JavaFX 1.1

I wrote a small (relatively) JavaFX application using the public Twitter API. As mentioned earlier JavaFX runs fine under Linux although it is not yet officially supported.

I have been using Eclipse for many years. Which means I'm a total Netbeans newbie, but Netbeans generally behaved and I found my way around pretty well. Though the support for JavaFX in Netbeans is not as good as other language support in NetBeans.

The thing I am missing the most in JavaFX are some kind of good component libraries. Chances are good, that the next version is going to solve that one. JavaOne may brings some new things...

JavaFX 1.0

I have just upgraded the JavaFX demo to work with the all new JavaFX 1.0 release. Alas only the Windows and Mac versions are available as of now, but thanks to this post I was able to get JavaFX 1.0 running on my Linux box.

As far as I can say, there have not been tremendous changes to the API from the pre-release to the final version. I had to adapt some import statements. Rectangle (and probably other shapes) moved from javafx.scene.geometry to javafx.scene.shape and the Font class move from javafx.scene to javafx.scene.text. The font style handling changed a bit, there is no FontStyle class anymore, but multiple boolean attributes on the Font object to control its style. The biggest change is probably that there is no javafx.application package anymore, the entry point of an JavaFX application is the javafx.stage.Stage class now.

On the tool side some compiler options changed or have been removed (-target does not exist anymore), and the applet parameter applicationclass has been renamed to MainJavaFXScript.

Check out the JavaFX homepage they have tons of examples there. Ohhh, and of course have a look at the updated GwtAI JavaFX demo and its source code.

GwtAI - 0.2

I have made a second release of the GwtAI project. Besides some minor bug fixes it now contains a couple of new parameters:

• The LoadingImage parameter sets a custom loading image for the applet. The custom image replaces the default animation that is show during applet loading.


• The SeparateJVM parameter specifies that the applet should run in its own JVM instance (Java Plug-In >= 1.6.0_10 only).


• The JavaArguments can be used to pass JVM command-line arguments to the applet instance (Java Plug-In >= 1.6.0_10 only).


• The JavaVersion parameter specifies which JRE version is required to launch the applet (Java Plug-In >= 1.6.0_10 only).

In addition to the new functionality I have separated the core and demo code into two different Eclipse projects. That makes building GwtAI much easier.

Thanks to all the people who have sent me feedback and suggestions!!!

Bringing JavaFX and GWT together

JavaFX it the new kid on the Java block. There is a lot of buzz about this new technology. Although it is not quite stable yet and some people think Sun is too late to win the RIA (Rich Internet Application) market. None the less I’m a Java guy, so I just had to have a look at JavaFX. At first I had some problems to understand how things work with JavaFX. They made quite some changes to the API over the course of developing it and lots of the examples on the net are not up to date anymore. This causes some confusion and does not make things easier.

However once I got my first JavaFX code snippet running the next question was how to integrate it into a GWT website. A JavaFX application can easily be compiled into a Java applet. And that is where GwtAI come into play. Have a look at this demo to learn how to integrate JavaFX with GWT. Using GwtAI this only takes a couple of lines of code, the actual compiling and packaging things together was a bit more complicated. The JavaFX support in Eclipse is not that great, and a real pain in the ass is the fact that the GWT compiler does not work with JDK 1.6 (at least not under 64bit Linux) and the JavaFX requires a Java 1.6 environment… Argh… But I figured it out eventually.



Don't miss the demo!

GwtAI - 0.1

Over the last weekend, I have finally made a first release of GwtAI. The project is still in an very early stage, but I got a couple of emails from people all over the world with questions and ideas. So I thought it is time to make something available for those who don't can or want to build GwtAI from SVN. The Applet integration and communication stuff is quite stable and already useful. The tray integration stuff does not yet work on all platforms. I have to read up and do some more tests with JDIC to get it to work on Linux and Mac.

GwtAI - GWT Applet Integration

In the past couple of days I have been working on a third party library to provide cross-browser no-hassle Java Applet integration for GWT. With the upcoming Java SE 6 Update 10 (a.ka. Update N) Sun provides a totally new browser plugin. With this move they want to bring the Java Applet and Web Start technology back. With the ability to drag an Applet outside of the browser and run it in a separate thread, Applets will become kind of equal to Web Start applications. The big advantage of an Applet that Applets are capable to talk back to the website that actually started them. So Applets may experience kind of comeback in the near future.

The GwtAI project is in an early stage, anyway have a look if you like.