attendees was top-notch.  Stephan Janssen definitely puts on quite an amazing show!

As a follow-up to my second Devoxx session, here is the full slide deck I presented:

[slideshare id=2579012&doc=projavafxdevelopingenterpriseapplications-091124204819-phpapp01]

Both this and the university session will be available on the Parleys.com beta site shortly, so you will be able to watch both sessions from the comfort of your home.

Now back to coding on the JFXtras 0.6 release with an announcement to be posted here very shortly…

My Devoxx university session yesterday was packed, which was awesome!  It was 3 hours of hard-core JavaFX knowledge, and almost everyone stayed for the duration.  Aaron Houston got a great shot of the venue (more on the Java Champions site):

I posted my slides on SlideShare, so check it out when you get a chance.  Special thanks to my co-authors, Jim, Weiqi, and Dean for help with the content.

[slideshare id=2529597&doc=thejavafxplatformajavadevelopersguide-091118113703-phpapp01]

For those of you at Devoxx, I also posted a new LearnFX question.  Please launch it with the link below and respond before or during my conference session tomorrow at 1:30PM to be eligable to win a prize!

More updates after my conference session tomorrow!

Next week I will be giving two talks on JavaFX at Devoxx in Belgium.  The first is a university session on Tuesday at 13:30 called The JavaFX Platform – A Java Developer’s Guide.  The second is a technical session on Thursday at 14:00 entitled Pro Javafx – Developing Enterprise Applications.

Leading up to both these sessions I will post a question via the LearnFX application.  To win a prize, all you have to do is:

1. Answer the question correctly using the LearnFX client (see below)
2. Come to the next Devoxx session I am speaking at
3. Winners will be selected by a random drawing from all the correct responses

Here is the LearnFX client displaying the first question.  To run it, make sure that you have a recent version (update 14 or later) of Java SE 6, and simply click on the launch button:

Please don’t ruin this for others by mentioning the answer!

The prizes include several copies of Pro JavaFX Platform and a limited edition WidgetFX T-Shirt.  I don’t know about you, but I know which prize I would pick:

WidgetFX Limited run T-Shirt - original artwork by Keith Combs (WidgetFX Developer)

There will also be an opportunity for audience members to answer simply by using a laptop or mobile Twitter client (more details on this at the start of the session), so you don’t have to respond in advance to win.

Thanks to Jim Weaver for the excellent LearnFX application, and I look forward to seeing you at my Devoxx talks!