posts/2018/one-guys-perspective-on-javafx/index

[JonathanGiles]

One guys perspective on JavaFX

https://jonathangiles.net/posts/2018/one-guys-perspective-on-javafx/

[JonathanGiles]

Auto-imported comment, original author: Werner Van Belle Comment posted on: March 28, 2018

Hello, interesting that you were part of the team that wrote it. I bumped into a lot of nasty corners of Javafx. Most of them I could fix or work around but I could not reach any of the developers, nor actually find the relevant bugtracker. Is there actually one ?

[JonathanGiles]

Auto-imported comment, original author: Jonathan Comment posted on: March 28, 2018

Yes, of course! :-) The best place to discuss issues you might be encountering is the openjfx-dev mailing list at http://mail.openjdk.java.net/mailman/listinfo/openjfx-dev. If you are looking for a bug tracker, it is just the standard Java Bug System bug tracker at https://bugs.openjdk.java.net

[JonathanGiles]

Auto-imported comment, original author: Werner Van Belle Comment posted on: March 28, 2018

Yes but but.... the https://bugs.openjdk.java.net bugracker requires me to have have 'author' status. FRom that page: 'Everyone with OpenJDK Author status or above has a JBS account which may be used to create and edit bugs. Those without accounts can view bugs anonymously.' I tried to obtain author status but couldn't get one.

[JonathanGiles]

Auto-imported comment, original author: Jonathan Comment posted on: March 28, 2018

As requested I pointed you to the official bug system for JavaFX :-) . If you want to file bugs and are not author status, you use the https://bugreport.java.com/ tool instead.

[JonathanGiles]

Auto-imported comment, original author: Andrea Liana Comment posted on: March 29, 2018

Hello, I am a freelance developer and my applications are desktop based ones. Most of them are still awt/swing based, and a couple of new ones are in early stages with JavaFX. At the moment, to me and my background, Java is still the best way to supported mixed OS environments I usually work with (Mac + Linux + Window 10). But after reading your last post I am a bit concerned about GUI support for Java. If I am not wrong, JavaFX was born as a modern replacement for older AWT/Swing apps. So the current landscape looks like: AWT/Swing is an old technology and is not clear for how long it will be supported; JavaFX after some troubles (1.x -> 2.2 -> 8.0) seems quite stable but its future as part of official Java distribution is quite foggy because Oracle doesnt find it much profitable. Should I be worried and start looking for other language/alternatives or keep investing on JavaFX to progressively replace my older AWT/Swing installations?

[JonathanGiles]

Auto-imported comment, original author: Paliy Comment posted on: April 1, 2018

I have started to write my first project on javafx. It is really nice, fast and easy way to develop desktop apps, even for beginners. It would be very sad if we will never see a new javafx version....

[JonathanGiles]

Auto-imported comment, original author: Ben Comment posted on: April 5, 2018

I am also wondering if it's time to abandon ship for another GUI toolkit. I have been with Java and Swing for a long time now and then I switched to JavaFX. I am wondering what other people think. Myu sense of it is that the skills needed to sustain and develop these libraries, as opposed ot use them to write apps, are relatively rare and the time commitment needed for ti means that it's someone's definite paid job, not an after hours effort. Without the ability to monetize it, what is the motivation for any company to pay these hypothetical developers?

When Sun went down, I thought that they should charge for Java. With millions of developers there was hundreds of millions of potential dollars. I dont' know why this couldn't be done with JavaFX and Swing.

Just as with any other library, to develop is free, to ship your app requires a subscription, say 100 bucks a year. People pay that for tooling, e.g. IntelliJ, why not pay it for a GUI library? Why not let IntelliJ bundle it with their paid IDE?

We devs can't live of goodwill fumes. At least, I can't and I think you can't and I don't expect anyone else to either. At the end of the day, an economy of people getting paid and paying has to materialize from somewhere. In this scheme. sure if you're just trying to start a business or running a very small one, you can't cought up six grand a year just for the privilege of attempting to make a living or using a programing langauge or library. That kind of pricing is for mega-corps. But a 100 bucks a year? Any company can afford that and with so many Java devs, it has to be profitable.

Using Jetbrains as an exaaple, most of their downloads are probably from people using the free community edition. Then most of the others are people paying a50 a year for their "all tools" package. Then some Big Customers who pay for a lot of devs. All this is a competitive landscape that is filled with free-as-in-beer alternatives. But still they make a success of it. Why can't this model work for JavaFX and Swing?

Regarding the alleged decline of desktop applications generally, please note that the web browser you're reading this on is itself just a desktop app. Yes it's a domiant one at the moment, but that will pass as the deep untapped utility of peer to peer decouples "being online" from merely "visiting sites" and people start to sharing data between their own private clients.

Someone is going to write desktop applications using some library, either in C++ or Java. As much as the people who hate privacy and want all our thoughts, business strategies and personal documents to live in the cloud don't like it, the personal privacy of a desktop computer will always be worth paying for.

Yes, there are also people who would love to meter our every keystroke and make us pay for access to things we ourselves created, but the human animal is not going to accomdate their ambitions, although that's where all the investment money is at the moment.

We're living in a very temporary era of cloud-based phone apps but the inevitable soon to be fully comprehended downside of this is virtually unlimted and anyway intolerable. Computers are where our private thoughts and plans and feelings go; putting them into stranger's hands to be sniffed and read and shared by 3rd parties is something people will have grave second thoughts about presently.

Desktops and the apps that run on them are here to stay, so let's pay the devs and companies who write the libraries we depend on good money and be glad of being able to secure our futures by doing so.

[JonathanGiles]

Auto-imported comment, original author: Murray Neish Comment posted on: May 19, 2018

I think the freemium model ala intellij has a lot of merit. As other commenters have noted, just open sourcing something and hoping for the best is wishful thinking if there is no revenue stream behind it to allow people to make it their day job. By the same token it is very difficult to make something free suddenly a paid product and not expect backlash.

MS can continue to make .NET free because they have an ecosystem behind it (OS, cloud, enterprise apps). Java has no such luxury. But I can understand the dilemma that Oracle faces now. There is definitely a market for free and open source, why does php persist and thrive even though it gets hated on by so many? Too bad Oracle could not come to some arrangement with Google instead of the legal route. Here's hoping that JavaFX survives.

[JonathanGiles]

Auto-imported comment, original author: Paul Comment posted on: November 1, 2018

I started using JavaFX only this January 2018, and have used it to develop desktop applications since. Due to it's beautiful model, development is fast, clean, and makes sense. I hope JavaFX is picked up/developed by the community. It saves developers huge amounts of time over Swing/AWT and it looks great.

[JonathanGiles]

Auto-imported comment, original author: TGM Comment posted on: December 11, 2018

As a client-side GUI guy from way back, I have to wonder if the ultimate destination would be basically what the entirety of the HTML5 umbrella-term has to offer. HTML5 is a fragmented mess of technologies, but I have noticed a UI here and there that seems to run in what amounts to a headless browser-like setting. I suppose this also allows for a semi-seamless transition to a cloud based front down the road. Odd really; I'm personally hoping client-side UI's take that [ugly] turn, but it seems like a possibility.

[JonathanGiles]

Auto-imported comment, original author: TGM Comment posted on: December 11, 2018

*Personally hoping they DON'T take that ugly turn. Typo.

[JonathanGiles]

Auto-imported comment, original author: steven hepple Comment posted on: December 17, 2018

Have you seen what must be done(in this case intellij ide) to set up for javafx 11....it is terribly convoluted, and a proper mess. Other ide`s are just as problematic to set up...

[JonathanGiles]

Auto-imported comment, original author: Klaus Musterberger Comment posted on: March 6, 2019

You are totally right. Compared to desktop frameworks, web frameworks feel like a big hack.