JavaFX
The future of Rich Client Java
Presented to Sydney Java Users Group
8 October 2009
By Steven Herod
steven@herod.net
http://twitter.com/sherod
(Available for JavaFX work :)
Friday, 9 October 2009 1

Who am I?
• Steven Herod
• CTO, Development Manager, Project Manager,
Architect, Developer, Frequent Tweeter
Friday, 9 October 2009 2

What have I done with
JavaFX?
• Working with JavaFX since a few days after 1.0
release
• Built ‘TwitterFX’, a fully featured* Twitter Client.
• TwitterFX was a launch application in Sun’s Java
Store (annouced at 2009 Java One)
• Worked with Pre release 1.2 version under NDA
• Informally in touch with Sun’s internal team
Friday, 9 October 2009 3

TwitterFX
Version 2.0
Version 3.0 (in dev)
Friday, 9 October 2009 4

What is JavaFX?
• It’s a programming language
• JavaFX Script
• It’s a runtime
• On top of the JRE
• It’s a common approach to rich applications on
your Desktop, Mobile and TV Set
• The API is divided in to 4 profiles:
Common, Mobile, Desktop and TV
Friday, 9 October 2009 5

What is it not
• It’s not a server side programming language
• I haven’t heard the slighted rumour of this
being the case.
Friday, 9 October 2009 6

JavaFX Script
• It’s not a script
• Your app is compiled by ‘javafxc’ to Java
bytecode and shipped as a JAR.
• It’s intended to be friendly to ‘the designer
types’
Friday, 9 October 2009 7

What’s special about
JavaFX?
• Declarative syntax
• Baked in data binding
• Function types/Closures
• Mixin inheritance
• Video / Audio support
• Built in codec for Flash Video/MP3
• Fall back to Java*
Friday, 9 October 2009 8

• Can launch via WebStart or Applet
• And you can drag applet out of browser
window to install them.
• Runs on Java 1.6
• Dev on Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris,
• Run on Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris,
Friday, 9 October 2009 9

Communication
capabilities
• RESTful Web services with a parser for
XML and JSON.
• Higher level support for ATOM and RSS
feeds.
• Supports streaming video for media player
• Go look at net for formats supported
Friday, 9 October 2009 10

Supported
controls
• All are native JavaFX controls (written in
JavaFX)
• You can wrap Swing controls
• Supported native controls:
Button, CheckBox, Hyperlink, Label,
ListView, ProgressBar, ProgressIndicator,
RadioButton, ScrollBar, Slider, TextBox,
TextInputControl, ToggleButton,
by Sergey Malenkov
Friday, 9 October 2009 11

Charts
AreaChart, BarChart,
BarChart3D, BubbleChart,
LineChart, PieChart,
PieChart3D, ScatterChart,
XYChart,
by Dean Iverson
Friday, 9 October 2009 12

You may go ‘oooooh’ if
you want to.
Friday, 9 October 2009 13

“Hello World”
Friday, 9 October 2009 14

Hello World
package helloworld;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.text.Text;
import javafx.scene.text.Font;
/**
* @author steven
*/
Stage {
title: "Hello SJUG!"
width: 250
height: 80
scene: Scene {
content: [
Text {
font : Font {
size : 16
}
x: 10
y: 30
content: "Hello World"
}
]
}
}
Friday, 9 October 2009 15

THERE IS NO
public static main(args String[]){}
THERE IS ONLY
Stage {}
Friday, 9 October 2009 16

Huh?
Friday, 9 October 2009 17

It’s all about the Scene
Graph
Friday, 9 October 2009 18

“Whats a Scene Graph”
• “The scene graph is a structure that arranges
the logical and often (but not necessarily)
spatial representation of a graphical scene.
The definition of a scene graph is fuzzy
because programmers who implement scene
graphs in applications and in particular the
games industry take the basic principles and
adapt these to suit particular applications.
This means there is no consensus as to
what a scene graph should be.”
Friday, 9 October 2009 19

“Thanks Wikipedia”
Friday, 9 October 2009 20

Think of a tree
Or if you are sick and twisted, an XML document
(Don’t panic, you write NO XML in a JavaFX program)
Friday, 9 October 2009 21

“All the worlds a
Stage...”
• All the action takes place ‘On the Stage’
• There is a root element (the ‘Scene’)
• Everything else visual is a type of ‘Node’
• ‘Text’, ‘Group’, ‘VBox’, ‘Panel’,
‘Stack’,‘Rectangle’ ‘Button’ ‘MediaPlayer’
• Some nodes can contain other nodes,
until you have a hierarchy, or a tree or
Friday, 9 October 2009 22

“Scene Graph”
Friday, 9 October 2009 23

JavaFX Syntax
Friday, 9 October 2009 24

An ‘easier’ Java
It takes a couple of
hours to pick up
Friday, 9 October 2009 25

def vs var
• Variables which are defined once, and are
never assigned-to, are defined with def.
• def myDef = 3
• def myDef = bind otherVar
• Variables that will or can be assigned-to
should be declared with var:
• var myVar = 3
Friday, 9 October 2009 26

Iteration
for (x in [1..3]) {
println(“The current value of x is P{indexof x}”);
}
Friday, 9 October 2009 27

Boring
How about...
Friday, 9 October 2009 28

var squares : Integer[] =
for (x in [1..10]) x*x;
Yes, our for loop evaluates to an
array* of all the squares between 1..10
(thats [ 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100 )
Friday, 9 October 2009 29

I lied
(You noticed the *)?
It’s not an Array, its a Sequence
Friday, 9 October 2009 30

Sequences
• A JavaFX Script sequence represents an
ordered list of data of the same type.
• Sequences are immutable
• You can do lots of cool things with a
Sequence
Friday, 9 October 2009 31

• Declaring one
• var booleans:Boolean[] = [true, false]
• Interpolate
• var nums = [1..10]
• The for loop example used a sequence in the for(x in [1..10)
• var nums = [1..10 step 2]
• Populates nums with 1,3,5,7,9
• Obtain slices
• println( mySequence[3..] );
• Create sequences of functions
• var functions = function(myString:String)[];
Friday, 9 October 2009 32

“and in the darkness
bind them”
Friday, 9 October 2009 33

Type of binding
• Simple bind
• var myVar = bind someOtherVar
• Inverse bind
• var myVar = bind otherVar with inverse
Friday, 9 October 2009 34

• conditional binding
• def x = bind if (condExpr) expr1 else expr2;
• bind to a sequence
• def values = bind for (x in [min..max]) square(x);
• bind to a function
• def value = bind myFunc(x,y)
• bound functions
• bound function bob(x,y) { x*y*z }
Friday, 9 October 2009 35

Impact of binds
• All bind updates happen on the EDT
• So, binding may be quick, but the
scenegraph may not be....
• bound values use more memory than non
bound values
Friday, 9 October 2009 36

“on replace”
var bob:String on replace oldBob {
if (oldBob == "chicken" and bob == "cow") then
otherVar = "{oldBob}{bob}";
}
• on replace fires on initialisation as well as update
• You can do this for sequences to with some funky
stuff, but I haven’t figured it out yet.
Friday, 9 October 2009 37

Creating a class
var myStaticVar;
public class myClass {
public-read var myReadOnlyVar;
public-init var myInitOnceVar;
public var myGoCrazy;
var myPrivateVar;
}
Friday, 9 October 2009 38

Inheritence
• JavaFX 1.0 - 1.1 had multiple inheritance
• But I don’t think it worked
• Java 1.2 drops that and introduces mixin classes
• mixin class MyMixin { }
• You can extend any number of Mixins, but you
can’t directly instantiate one.
• class myClass extends MyMixin1, MyMixin2 {}
Friday, 9 October 2009 39

Other bits
• Duration is a first class type:
• def myTime = 2h * 0.6h
• Localization is baked in
• def about = ##[JOKE]"Michael Neale sucks";
• Methods or member vars that override a parents
definition must use the keyword ‘override’
• override function myFunc();
Friday, 9 October 2009 40

Tooling
Friday, 9 October 2009 41

It’s early days
• SDK, Netbeans & JavaFX 1.2
Production Suite
(Officially Supported)
• Eclipse
(Sun backed, open source)
• Exadel JavaFX Studio
Friday, 9 October 2009 42

Unit Testing
Friday, 9 October 2009 43

“We’ve had some
success using junit
internally”
Friday, 9 October 2009 44

Functional Testing
Friday, 9 October 2009 45

Although some work
is being done in FEST
Friday, 9 October 2009 46

The future
Friday, 9 October 2009 47

What’s next?
• Java FX 1.3 “SoMa”, which will focus on:
• Making binding dirt cheap
• Making object creation & insertion dirt cheap
• Removing eager binding from the scenegraph
• by making things lazy, it means we only have to compute once
per frame in many cases rather than constantly
• Reducing the memory cost of Node
• Reducing the number of Nodes created
• In particular, making it so that CustomNode's can deal with more than one
item so you don't have to have useless wrapping groups all the time
Friday, 9 October 2009 48

What else?
• A new graphics stack
• Out with Java2d/AWT/Swing
• Immediate mode Java 2d
• In with ‘PRISM’
• Direct to Hardware Acceleration
• But will it be enabled by default?
Friday, 9 October 2009 49

Other tooling
• JavaFX Authoring Tool
• Being worked on by Tor Norbye of
JavaPosse fame.
Friday, 9 October 2009 50

When is SoMa?
• December? January? February?
• Nothing announced yet
Friday, 9 October 2009 51

Want to know more?
http://bit.ly/sjugoctober
Questions?
Friday, 9 October 2009 52