Pro JavaFX Released in Apress Alpha (Early Access) Program

As many of you know, Weiqi Gao, Stephen Chin, Dean Iverson and I have been writing a book entitled  Pro JavaFX that is targeted at serious developers who want to use JavaFX.  In addition to the book being available in printed form by JavaOne 2009, we made the decision last week to allow the book to be offered as an Apress Alpha (early access) eBook.  This enables you to see the chapters of the book as drafts are submitted and revised, which gives you access to the content as soon as it is created (typos and all).  This also enables us to fine-tune the material based upon your feedback.

Here's the list of the chapters for the book:

1. Getting a Jump Start in JavaFX
2. Taking a Closer look at the JavaFX Language
3. Creating a User Interface in JavaFX
4. Using Functions, Classes and Other Advanced Features
5. Creating Custom UI Components in JavaFX
6. Using the Media Classes
7. Dynamically Laying out Nodes in the User Interface
8. Extending JavaFX with Third-Party Libraries
9. Building a Professional JavaFX Application
10. Developing JavaFX Mobile Applications

Currently, seven chapters (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8) are available for download, and each of these is in first or second draft.  Chapters 5, 9 and 10 will be available soon as first drafts.  Here is a screenshot from Chapter 8 in which a drawing program built in JavaFX (in Chapter 5) is used to draw the shapes available in the JFXtras project:

Weiqi, Stephen, Dean and I welcome you to join us in this journey as we complete the development of what is becoming a definitive treatment of JavaFX for professional developers.

For therapeutic purposes I'm sure, Stephen Chin wrote a quick blog post that gives an "exclusive, behind-the-scenes look into the making of the Pro JavaFX™ Platform book" :-)

Regards,
Jim Weaver
JavaFXpert.com