Introducing JavaFX GUI Programming

PART IV 

Introducing GUI Programming with JavaFX

CHAPTER 34

Introducing JavaFX GUI Programming

Like all successful languages, Java continues to evolve and improve. This also applies to its libraries. One of the most important examples of this evolutionary process is found in its GUI frameworks. As explained earlier in the book, the original GUI framework was the AWT. Because of its several limitations, it was soon followed by Swing, which offered a far superior approach to creating GUIs. Swing was so successful that it has remained the primary Java GUI framework for over a decade. (And a decade is a long time in the fast-moving world of programming!) However, Swing was designed when the enterprise application dominated software development. Today, consumer applications, and especially mobile apps, have risen in importance, and such applications often demand a GUI that has “visual sparkle.” Furthermore, no matter the type of application, the trend is toward more exciting visual effects. To better handle these types of GUIs, a new approach was needed, and this lead to the creation of JavaFX. JavaFX is Java’s next-generation client platform and GUI framework.

JavaFX provides a powerful, streamlined, flexible framework that simplifies the creation of modern, visually exciting GUIs. As such, it is a very large system, and, as was the case with Swing discussed in Part III, it is not possible to describe it fully in this book. Instead, the purpose of this and the next two chapters is to introduce several of its key features and techniques. Once you understand the fundamentals, you will find it easy to explore other aspects of JavaFX on your own.

One question that naturally arises relating to JavaFX is this: Is JavaFX designed as a replacement for Swing? The answer is a qualified Yes. However, given the large amount of Swing legacy code and the legions of programmers who know how to program for Swing, Swing will be in use for a very long time. This is especially true for enterprise applications. Nevertheless, JavaFX has clearly been positioned as the platform of the future. It is expected that, over the next few years, JavaFX will supplant Swing for new projects. JavaFX is something that no Java programmer can afford to ignore.

Before continuing, it is important to mention that the development of JavaFX occurred in two main phases. The original JavaFX was based on a scripting language called JavaFX Script. However, JavaFX Script has been discontinued. Beginning with the release of JavaFX 2.0, JavaFX has been programmed in Java itself and provides a comprehensive API. JavaFX also supports FXML, which can be (but is not required to be) used to specify the user interface. JavaFX has been bundled with Java since JDK 7, update 4. The latest version of JavaFX is JavaFX 8, which is bundled with JDK 8. (The version number is 8 to align with the JDK version. Thus, the numbers 3 through 7 were skipped.) Because, at the time of this writing, JavaFX 8 represents the latest version of JavaFX, it is the version of JavaFX discussed here. Furthermore, when the term JavaFX is used in this and the following chapters, it refers to JavaFX 8.