All the Interesting Things

Thursday Jul 30, 2009

Thoughts on an JavaFX article

I read an article by Charles Ditzel on dzone.com. The article listed a few points that JavaFX should be improved on.

The first thing I agree on is the "Two-way Integration with SWING". SWING is probably the most important client side technology in Java. The current interoperability between JavaFX and Java is one way, i.e. JavaFX can use Java directly, not vice versa. I think it is necessary to create a JavaFX API for Java. The adoption of JavaFX will be greatly improved if we have the two-way integration.

The second thing is the "Lack of Control". I saw people are writing some controls to complement what are missing in the JavaFX API. For example, a JavaFX Menu is built by SWING Menu Classes. I am not sure whether more controls are planning in the coming JavaFX releases, but I think it is crucial for developers to turn into JavaFX and build anything practical.

The third thing is no visual development tool. Well, we all know that there should be a visual tool like other modern IDEs. I know some people should be working hard on it.

The next two things are Proprietary Framework and no modular system. I don't think we need to care much about this now. Open source issue can be dealt with later when JavaFX becomes more mature. Modular system is is so necessary for a scripting language.

The last thing is the roadmap of JavaFX. I would say we really want that as we then know where JavaFX is heading.

I would agree on most of points in the article. I hope in subsequent releases of JavaFX, we can have more improvement on interop and better tool. This will attract more developers from Java or other languages.

Relate articles:
How to show JavaFX Component in Java
How to Invoke JavaFX from Java?
Details on Interoperability between JavaFX and Java

other articles:
Diecast cars of NASCAR

Posted at 03:20AM Jul 30, 2009 by morningstar in JavaFX |

Friday Jul 17, 2009

JavaFX Tricks: SWING Application Displays JavaFX Components

About a month ago, Amy Fowler posted an article about Mixing Swing and JavaFX in an application. The post introduced a few steps to convert SWING applications into JavaFX ones. As I understand it, this approach requires existing java(swing) application to be refactored into JavaFX using wrappers etc. Since JavaFX is still an evolving platform, I doubt people would actually do it.

In fact, I think it should be the other way around. The necessity of Java to call JavaFX is important to many existing Java applications including Swing applications. Why not JavaFX provides some official way to allow Java to call JavaFX features? We know there are a lot of good stuffs in JavaFX, such as animation, media handling, charting. These pieces are missing in Java SE versions. Suppose we could have JavaFX APIs for Java, they would provide great help to Java development. This also promotes a wider adoption of JavaFX among current Java developers.

For people interested in the tricks and techniques on JavaFX and SWING integration, an article on javafxgame.com describes in details. Basically, the open source project JFXtras has provided a way to put JavaFX Scene into a SWING container. You can check out the article for more details:

JavaFX Scene Embedded into a Swing JFrame.

Unrelated articles:
American Immigration Guide for people who want to live and work in United States(some of my friends are still working hard to get this). Some other readers might be interested in how to get through the naturalization process to apply for US citizenship.
NASCAR Die-cast Models : A friend's NASCAR Diecast Models collection for his favorite NASCAR racing drivers, and other collectibles.

Posted at 08:52AM Jul 17, 2009 by morningstar in JavaFX |

Sunday Jul 05, 2009

Thoughts on Independence Day: Citizenship of American

One of my friends had a special Independence Day holiday this year. He took oath to become a new American citizen. He told me that he now had the feeling of staying in his own country and he was ecstatic and happy. It seems the piece of paper means much more to him.

Every year, there are more than 200,000 immigrants went through the naturalization process to obtain their American citizenship of the United States. In order to apply for USA citizenship, a legal green card holder(immigrant) must stay in United States for more than 5 years. The applicant must go through an interview in which an immigration and citizenship officer asks American questions about United States Citizen. The citizenship test questions are related to the history, politics and culture of USA.

Other thoughts on the Independence Day is a technical article: JavaFX used in a Java Swing application. Will blog for it later.

Posted at 06:41AM Jul 05, 2009 by morningstar in Citizenship |