Category Archives: JavaFX

Update to FXRibbon (Ribbon for Java)

I’ve updated the Ribbon control and its documentation.

Here’s some of the relevant code changes (you can check the git log history for more details):

  • Cleaned up API
  • Cleaned up code into standard conventional packages
  • Fixed and cleaned up test apps (that also serve as documentation examples)
  • Added gradle build and configuration
  • Other refactors

Here’s the new page for the FXRibbon documentation: here.

Future developments for this library:

  • Add button controls: current javafx buttons don’t provide the best API for the ribbon use case, there’s also an issue where if you have a button with a multi line label, the label won’t be vertically aligned with the rest of the buttons.
  • Add other specialized controls, e.g. Ribbon gallery
  • Fix other issues in the issue tracker.

Javafx on mobile first impressions

I decided to give it a go at testing javafx in an android device. My android device might be considered a low end device, it’s a nexus 4 from LG. The result can be seen below in a video. The quality of the video isn’t the best, I had to scale down the quality because the video was occupying 2GB.

My conclusion is that java/javafx runs with a very good performance in a low end android device with a pretty decent start up time. There were just 2 problems with this test, the first was with a demo which tested multi touch but didn’t run with top notch responsiveness but that might be the demos fault and not an issue with javafx itself. The second problem were dialogs: they aren’t showing up well.

The demo took about 6 seconds to start which is more than the standard android app but not too much.

ToggleSwitch control revisited

ToggleSwitch - modena theme

ToggleSwitch – modena theme

Going through JMetro I just remembered the Toggle Switch control that I have created. It reminded me that this should be in a control repository next to other controls, publicly available for anyone to grab. I think this is one of those controls that should be part of the java sdk, it’s very popular especially on touch based devices. For more information read my previous blog post on the Toggle Switch control.

I have heard more than once people saying why a new control, why not simply style the Checkbox to appear the same way as a Toggle Switch. I think Toggle Switch merits being its own control the same way the Radio Button and Checkbox aren’t just skins of the Toggle Button, besides being conceptually a different control a Checkbox has the indeterminate state which doesn’t make sense in a Toggle Switch. Toggle Switch are usually also animated which can’t be achieved by skinning. And finally creating a Toggle Switch control makes it easier for others to style the control in different ways via css (styling a Checkbox to look like a Toggle Switch is difficult and hacky) .

So I decided to submit this control to the ControlsFX project.

One of the pertinent feedbacks I’ve received from the project members was that the default skin should be inline with the Modena theme.  And so I created a new css stylesheet that I think is inline with Modena and is the default look of the control (if you don’t override the default stylesheet).

Metro style List Box for java (JMetro)

This time the ListView which is called ListBox in the windows sdk:

ListView - light theme

ListView – light theme

ListView - dark theme

ListView – dark theme

If you are using JMetro please send me pics of your applications.