Steve On Java

I am pleased to announce the 0.6 release of the open-source JFXtras project, the largest 3rd party library of JavaFX add-ons.  This release is a very large undertaking that represents the work of several dozen contributors over the past 6 months.

JFXtras 0.6 will work with any JavaFX release in the 1.2 family.  We recommend using the very latest release (currently JavaFX 1.2.3), which can be downloaded from JavaFX.com.

Starting immediately, we will be focusing on developing a JavaFX 1.3 compatible JFXtras release.  Our plan is to release a 1.3 compatible version of JFXtras within 1 week of the official release announcement from Oracle.  To hear about future JFXtras release announcements, make sure to follow my blog.

JFXtras Functionality

To make it easier to see some of the JFXtras capabilities in action, I have included Web Start demos from our component test library.  It may take a minute or two to load the first demo, but after that the rest should launch instantaneously.

Data-Driven Controls

The JFXtras controls include a Table, Tree, Shelf, Calendar, PasswordBox, Picker, Spinner, MultiLineTextBox, ScoreBoard, and Menu.  Many of these controls can be driven off a dynamic data provider that gives back incremental results from an asynchronous operation, such as a Web Service call.

XTableView (browse demo source)

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All these widgets are available and working today on the WidgetFX 1.2 release.  To run WidgetFX, simply go to the WidgetFX home page and click on the Launch Dock link: http://widgetfx.org/

Here is a list of the major changes in this release:

• Improved Performance – The widget dock, as well as all widgets will benefit from performance improvements in JavaFX 1.2.
• Built-in Layout – Widgets now have an onLayout() function that can be used to layout the top-level nodes.
• Signed Widgets – Widgets can now be signed with certificates to get out of the sandbox and gain access to system resources.
• Additional API Hooks – New event handlers for onShow and onHide.
• Macintosh Bugfixes – Transparency now works with the latest JDK (1.6.0_13), and dialog interaction issues have been fixed.

You too can be a widget author and win some free prizes in our widget development contest.  The deadline is July 31st with a grand prize of a year’s worth of free books donated by my publisher, Apress.

WidgetFX Developer Contest

Happy Widget Hacking!

I am pleased to announce the 0.5 release of JFXtras.  This release updates the project with JavaFX 1.2 support, plus includes a major overhaul of the Shapes, Borders, and Layouts.

You can grab the latest bits here:
http://code.google.com/p/jfxtras/downloads/list

And browse the Javadoc online.

Pure JavaFX Shapes

Why should you care that we spent months re-implementing all the Shapes from scratch in pure JavaFX code?  Well, here are a few reasons:

1. JavaFX 1.2 Compatibility - The JavaFX scene graph was pretty-much rewritten from the ground up in the 1.2 release, so porting the old Shape code was non-trivial.
2. Mobile Deployment - Yes, you can now draw stars, balloons, and reuleaux triangles on your new HTC Diamond.  (What, you didn’t pick up a JavaFX Mobile device at JavaOne?  Your loss…)
3. Richard Bair said to do it…  Rich isn’t the sort of guy you say no to, and he was pretty adament about the fact that we shouldn’t be hacking the scene graph directly.  Well, now we aren’t.  (although don’t let him know about our new hack to embed JavaFX in Swing…)

You can try out the new shapes by running the DrawJFXtras sample program from the Pro JavaFX Platform book (which has an entire chapter dedicated to the JFXtras project and other JavaFX FOSS):

Draw JFXtras Sample Application

Note:  When playing with the demo be careful using the balloon and rounded rectangle shapes.  They trigger a nasty bounds-detection bug that we still haven’t tracked down.

Thanks to my coworker, Steve Bixby for doing the rewrite in his spare time.  He was looking for a little project to learn JavaFX, and went way above and beyond!

Redesigned Borders

We also redesigned the JFXtras Borders from scratch.  Here are some of the new and noteworthy improvements:

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I am pleased to announce the 0.4 release of the JFXtras project.  This is a pretty significant release for the project, which includes quite a bit of new functionality, as well as a new project subdivision.

The JFXtras project has been split into the following three subprojects:

• JFXtras Core – Contains everything you need to quickly and easily build rich JavaFX applications.  This includes Layouts, UI Controls, Shapes, Borders, Utilities, etc.
• JFXtras Test – This provides a comprehensive unit and UI test suite along with wrappers for running from the command line or a visual client (coming soon).
• JFXtras Samples – This is a new project dedicated to providing high quality JavaFX samples to teach the language and bootstrap innovation.  More on this coming in the next few weeks, but if you are interested in contributing or helping out let me know.

The release today is for JFXtras Core, which is now Java 1.5 compatible, and includes some brand new features courtesy of Jim Clarke.  This includes a wide assortment of styleable Borders:

New JFXtras Borders Support

As well as:

• Styleable ScrollBars and ScrollViews
• A JSON Handler to automagically populate JavaFX objects from a remote connection

Which is in addition to a whole slew of other cool features including:

• A new Constraints system for specifying how nodes are laid out with a uniform API
• Significant updates to the JFXtras Grid
• New resizable layouts including: ResizableCustomNode, ResizableImageView, ResizableMediaView, ResizableHBox, ResizableVBox, and updates to ResizableRectangle
• A new version of the Shapes library
• An ImageFix class that resolves backgroundLoading issues and an ImageUtility class to help with common operations
• Defect fixes for Shapes, Dialogs, and others

You can download the latest bits here:  http://code.google.com/p/jfxtras/downloads/list.  And also browse the online Javadocs.

Thanks to the whole JFXtras crew for putting together another huge release!

The JFXtras 0.3 release is out with full support for JavaFX 1.1, as well as JavaFX MigLayout support.  You can download the latest bits here:

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

Since JavaFX 1.1 is not binary compatible with the 1.0 JavaFX release, if you are doing any development with JavaFX 1.1 you will need to upgrade to the newly released version 0.3 of JFXtras.  Similarly, if you want to do any development on legacy JavaFX 1.0 applications, you will need to stick with JFXtras 0.2 or earlier.

The major feature in this release is the inclusion of a MigLayout wrapper that gives you all the power of MigLayout from within a native JavaFX syntax (a big thanks to Dean Iverson for making this happen).  Here is an example of Mig Docking in action:

MigLayout Docking Test

The intent is to keep both the JFXtras Grid and MigLayout as fully supported options for JavaFX layout.  The choice is yours which one to use!

Some other changes that went into this release as well include:

• Modified permissions in JFXWorker, JFXException, and JFXDialog from public-init to public-init protected
• Fixed alwaysOnTop support and added an icon workaround to JFXDialog
• Deprecated CacheSafeGroup now that the underlying bug has been fixed

This release made it in roughly 5 days total, but only 2 business days after the JavaFX 1.1 Release.  Special thanks to Keith Combs for packaging up the release!