Denver Java Users Group

 

agenda

5:30 p.m. Food and Networking
6-7 p.m. Basic Concepts
7-7:15 p.m. Break and Announcements
7:15-8:15 p.m. Main Meeting
8:15-8:30 p.m. Questions and Answers
8:30 p.m. Door Prizes

location

We will be meeting at the Tivoli Building which is closest to the Pepsi Center side of the campus. We are in room 320 AB.

For directions to the Auraria Campus, click here.

sponsors

 

Description

JavaFX Script is the new language from Sun focused on assisting developers in building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). In this "basic concepts" session we'll look at the IDE support for JavaFX Script in NetBeans and Eclipse, sample some of the language constructs, then build a basic application that showcases some of the unique timer-based animations that are so easily accomplished using this new language. This demo application will then be extended to demonstrate JavaFX's ability to talk to existing Java and Groovy code libraries. We'll wrap up with a comparison of JavaFX to Adobe FLEX, Adobe AIR, Ajax, and Microsoft Silverlight and review each of these platforms' features in comparison to JavaFX.

Speaker

Matthew McCullough is a Java application architect and co-founder of Ambient Ideas. He is a outspoken advocate for the use of Agile Methodologies and Open Source libraries in Enterprise Applications. Matthew serves as a member of the JCP, member of the CSIA Planning Committee, member of CodeReviewers.com, member of the board of directors for the Denver Open Source Users Group, and frequently speaks at this and other training sessions. Matthew contributed to the Sun Java 5 SCJP Certification Exam, and makes appearances in coding on several open source projects. Matthew's experience includes successful J2EE, SOA, and Web Services systems, including a J2EE Resort Management application supporting destinations across Canada, the USA, Belize, Panama, and Mexico.

Description

JavaFX Script is a statically typed language that allows good IDE support and compile-time error reporting and has type inference, declarative syntax, and automatic data binding with full support for 2-D graphics and standard Swing components as well as declarative animation. You can also import Java class files, create new objects for the Java platform, call their methods, and implement interfaces for the Java platform. IDE plug-ins are available for both the NetBeans IDE and Eclipse. Both plug-ins support as-you-type validation, code completion, syntax highlighting, and hyper link navigation.

An excerpt from the speaker's blog lists some of the strengths of JavaFX Script:

• Its simple, declarative syntax used to express user interfaces, including a very rich set of layout widgets that make easy work of laying out a user interface in a platform-independent way.
• Its innate ability to support the model-view-controller pattern because of its very powerful bind capability.
• The concept of triggers (functionality that is automatically invoked when certain conditions take place, such as when the value of an attribute changes). This enables the declarative syntax as well.
• JavaFX programs will run anywhere Java programs will run, because they run within the context of a Java Virtual Machine (JVM).
• Its very powerful syntax for defining, modifying, and querying sequences (think arrays).

Some of the content of this presentation will be based upon the book written by the speaker entitled "JavaFX Script: Dynamic Java Scripting for Rich Internet/Client-Side Applications"

Speaker

James L. (Jim) Weaver is the Chief Technical Officer at LAT, Inc. (lat-inc.com); a technology consulting and software development company. He is also the President of JMentor(r) (jmentor.com), in which he writes books, speaks for groups and conferences, and provides training and consulting services on the subjects of Java and JavaFX. His latest book is entitled "JavaFX Script: Dynamic Java Scripting for Rich Internet/Client-Side Applications". He also posts daily to a blog (http://learnjavafx.typepad.com) whose stated purpose is to help the reader learn JavaFX Script and other JavaFX technologies.