WidgetFX 1.0 Release

steveonjava | January 6, 2009

The WidgetFX project reached a huge milestone today, hitting a production 1.0 release!

Here is a link to the public release page: http://widgetfx.org/

The new version is compatible with JavaFX 1.0 and sports a completely new look and feel for the desktop dock:

WidgetFX 1.0 on the Desktop

WidgetFX 1.0 on the Desktop

WidgetFX is an open-source desktop widget platform written from the ground up in the JavaFX Script language. It can run widgets written in JavaFX Script and Java and takes advantage of the latest features of the Java Platform.

Some of the new and noteworthy features include:

  • Skinning Support – WidgetFX now takes advantage of the new CSS skinning support in the JavaFX 1.0 release so you can change the look of your widgets and even the WidgetFX dock itself!
  • New Dock Theme – Graphics Designer, Mark Dingman, did a complete overhaul of the WidgetFX UI, providing a new color scheme, logo, and a simplified design.  Notice that when the dock is not highlighted you can now access your icons underneath it!
  • Embedded Flash/Flex Widgets – WidgetFX makes it easy to take your existing investment in Flash or Flex applications and turn them into desktop widgets.  The same events you get in JavaFX are exposed via a Javascript bridge to Flex applications, so you can do full-featured widgets.
  • Performance Enhancements & Bugfixes – There are too many small fixes and improvements to list here, but after several weeks of solid break-in time the dock is very stable on the JavaFX 1.0 platform.

Keith Combs helped revamp the website with a new theme and deployment toolkit support for Java auto-detection.  Give the new site a try and show off your JavaFX spirit by running WidgetFX today!

http://widgetfx.org/

 
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Announcements, JavaFX, WidgetFX
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6 Responses to “WidgetFX 1.0 Release”

  1. Thierry says:
    January 8, 2009 at 2:59 pm

    Nice, but still much CPU usage…

    Reply
  2. steveonjava says:
    January 8, 2009 at 4:28 pm

    Thierry,

    Thanks for the feedback. I played lots of tricks to try to optimize the dock performance as much as possible. One of the big factors is whether you can take advantage of hardware acceleration on the visual effects.

    If you don’t mind, please submit an issue to the Google Code tracker with information about your OS, Processor, Graphics Card, widgets loaded, and the average CPU usage you see.

    Cheers,
    –Steve

    Reply
  3. Kanta says:
    January 20, 2009 at 10:12 pm

    Hi,

    Today I’ve seen the demo… Its look good, having some issues though. When the widgets are dragged out of dock or when the widgets settings are opened the controls are not accessible with mouse and I m forced to use my key board. Is this issue with me only or u r not dealing the mouse interaction? As the earlier says, it still CPU intensive (as with only clock and empty photo frame widgets, CPU usage is around 2% and memory usage is around 60MB). When the dock is re sized the re sizing is not smooth.

    Good work though. Waiting to see lot from JavaFX.

    Kanta

    Reply
  4. sj2004 says:
    January 26, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    Did not work.. Installed it 2 times.

    2nd time, the widget hid behind the task bar, could not activate it.

    Reply
  5. steveonjava says:
    January 27, 2009 at 7:08 am

    sj2004,

    Please join the WidgetFX user mailing list and post some more details on your OS, Java version, configuration, etc. that would be useful for debugging. Also, a small screenshot may help.

    Thanks!
    –Steve

    Reply
  6. WidgetFX 1.0 Release - Technology says:
    April 8, 2009 at 6:36 am

    [...] written in JavaFX Script is now available. Java developer Stephen Chin blogs about it on his website, or you can go to the project [...]

    Reply

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