Maxa Blog

With the launch of exadel.org, we also made a new version of JavaFX plug-in available, version 1.2.2. Download the new version here.

In addition to bug fixing, it has the following new features:

• New JavaFX Script Wizard
• Outline View with navigation

As we have been promising, the plug-in is now open source (under GPL). You can download the sources, access project Jira and post questions and comments to new forum all from www.exadel.org.

New version of Exadel JavaFX plug-in for Eclipse is now available. There are a number of small features and bug fixes. We’re still working on a new in­ternal plat­form with full easy-to-use ser­vices for open source man­age­ment to host our open source projects. The JavaFX plug-in will be the first to go up on the new open source site, but in the mean­time we are still de­vel­oping it internally.

• More info on Exadel blog
• Download JavaFX plug-in for Eclipse
• Release notes

Great blog post by Tom Eugelink from JFXtras project on how to use Exadel’s JavaFX plug-in for Eclipse to develop JFXtras.

We kept kind of quite but Exadel has released JavaFX plug-in for Eclipse version 1.2. This version is now open source under GPL v2.0. Registration is no longer required to download. We are in the process of launching new site where this plug-in and other open source projects will be hosted.

Download the plug-in (registration is no longer required). The plug-in works with JavaFX 1.2 and 1.2.1.

Version 1.2

New features:

1. Open source release under GPL v2.0

Bug fixes:

1. Issue with multi-project support
2. Issue with JavaFX compiler. Some required libraries were missing in the
   classpath
3. Issue with setup of default JavaFX run-time for workspace

2009 was a good year. RichFaces is more popular than ever today. Exadel has participated in hundreds of RichFaces engagements this year. I don’t remember how many trainings I’ve done this year but just since September I had a RichFaces training every other week. The forum is very active. RichFaces now has two books, one is mine, Practical RichFaces (Apress). The other books is called JBoss RichFaces 3.3 (Packt). There is also RichFaces DZone RefCard available.

My blog traffic has been steadily growing this year. To make it easier for readers, I have tagged all my RichFaces howto’s, tips and tricks with richfaces-howto tag. Now you can find all the posts quickly. And of course I also started using Twitter (http://twitter.com/maxkatz) this year. My first tweet and my first follower @kito99 via http://firstfollower.com/

If you tried JSF 2 (and you should, it’s much better than JSF 1.2. Here is a great post by Andy Schwartz and here is my JSF 2 series), you will notice that core Ajax features in JSF 2 are very similar to what has been available in RichFaces for a very long time now. You will see that f:ajax tag in JSF 2 works very similar to the popular a4j:support tag (see this blog post and this for more info). The RichFaces team is already working on RichFaces 4 which will be based on JSF 2.

This year I attended and spoke at a number of conferences. I started with JSFdays in Vienna, Austria in early April. End of April I attended JAX in Maintz, Germany. In June, I spoke at JavaOne 2009 and beginning of September presented at JBoss World in Chicago. My final conference was JSFSummit in Orlando in December.

With trainings and conferences (and some personal travel), I flew over 150,000 on United this year which makes me 1K again. I’m looking forward to system wide upgrades (for international travel) and new unlimited upgrades United announced earlier this year. If you travel frequently, I definitely recommend trying to stick with one airline. Even if you just get entry level status, travel usually becomes more pleasant.

Next year already looks very interesting. I already have three trainings booked and two conferences. I will be presenting and teaching RichFaces workshop JSFdays 2010 in Vienna in February and presenting for the first time at TheServerSide Symposium in Las Vegas in March.

If you have been reading my blog, you will know that we have been doing some interesting stuff with JavaFX. Exadel has been working on JavaFX plug-in for Eclipse and Flamingo framework. We have also worked on JavaFX and JSF integration. Although we could wished for a stronger “acceptance” of JavaFX this year especially in the enterprise, nevertheless, the community has been growing very strong. I have approached Sun on two different occasions with an offer to work together on some of the enterprise features for JavaFX but never got a reply back. Now that Oracle-Sun deal is close to being final and once Oracle takes ownership of JavaFX, we hope it [Oracle] will start using more JavaFX in the enterprise.

2010 (how are you going to say 2010?) is looking to be very interesting year. We have RichFaces 4.0, our JavaFX plug-in for Eclipse is going to be open source and have been adding very interesting mobile feature to Flamingo such as connector for Android. JavaFX and JSF integration also sounds very interesting. Stay tuned.

Happy New Year!

First screen shot of JavaFX visual designer in JavaFX plug-in for Eclipse. It’s too early to say when it’s going to be released, but as you can see we are working on it. You will soon be able to try nightly builds as we are making the plug-in open source.

When you download JavaFX SDK, it comes with a number of ready to run examples. They are located in ’samples’ directory. You can build them from the command line but a much easier way to run is from Exadel JavaFX plug-in for Eclipse. The plug-in has a special wizard that will create a new project based on any of the samples.

1. Download and install Exadel JavaFX plug-in for Eclipse
2. After setting up JavaFX SDK in Eclipse, select File/New/Example…/JavaFX Examples
3. Click Next
4. Enter project name and select from available examples list (screen shot below)
5. Click Finish

That’s it. Once the project is created find Main.fx file, right-click it and select Run As/JavaFX Application.

My interview on JavaLobby.com on JavaFX: Is There a Lack of Advertising for JavaFX Capabilities?

We have released new Exadel JavaFX plug-in for Eclipse version 1.1.1. Official announcement here.

New fea­tures:

• Project wizard for JavaFX SDK examples
• Dis­plays javadoc viewer for JavaFX classes, methods and attributes
• Snip­pets pallet
• Multiple project support

Try the plug-in today.

What’s coming up?
We will continue adding small features. But biggest upcoming feature is that we have started working visual editor for JavaFX script. Lastly, we are planning to make the plug-in open source. This will make it much simpler for the community to participate, provide feedback, and try nightly builds and of course enter bugs.

I posted Upcoming features in Exadel JavaFX plug-in for Eclipse version 1.1.1 and forgot one very important new feature. You can now create projects based on the examples that ship with JavaFX SDK. For JavaFX to continue growing, there are must be tools to help you learn the technology and we we think that’s a great way to learn JavaFX. Here is a screen shot of how it’s going to look: