JavaFX: Call to ARMs

#1

Post by youjiuzhifeng » Fri, May 20, 2016, 1:54 PM UTC

Re: JavaFX: Call to ARMs

#2

Post by ysleepy » Fri, May 20, 2016, 3:12 PM UTC

I had hopes for JavaFX as well. But I dont see it soing places anymore without massive corporate backing. All the secondary APIs are pretty much clean-room designed and lack some consumer-developer insight on how its used. I encountered missing API surface, missing layout logic, huge feature holes etc.

The WebView is just unusable. It segfaults the JVM if you use it wrong, and I had like three different ways I did that. It is practically impossible to control the behaviour of the navigation and Network fetching, which I really need to do.

Also it is just way to slow. All the widgets are coded like they are the only thing the app is for and contain huge object trees for the simplest blip. CSS support was (there have been efforts lately) just very clunky and half done.

Passing Events to/from a backend to the UI Model is still very clunky because of the Single Thread thing of the UI. It collides with the Binding semantics, which only really work inside one thread.

It really needs a slim down, and lots and lots of elbow grease to polish it into a state where it can be the base of a nice and big ecosystem.

The Design itself is rather modern and feels OK with Java8.

Re: JavaFX: Call to ARMs

#3

Post by michaelbuddy » Fri, May 20, 2016, 3:26 PM UTC

must be a rule that the vast majority of informational sites, blog sites, tutorial sites regarding Java look hideous. Looking up tutorial sites on JSF, this 'great' front end coding framework and there's not one site that can manage a nice looking website, not even barebones nice. All are hideous.

Re: JavaFX: Call to ARMs

#4

Post by crudbug » Fri, May 20, 2016, 3:36 PM UTC

Oracle can revive JavaFX, if they develop something like ReactFX, JavaFX target React. They have all the infrastructure with Nashorn, SceneGraph, etc.

Re: JavaFX: Call to ARMs

#5

Post by pron » Fri, May 20, 2016, 3:45 PM UTC

One irony regarding JavaFX is that the original JavaFX Script language[1] was probably among the best frontend languages ever created (better than TypeScript or Elm in many ways, IMO). It is powerful, typed, and easy for JS developers and designers to learn, plus it's designed for CSS integration. When it was abandoned by Oracle (good decision), it was forked [2], maintained and improved for some time, and then withered. I hope someone would take it[3] and write a JavaScript/HTML backend. It has pretty good tooling (IDE support) that could probably be used.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaFX_Script

[2]: http://javafx.steveonjava.com/accouncing-visage/

[3]: https://github.com/visage-lang

Re: JavaFX: Call to ARMs

#6

Post by pjmlp » Fri, May 20, 2016, 3:58 PM UTC

For our customers it is all about WPF, Qt and Xamarin.Forms.

The few customers that still require Java desktop applications have no desire to move away from Swing.

I really don't see a bright future for JavaFX.

Re: JavaFX: Call to ARMs

#7

Post by reitanqild » Fri, May 20, 2016, 4:11 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #5

One irony regarding JavaFX is that the original JavaFX Script language[1] was probably among the best frontend languages ever created (better than TypeScript or Elm in many ways, IMO). It is powerful, typed, and easy for JS developers and designers to learn, plus it's designed for CSS integration. When it was abandoned by Oracle (good decision), it was forked [2], maintained and improved for some time, and then withe…

I also miss JavaFX Script.

In my head it was destroyed by trying to improve it.

IIRC the first versions just worked and was amazing with live scripting etc. I even made an applet that was popular for a while.

Newer versions added more and more complexity before you could get anything done (again IIRC).

Feels a lot like Symfony: started small and focused and ended up as multiple smaller projects including a dependency inversion container but at some point along the road the magic was lost.

Re: JavaFX: Call to ARMs

#8

Post by incepted » Fri, May 20, 2016, 4:21 PM UTC

It's always interesting to see the only people who ever talk about JavaFX are either Oracle employees or people who have a financial interest in JavaFX, such as the author of this piece whose business is based on JavaFX.

Re: JavaFX: Call to ARMs

#9

Post by bitmapbrother » Fri, May 20, 2016, 4:34 PM UTC

>Throw in RoboVM who successfully AOT compiled Java byte codes to native Objective-C to facilitate Java running on iOS and others who contributed to the Android port, and we were now ready to take on the world!

I wonder if he knows the fate of RoboVM.

Re: JavaFX: Call to ARMs

#10

Post by geodel » Fri, May 20, 2016, 4:40 PM UTC

With Oracle increasingly looking to win in Oracle vs Google court case JavaFX might have future after all.