JavaFX Links of January 2023

2023 has taken off with a flying start in JavaFX-world!

Here is a summary of the Links Of The Week that were published in January on jfx-central.com.

JavaFX Versions

• Gluon announced the first set of JavaFX releases in 2023:
  • JavaFX 19.0.2: public release containing some updates and security patches to JavaFX 19.
  • JavaFX 11.0.18 and JavaFX 17.0.6: for LTS customers who keep supporting the development, and who make it possible to move JavaFX forward.

Podcast

• This was already mentioned the last time, but maybe you missed this 😉 Here on Foojay.io, we published the podcast “The State of JavaFX Framework, Libraries, and Projects”. Pedro Duque Vieira, Sean Phillips, Johan Vos, Gail Anderson, Dirk Lemmermann, and Frank Delporte spoke about the JavaFX framework itself, but also about the libraries and applications that are built with it.

Games

• Almas Baim started the new year with eco-friendly fireworks. Powered by the FXGL particle system.
  • He also published a video tutorial in which he uses snow particles to outline an arbitrary String.
  • And a video illustrating how modifying an entity’s TransformComponent will now correctly update the entity’s 3D direction and vice versa in FXGL.
• GZYangKui shared a video of nes4j - The Nintendo Red and White Machine Simulator - and a link to the sources.
  • And another video with Super Mario.
• Peter Pietri shared info and a video via Reddit of “Gilded Sols”, a game based on chess but with fantasy elements.
• WhiteWoodCity promotes FXGL to create games.
• Gerrit Grunwald is modifying the SpaceFX mobile build so that it runs again on iPhone, including an update of the readme regarding the build.
• Botond Hegyi already had some experience with JavaFX game development, but he found out working with FXGL by Almas Baim is sooo much easier.
• OrangoMango posted a video of snake bot using a pathfinding algorithm.
  • The sources are available on GitHub.
  • And another video showing a 3D animation only using matrices and vectors.

JavaFX Applications

• Zoran Sevarac shared a screenshot of a Neural network visual Weights Analysis tool under development for the next DeepNetts release. It helps understanding what’s going on inside layers, and debugging trained networks.
• Mohammed Saied demonstrates a JavaFX GUI to control a car (via YouTube Shorts).
• Heiko Rupp is making progress with a Java/JavaFX Mastodon application.
• LeeWyatt tweeted a short video introduction on how to use beta 2 of FXTools.
• Hilmi made a hospital queue app for his final homework on Data Structures Practicum. Video and link to the sources.
• Neba Desmond shared a video of a nice sidebar navigation.
• Patrik Karlström is making progress moving Yaya from Swing to JavaFX using WorkbenchFX as the base for the UI.
• Sundar Krishnamachari shared a small project that creates a UI client for communication over MQ Telemetry Transport or MQTT, a messaging protocol popular in IOT devices.
• JavaFX3D found a nice Car Rental System with a JavaFX user interface. Code with screenshots and videos is available on GitHub.

JavaFX Development

• Setting up your JavaFX development environment can be challenging. Andreas Fester shared the solution that helped him to fix “Module not found”, thanks to José Pereda and Jeanette Winzenburg.
• Johan Vos is looking for help with the JavaFX plugin for Eclipse 2022-12: “Who has #Eclipse experience and wants to help the #JavaFX community?”

To Read…

• Nikos Vaggalis wrote an article about WebFX, a new way to develop modern web-based Java applications with rich desktop-like GUIs.
• Autumo shared an article on Foojay: “Modular and non-modular Gradle build scripts for JavaFX-based projects”.
• Siegfried Steiner wrote a very detailed, clear, step-by-step post: “Write once, run anywhere: An Android game using JavaFX and the GraalVM”.
• Another step-by-step by Jesse Watson on how to start a JavaFX project using Eclipse IDE and SceneBuilder. Read it here.

Miscellaneous

• Thanhpv is impressed by the performance of JavaFX on a 10y old computer. The screen recorder couldn’t catch up…
• According to ChatGPT there are several advantages to using JavaFX over Swing or SWT.
• You want more information about the OpenJFX project than you can find here on jfx-central.com? Visit mkpaz/aboutfx on GitHub!
• According to the “2022 Q4” chart on “Java InfoQ Trends Report - December 2022”, OpenJFX is now considered a software development topic for the Innovators! So a call-out to all innovative people reading this… JavaFX is the way to go! 🙂
• MichaelPaus shared this valuable link: “A very informative, but little known, source of information is the JavaFX tag info on stackoverflow: stackoverflow.com/tags/javafx/info. The FAQs cover all the things that are frequently asked on SO and actually should be consulted first before posting a question.”
  • He also shared that he crossed the 10K reputation limit on Stackoverflow (which gives you access to the moderator tools), by answering mostly JavaFX related questions!
• Matthew Wheeler (via YouTube) uses JavaFX 3D to randomly generate galaxies.
• Dirk Lemmermann shared a teaser of the new layout for jfx-central.com.
• Shared by JavaFX3D: “Go from Figma to a fully Responsive JavaFX Application with support for navigation, responsive sizes, images and more.”
• WhiteWoodCity shared a video of a self-made TableView.
  • Dirk Lemmermann replied this is actually an important tweet. as many JavaFX developers think they “have to” use the TableView, and then complain about its limitations. Using GridPane you can create your own custom table view, as most HTML devs do for tables.
  • And another video showing a HDFS management system created with JavaFX.
• Matt Coley discovered that JavaFX CSS allows you to effectively create borders just with the background color/insets property. This fixes the effect of changes in the component when you add a border, and padding changes are needed.
  • And he shared a preview of the new attach window in Recaf (Java bytecode editor), that shows remote process properties and JMX beans, and indicates which JVM you’re attached to with highlighted components.
• Sean Phillips announced that the master branch of FXyz3D has been updated to build with Gradle 7.6 and JDK 17 thanks to José Pereda, and is working on several fixes and updates coming soon for the release of version 5.5.
  • He will provide a Keynote presentation at Devnexus 2023, the largest Java conference in the USA: “Harnessing the Hyper-dimensional Mind: Visualizing Brain Computer Interfaces.”
• OrangoMango shared a video of a rendering of an .obj file with only the use of the JavaFX canvas, including camera movement and rotation.
• Frank Delporte announced he started working on a new Java library to load and save #LottieFiles and #dotLottie, plus a #JavaFX player. The very early steps are taken with a website, Mastodon account, different Lottie JSON files can already be loaded and saved back to the same JSON, and a very first visual output shows there is some valid data being handled. Maybe you have ideas how to move on with visualizing and animating in JavaFX and want to contribute?
  • He also made his Udemy course to learn how to use JavaFX on the Raspberry Pi available for FREE.
• During the JChampions Conference, Gail Anderson and Paul Anderson presented “Say the Words: Modern Java with JavaFX for Rich Client UIs”.
• Matt Coley shared his wish-list to extend RichText. You want to join the discussion?

New releases

• 17.0.45 of JDKMon by Gerrit Grunwald: minor bugfix.
• 1.6.4 of SmartFinder by Serendipity with a new quick search view: filter the search results by categories (Documents, Ebooks, Images,…).
• 23.1.0 of LogoRRR by Robert Ladstätter: builds for Linux, visual improvements, autoscroll support,…
• 11.12.4 of CalendarFX by Dirk Lemmermann: very important fixes related to memory leaks that can happen when constantly recreating calendar views.
• 1.5.4 of JFreeChart by David Gilbert, a project he started in 1999 and although he doesn’t spend much time on it these days, he made a new release. And got very nice feedback on this message!
• 11.0.7 of GMapsFX by Dirk Lemmermann is on Maven Central. No new features or bug fixes, simply updated jaxb version from 2 to 4.
• 11.55.0 of GemsFX by Dirk Lemmermann.
• GlucoStatusFX by Gerrit Grunwald with a minor bugfix.