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Essential JavaFX
A complete introduction for beginners to Sun's powerful JavaFX scripting language JavaFX is a scripting language which provides built-in properties for manipulating objects within a 2D coordinate system. A competing technology to Microsoft's Silverlight, JavaFX provides the tools to fill and pen stroke colors, and create special effects, shapes and lines. It also manipulates images and play videos and sound and defines animations that affect objects over time. This complete introduction for any level doesn't bury you with details. It starts quickly with an introduction to the power of JavaFX key features--scene node graphs, nodes as components, the coordinate system, layout options, colors and gradients, custom classes with inheritance, animation, binding, and event handlers. It then shows step-by-step how these features could be used in a real JavaFX application and will help an application look
344 pages, Paperback
First published May 27, 2009
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December 3, 2009
(10/15/09). Chapter 3 covers the fundamental language syntax. None of the console type examples lend themselves to becoming netbeans projects because of includes, lack of stage/scene output (these are console/println examples).
All examples have worked. All explanations given are clear. More effort could be expended to develop easier unit display for testing on the console apps. The rest of the book is devoted to more graphical topics. I have not seen a good example to display a tuple result from a db search, where the output size in items is variable, and it would be desirable to not assign from data values to display vars. Note: FX doesn't have text area capabilities, and most of the traditional business type data entry screens will depend on wrapped Swing Classes, which can't be used for mobile apps.
Clarification for testing of packages (this was not clear in the book or examples):
The package name is a folder where the source and compiled class of a file should be found. A test script file (the book uses Main.fx for all of these test script calls) must be located in the directory above the package subdirectory.
ie directory structure /home/user/code/chapter03/compex : location of Complex.fx, where "package complex" is specified. The script test file that instantiates the Complex.class file was tested with the compiled Main.fx in the ~/chapter03 directory above the package directory name. Specifically :
~/chapter03/Main.fx, Main.class
~/chapter03/complex/Complex.fx, Complex.class
from ~/chapter03 using the command line execution syntax : javafx Main
The original source code download for this book linked to an incomplete source version. A later correct version contains all source for chapter 3, which contains working examples of fundamental syntax. All examples can be loaded as netbeans projects and all worked perfectly.
12/03/09 :
Criticisms of book : It doesn't mention nuts and bolts FX or when it does, does not provide depth. For example there is no "Main" class, actually there is a working implementation hidden from the developer, but this is only mentioned and not thoroughly explained. I like to see how the underlying compiler implementation is working, and I think some of those details could have been added to provide a really substantial FX development guide. This book provided a brief working explanation of most of the important API's but didn't emphasize having the API documentation for your current version of FX, available as you are developing. There's no other way to develop until you are so familiar with the API's that automatic syntax generators from Netbeans become a reminder or nuisance case because you know what you are calling and all the arguments for each call.Note that FX appears to be in a rapid state of flux, so the API's may be very different in later versions.
Another criticism of this book is that it outlines the graphical "sugar" of FX, but never goes into how this might be integrated into an enterprise server-based application. This seems to be one of the primary weaknesses surrounding all FX presentations at this time (12/09).
Pro's : The book and examples were spot on to the current FX syntax and covered its graphical capabilities very well in a no-nonsense non-distracting very brief how-to format. Chapter 9, Web Services, might be the most valuable chapter for practical use in the long run. Chapter 10, Mobile Applications was just adequate. I feel that both of these chapters will later have entire books dedicated to their subject if FX survives as a practical tool.
All examples have worked. All explanations given are clear. More effort could be expended to develop easier unit display for testing on the console apps. The rest of the book is devoted to more graphical topics. I have not seen a good example to display a tuple result from a db search, where the output size in items is variable, and it would be desirable to not assign from data values to display vars. Note: FX doesn't have text area capabilities, and most of the traditional business type data entry screens will depend on wrapped Swing Classes, which can't be used for mobile apps.
Clarification for testing of packages (this was not clear in the book or examples):
The package name is a folder where the source and compiled class of a file should be found. A test script file (the book uses Main.fx for all of these test script calls) must be located in the directory above the package subdirectory.
ie directory structure /home/user/code/chapter03/compex : location of Complex.fx, where "package complex" is specified. The script test file that instantiates the Complex.class file was tested with the compiled Main.fx in the ~/chapter03 directory above the package directory name. Specifically :
~/chapter03/Main.fx, Main.class
~/chapter03/complex/Complex.fx, Complex.class
from ~/chapter03 using the command line execution syntax : javafx Main
The original source code download for this book linked to an incomplete source version. A later correct version contains all source for chapter 3, which contains working examples of fundamental syntax. All examples can be loaded as netbeans projects and all worked perfectly.
12/03/09 :
Criticisms of book : It doesn't mention nuts and bolts FX or when it does, does not provide depth. For example there is no "Main" class, actually there is a working implementation hidden from the developer, but this is only mentioned and not thoroughly explained. I like to see how the underlying compiler implementation is working, and I think some of those details could have been added to provide a really substantial FX development guide. This book provided a brief working explanation of most of the important API's but didn't emphasize having the API documentation for your current version of FX, available as you are developing. There's no other way to develop until you are so familiar with the API's that automatic syntax generators from Netbeans become a reminder or nuisance case because you know what you are calling and all the arguments for each call.Note that FX appears to be in a rapid state of flux, so the API's may be very different in later versions.
Another criticism of this book is that it outlines the graphical "sugar" of FX, but never goes into how this might be integrated into an enterprise server-based application. This seems to be one of the primary weaknesses surrounding all FX presentations at this time (12/09).
Pro's : The book and examples were spot on to the current FX syntax and covered its graphical capabilities very well in a no-nonsense non-distracting very brief how-to format. Chapter 9, Web Services, might be the most valuable chapter for practical use in the long run. Chapter 10, Mobile Applications was just adequate. I feel that both of these chapters will later have entire books dedicated to their subject if FX survives as a practical tool.
Displaying 1 of 1 review