JavaFX 1.2 Application Development Cookbook

Over 60 recipes to create rich Internet applications with many exciting features

• Easily develop feature-rich internet applications to interact with the user using various built-in components of JavaFX
• Make your application visually appealing by using various JavaFX classes - ListView, Slider, ProgressBar - to display your content and enhance its look with the help of CSS styling
• Enhance the look and feel of your application by embedding multimedia components such as images, audio, and video
• Part of Packt's Cookbook series: Each recipe is a carefully organized sequence of instructions to complete the task as efficiently as possible

In Detail

JavaFX Script enables you to easily create rich Internet applications by embedding multimedia components. Although you can create stylish Internet applications by modifying these default components, even advanced users find it challenging to create impressive feature-rich Internet applications with JavaFX. Also, there are limited JavaFX components to work with and by default these components don't look visually appealing.

This book explores limitless possibilities to style your application by coding JavaFX components to display your content in a more appealing fashion. The recipes in this book will help you to create customized JavaFX components with which you can make modern, feature-rich applications.

First, you will be introduced to the JavaFX SDK and other development tools available to help you be productive during development. You will create an application in JavaFX by arranging complex graphical components (and non-graphical libraries) with simplified declarative constructs. You will then explore the fun side of JavaFX by using transformation techniques to manipulate the location and dimensions of objects. The next chapter is about the GUI components that are available in the framework, which provide a high level of interactivity. You will learn how to use the media component to play media content. Then we will access data and manipulate data locally or remotely. You will explore many deployment options and integration tips and tricks to take advantage of runtime contexts. Finally, you will interact with pure Java code to read and write files in JavaFX and to establish interactions with computing platforms.

Get quick solutions to create modern rich Internet applications using the various JavaFX features ranging from JavaScript fundamentals to more complicated topics including visual controls, custom components, multimedia, animation, effects, web and data services, deployment practices, and much more

What you will learn from this book

• Dive into the JavaFX scripting language fundamentals by creating and declaring classes, functions, trigger variables, and more
• Create complex graphical components with simplified declarative constructs and arrange these building blocks to create applications in JavaFX
• Effortlessly make your objects visually appealing by applying cool effects
• Quickly build an application that provides a high level of interactivity by using JavaFX GUI controls
• Seamlessly play audio and video in several formats using built-in media components
• Access data and manipulate data locally or remotely using tools that are available in JavaFX
• Achieve data visualization using the newly added feature - JavaFX chart components
• Make your applications available for easy access and use by implementing deployment options such as Java WebStart and applets available in JavaFX
• Take advantage of runtime contexts to interact with the executing environment with integration tips and tricks

Approach

This book is a comprehensive collection of recipes that elaborate on known use cases. You will find an organized step-by-step procedure to accomplish each task followed by detailed explanations to better understand how and why each step was undertaken, and many links to online references and other related sections in the book that supplement the subject in question. The book is written so that you can work through the recipes in order or go straight to the recipes that interest you; where a recipe depends on other recipes they are clearly referenced.

Who this book is written for

If you are a Java developer, Rich Internet Application content developer, or graphic designer who wants to build RIAs featuring animations, videos, and other feature-rich content, this book is for you. Knowledge of Java, JavaScript, and JavaFX components is not essential, but will help you exploit this book to your advantage.