James Weaver on Quantum Computing and Java

Reserve your Preferred JavaOne 2009 JavaFX Sessions

Just a heads up that you can now reserve the JavaFX (and other) sessions that you want for JavaOne 2009.  As it says on the JavaOne 2009 Sessions web page:

"In order to get into the sessions that matter to you most, you must use Schedule Builder to pre-enroll and ensure you get into your preferred sessions. Sessions fill up fast, so don't delay."

Of course, Stephen Chin and I would like to welcome you to reserve our Pro JavaFX™ Platform: RIA Enterprise Application Development with JavaFX Technology session.  As an extra incentive, all four of the Pro JavaFX book authors plan to be at the session (Stephen and I will be presenting, and we'll call on Weiqi Gao and Dean Iverson to field the tougher questions).

Update May 27, 2009: There are currently only 113 seats left, so please pre-enroll to ensure that you're able to attend this session:

On a related note, I'll be teaching a half-day JavaOne University session on JavaFX entitled:

Developing Secure, Interactive Applications Hosted on a Variety of Clients Using JavaFX Technology

As a special treat, Weiqi Gao, Stephen Chin and Dean Iverson each plan to teach part of the session, focusing on areas that they've written about in our Pro JavaFX book.

For your convenience, here is a list of the JavaFX-related sessions with hyperlinks to their details:

Session ID Session Title Session Type Speakers and Company Date/Time 54 Record(s) Found TS-4381 Deploying Java™ Technology to The Masses: How Sun Deploys The JavaFX™ Runtime Technical Session Thomas Ng, Sun Microsystems Inc Tuesday June 02 10:50 AM - 11:50 AM TS-4420 Testing of JavaFX™ Technology-Based UIs Made Easy with FEST Technical Session Michael Huettermann, Training & Consulting Tuesday June 02 10:50 AM - 11:50 AM TS-7072 Rich User Interfaces for Java™ Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME Platform) Devices Technical Session Enrique Garcia, Sony Ericsson; Alexander Klintström, Sony Ericsson Tuesday June 02 10:50 AM - 11:50 AM TS-5576 Introduction to the JavaFX™ Script Programming Language Technical Session Richard Bair, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Jasper Potts, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Tuesday June 02 12:10 PM - 1:10 PM TS-5577 Introduction to the JavaFX™ Technology-Based API (Graphics and Animation) Technical Session Martin Brehovsky, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Jasper Potts, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Tuesday June 02 3:20 PM - 4:20 PM TS-5494 Getting the Most from the Designers with the JavaFX™ Production Suite Technical Session Martin Brehovsky, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Lukas Waldmann, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Tuesday June 02 4:40 PM - 5:40 PM TS-5587 Ajax Versus JavaFX™ Technology Technical Session Dion Almaer, Ajaxian, Inc.; Ben Galbraith, Mozilla Tuesday June 02 4:40 PM - 5:40 PM TS-5216 Toward a Renaissance VM Technical Session Brian Goetz, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; John Rose, Sun Microsystems Tuesday June 02 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM TS-5488 The Mobile Evolution: From Java™ Platform, Micro Edition to JavaFX™ Mobile Applications Technical Session Adam Sotona, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Petr Suchomel, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Tuesday June 02 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM BOF-4383 Meet the Java™ Deployment Team BOF Gustavo Galimberti, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; William Harnois, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Tuesday June 02 7:30 PM - 8:20 PM BOF-4805 Spice Up Your JavaFX™ Mobile Applications with Rich Multimedia BOF Michael Heinrichs, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Petr Vasenda, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Tuesday June 02 7:30 PM - 8:20 PM BOF-5493 Quo Vadis JavaFX™ Production Suite BOF Pavel Benes, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Martin Brehovsky, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Tuesday June 02 7:30 PM - 8:20 PM BOF-5152 Meet the Java™ and JavaFX™ User Experience Team BOF Jeff Hoffman, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Karen Stanley, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Tuesday June 02 8:30 PM - 9:20 PM BOF-5759 Meet the Java 2D™ API and Java™ Advanced Imaging API Teams BOF Jim Graham, Sun Microsystems; Phil Race, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Tuesday June 02 9:30 PM - 10:20 PM TS-4514 Building Rich Internet Applications with the JavaFX™ Programming Language Technical Session Max Katz, Exadel Wednesday June 03 9:45 AM - 10:45 AM TS-4801 Does Your Mobile Speak JavaFX? Technical Session Jan Sterba, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Juraj Svec, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Wednesday June 03 9:45 AM - 10:45 AM TS-5575 Extreme GUI Makeover (Hybrid Swing and JavaFX™ Technology) Technical Session Amy Fowler, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; David Grieve, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Jasper Potts, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Paru Somashekar, Sun Microsystems Wednesday June 03 9:45 AM - 10:45 AM TS-4069 JavaFX™ Technology in Action: From Design Tool to Desktop, to Mobile Device Technical Session Mike Mannion, Canoo Engineering AG Wednesday June 03 11:05 AM - 12:05 PM TS-4506 Migrating Your Java™ Platform, Micro Edition Midlets to JavaFX™ Mobile Technology Technical Session Hinkmond Wong, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Wednesday June 03 11:05 AM - 12:05 PM TS-6765 MobiTV: Creating Effective Mobile Content Now and in the Future Technical Session Roy Ben Hayun, Sun Microsystems; Do Hyun Chung, MobiTV Wednesday June 03 11:05 AM - 12:05 PM TS-5047 Building Rich Internet Applications Using VJO Blurring the Difference Between Java™ and JavaScript™ Technology Technical Session Justin Early, eBay; Yitao Yao, eBay Wednesday June 03 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM TS-5226 Hardware Accelerated Graphics for High Performance JavaFX™ Mobile Applications Technical Session Pavel Petroshenko, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Jan Valenta, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Wednesday June 03 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM TS-3968 JavaFX™ Programming Language + Groovy = Beauty + Productivity Technical Session Dierk König, Canoo Engineering AG Wednesday June 03 4:10 PM - 5:10 PM TS-4861 Pro JavaFX™ Platform: RIA Enterprise Application Development with JavaFX Technology Technical Session Stephen Chin, Inovis; Jim Weaver, Veriana Wednesday June 03 4:10 PM - 5:10 PM BOF-5150 Make Your Users Happy: Creating JavaFX™ Environment User Experiences That Work BOF Jindrich Dinga, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Jeff Hoffman, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Wednesday June 03 6:45 PM - 7:35 PM BOF-5063 JavaFX™ Platform RIAs Joined to GlassFish™ App Server Java™ Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 Services BOF Ludovic Champenois, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Wednesday June 03 7:45 PM - 8:35 PM BOF-4344 Test Tools BOF BOF Frank Cohen, PushToTest Wednesday June 03 8:45 PM - 9:35 PM BOF-4787 Piccolo2D Open-Source Community Forum: The Future of Zooming User Interfaces BOF Stephen Chin, Inovis Wednesday June 03 8:45 PM - 9:35 PM TS-3890 Energy, CO2 Savings with Java™ Platform, Enterprise Edition and More: Project GreenFire Technical Session Adam Bien, adam-bien.com Thursday June 04 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM TS-4529 A Closer Look at the Java™ Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME Platform) SDK 3.0 Technical Session Tomas Brandalik, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Richard Gregor, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Erik Hellman, Sony Ericsson Thursday June 04 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM TS-4842 A Music Visualizer with the Java™ Media Framework API and JavaFX™ Technology Technical Session Lucas Jordan, EffectiveUI Thursday June 04 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM TS-5578 The New World: JavaFX™ Technology-Based UI Controls Technical Session Amy Fowler, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Stuart Marks, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Jasper Potts, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Thursday June 04 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM TS-4142 JavaFX™ Technology + JSAPI2 = VoiceFX: Add Voice Recognition to Your JavaFX Applications Technical Session Eric Smith, Burning Sun Enterprises Thursday June 04 10:50 AM - 11:50 AM TS-4086 Visual JavaFX™ Technology-Based Design with JFXBuilder Technical Session Josh Doenias, ReportMill Software; Jeff Martin, ReportMill Software, Inc. Thursday June 04 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM TS-5098 RIA Teacher Gradebook Managing Millions of Students with Swing and Web Services: How It Was Done Technical Session Deane Richan, Pearson Thursday June 04 2:50 PM - 3:50 PM TS-5574 JavaFX™ Technology for Swing Developers Technical Session Richard Bair, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Jasper Potts, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Thursday June 04 2:50 PM - 3:50 PM TS-3896 Accessing RESTful Web Services from the JavaFX™ Script Platform Technical Session Akhil Arora, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Kinsley Wong, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Thursday June 04 4:10 PM - 5:10 PM TS-5809 Producing High-Quality Video for JavaFX™ Applications Technical Session Jim Bankoski, On2 Technologies Thursday June 04 4:10 PM - 5:10 PM BOF-4548 JavaFX™ Technology for TV: That Other Screen in Your Life BOF Riaz Aimandi, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Ronan McBrien, Sun Microsystems Thursday June 04 6:30 PM - 7:20 PM BOF-4707 JideFX: Bringing Desktop Richness to the Internet BOF David Qiao, JIDE Software, Inc. Thursday June 04 6:30 PM - 7:20 PM BOF-4595 Insights into Java™ Platform, Standard Edition, and JavaFX™ Platform Performance BOF Aleksey Shipilev, Sun; Robert Strout, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Thursday June 04 7:30 PM - 8:20 PM BOF-6343 Meet the Developers of the JavaFX™ Media API BOF Brian Burkhalter, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Boman Irani, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Tony Wyant, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Thursday June 04 7:30 PM - 8:20 PM BOF-4844 Java™ and JavaFX™ Technology and the Nintendo Wiimote: Just How Much Fun Can You Have? BOF Angela Caicedo, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Simon Ritter, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Thursday June 04 8:30 PM - 9:20 PM TS-3789 Getting Started with WidgetFX: Open-Source Widget Desktop Platform with JavaFX™ Technology Technical Session Stephen Chin, Inovis; Joshua Marinacci, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Friday June 05 10:50 AM - 11:50 AM TS-5587 Ajax Versus JavaFX™ Technology Technical Session Dion Almaer, Ajaxian, Inc.; Ben Galbraith, Mozilla Friday June 05 10:50 AM - 11:50 AM TS-5280 JavaFX™ Platform: Animations, Timelines, and Collision Analysis for Games Technical Session Peter Pilgrim, LLoyds TSB Friday June 05 12:10 PM - 1:10 PM TS-5307 Building Next-Generation Web Applications with the Spring 3.0 Web Stack Technical Session Keith Donald, SpringSource; Jeremy Grelle, SpringSource Friday June 05 12:10 PM - 1:10 PM TS-4388 Distributing JavaFX™ Applications with Java™ Web Start Software/Maven Repository Manager Technical Session Yoav Landman, JFrog Ltd.; Frederic Simon, JFrog Ltd. Friday June 05 4:10 PM - 5:10 PM LAB-5532 Breathe in JavaFX™ Technology Hands On Lab Fabiola Gallegos Rios, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Michal Skvor, Sun Microsystems, Inc. - LAB-5533 Java™ Technology Strikes Back on the Client Side: Easier Development and Deployment Hands On Lab Jason Huang, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Joey Shen, Sun Microsystems, Inc. - LAB-5557 Build a RESTful Client-Server Rich Internet Application with JavaFX™ Technology and Jersey (JSR 310) Hands On Lab David Delabassee, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Sebastien Stormacq, Sun Microsystems, Inc. - LAB-6245 Making a Java™, Swing, JavaServer™ Pages, and JavaFX™ Technology Smoothie Hands On Lab Inyoung Cho, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Cindy Church, Sun Microsystems, Inc. - LAB-6770 JavaFX™ Technology in Your Back Pocket: Developing Content with JavaFX Mobile Technology Hands On Lab Angela Caicedo, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Mauricio Leal, Sun - LAB-6771 Building RIA Dojo and JavaFX™ Pet Catalog Clients for MySQL™ backed RESTful Web Services Hands On Lab Carol McDonald, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Sridhar Reddy, Consultant - 54 Record(s) Found Hope to meet you at JavaOne! Jim Weaver

JavaFX Performance Tips from Michael Heinrichs

There is a scene in Rocky II in which boxing trainer Mickey tells Rocky something to the effect of: We need speed. Speed's what we need. Greasy, fast speed!

Today I'd like to feature some JavaFX performance tips that Michael Heinrichs documented in his article entitled JavaFX Mobile Applications - Best Practices for Improving Performance.  This article points out some performance-related lessons learned while preparing the JavaFX Mobile release:

• Avoid unnecessary bindings
• Keep the scenegraph as small as possible
• Use simple shapes instead of images
• Use the pre-scaling functionality
• Use background loading
• Use Integer instead of Number
• Use functions of class Sequences

The tips in the article are not only valid for JavaFX Mobile, but for JavaFX on other platforms as well.  Michael does a great job in explaining these tips, as well as using short code examples to make them easy to understand and implement.

As a random bit of trivia, did you know that the Mickey character shown above in the Rocky series was played by the same actor as The Penguin in the Batman television series?  Yup, they were both played by the late [Oliver] Burgess Meredith :-)

Regards,
Jim Weaver

Found! The First Ever JavaFX Users Group...In Japan?

I just became aware of a JavaFX Users Group, and unless someone tells me otherwise, I'm going to assume that it's the first one.  It is located in Japan, and I'd like to congratulate and encourage them!

The way that I became aware of this JavaFX Users Group is that hide1080 (a member or perhaps the leader of this group ) joined the JavaFX twibe.  Any tweets (from members of the twibe) that contain the word JavaFX in them appear on the JavaFX twibe page. I just started the JavaFX twibe yesterday, so it will be interesting to see if it is a good medium for quickly exchanging JavaFX-related ideas and answering quick questions.

If anyone is aware of other JavaFX User Groups, please leave a comment!

Regards,

Jim Weaver
JavaFXpert.com

What - Me Worry? (about JavaFX vis-à-vis the Sun acquisition by Oracle)

If you've read this blog for any length of time (or attended any of my presentations/classes) you know that I believe that JavaFX is desperately needed by the software development industry and its users.  You also know that I have spent much time and energy advocating, writing about, and providing feedback to the development of JavaFX.

I've frequently stated that JavaFX is bigger than its founder (Chris Oliver), and bigger than Sun.  JavaFX will become as pervasive as the needs of the industry require it to be, and an event like Oracle purchasing Sun in my opinion is nearly irrelevant to the success of JavaFX.

That being said, here's what fellow Java Champion Harshad Oaks wrote in his IndicThreads article on the subject:

"Oracle doesn’t have a competing GUI & graphics technology, however Oracle also doesn’t seem to be very interested in that space. I would expect Oracle to continue to support JavaFX for the time being but truly process JavaFX maybe a year from now, when it would have come to terms with the Sun acquisition."

I can make the argument that the reason Oracle "doesn't seem to be interested in that space" is because until now the rich-client Java space has been hindered by deployment issues as well as development complexity.  Java 6 update 10 and JavaFX are quickly changing this.  It is my opinion that Oracle will take full advantage of the capability of JavaFX to (for example) create graphically stunning UIs on their database tools and other products.

Regards,

Jim Weaver
JavaFXpert.com

Is August Lammersdorf a Propeller-Head? (JavaFX meets Java 3D animation)

In an earlier post, I featured the "JavaFX meets Java 3D" work that August Lammersdorf of InteractiveMesh.org is doing.  In a nutshell, he is developing infrastructure that connects Java 3D and JavaFX, in which the 3D canvas is rendered in a lightweight component. This infrastructure makes it easy for developers to create JavaFX applications that contain a Java 3D universe.  He has taken this work to a new level, as demonstrated by an animated 3D piston and propeller in a virtual universe being rendered on puzzle pieces in JavaFX.

The controls at the bottom of the UI are JavaFX components that control the Java 3D universe.  For example, the Rotation slider controls the animation of the 3D piston/propeller.  The Shuffle button breaks the propeller (whilst spinning if you please) into puzzle pieces as shown below:

You can then drag the puzzle pieces to their correct locations and solve the puzzle.  Here's an exceprt of this program's description from the InteractiveMesh.org website, where you can play with this puzzle:

"The Java 3D scene of an animated propeller engine is rendered into several puzzle pieces. The puzzle board is resizeable from 2x2 up to 8x8 pieces on a screen of 1200 pixels height. This application is using source code of the JavaFX sample 'PuzzlePieces'.  The engine animation, the viewpoint setting, and the 3D mouse navigation (on the puzzle board) are enabled even if the puzzle pieces are shuffled."

Thanks August, and please know that I'm using "propeller-head" in a most respectful manner :-)

Jim Weaver
JavaFXpert.com (Learn JavaFX blog)

Six Degrees of Bob Seger: A JavaFX Program that We'll Build Together

To acknowledge the Detroit Java Users Group for inviting me to give a JavaFX presentation, I'm starting a project that features Detroit-born musician Bob Seger.  We'll build this project in an iterative manner together, with each post adding new functionality and improving the application's appearance.  Here are a couple of screenshots of this application's humble beginnings:

The idea is that we'll eventually use the Freebase database service so that the application can show the albums on which a given musical artist contributed.  For example, as shown above, Bob Seger contributed on Little Feat's Let It Roll album, and on Aaron Neville's Warm Your Heart album.  When an album is clicked, the artists that contributed on that album are shown.  For example, when the Let It Roll album is clicked a screenshot similar to the one below would be displayed, indicating that Bonnie Raitt, Richie Hayward, Bob Seger and Linda Ronstadt contributed on that album:

In the process of traversing from artist to album to artist, I think that it will be interesting to note which artists have played on albums with other musicians.  It should also be fun to play a game similar to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon in a musical context, rather than the usual movie context.

By the way, we'll be using the JSON parser that is in release 0.4 of the open source JFXtras project.  See Stephen Chin's blog post that announces and describes the features in this release.

In the next post of this Freebase Contributing Artists App series, I'll publish the code in its then current state.

Regards,

Jim Weaver
JavaFXpert.com

JavaFX Tips and Tricks: Invoking JavaFX Functions from Java

Occasionally the requirement arises to call a JavaFX function from within a Java method.  I needed to do this yesterday, so I thought I'd take a moment to explain a way to do this in three simple steps:

1. Create a Java interface
2. Extend the interface with a JavaFX class, implementing any functions defined by the interface
3. Obtain a reference to, and call a function of, the JavaFX class defined by the interface

Here are snippets of the code that I created yesterday in the context of the steps listed above:

Create the Java interface

public interface UniverseHandler {
  public void onSphereClicked(SphereBranch sphereBranch);
}

Extend the interface with a JavaFX class, implementing any functions defined by the interface

public class WindshieldModel extends UniverseHandler {
  ...model code omitted...

  /**
   * This is called when user clicks a sphere on the 3D Canvas
   */
  public override function onSphereClicked(sphereBranch:SphereBranch) {
    curSphereBranch = sphereBranch;
  }
}

Obtain a reference to, and call a function of, the JavaFX class defined by the interface

 universeHandler.onSphereClicked(currentSphereBranch);

The universeHandler was passed into the constructor of the Java class.

Thanks again to InteractiveMesh.org for their lightweight 3D canvas and classes that enable JavaFX/Java 3D integration!

Regards,
Jim Weaver
JavaFXpert.com

JavaFX Tips and Tricks: Using Singleton Pattern to Share a Model

Features of JavaFX such as declarative UI scripting, and binding, make it very natural to use a model-view-controller pattern.  I typically have at least one class that comprises the model, and usually put model classes in a package whose ending node is "model". 

Often it is necessary to share a model instance with more than one view class.  In these cases I leverage the Singleton pattern with a factory function to ensure that there is at most one instance of a model class.  The screenshot below is the UI of a very simple program that I developed to demonstrate this technique.  The screenshot on the right is of the quintessential model Betty Boop :-)

Here's the code behind the example, beginning with the model class:

/*
 * SingletonExampleModel.fx
 *
 * Example of using the Singleton pattern to have share a model class
 * by more than one view class in JavaFX.
 *
 * Developed 2009 by James L. Weaver as a JavaFX example to be freely used
 */

package com.javafxpert.model;

/**
 * Singleton instance of model
 */
var modelInstance:SingletonExampleModel;

/**
 * Get or create the singleton instance of model
 */
public function getInstance():SingletonExampleModel {
  if (modelInstance == null) {
    modelInstance = SingletonExampleModel {};
  }
  return modelInstance;
}

public class SingletonExampleModel {
  /**
   * String that comprises this very simple model
   */
  public var myString:String = "Change me!";
}

The model class above uses a module-level variable to store the singleton instance, and a module-level function that retrieves it (creating one if necessary).  This model instance is accessed by the simple, contrived, view classes (CustomNodeA and CustomNodeB) shown in the listings below:

CustomNodeA.fx:

package com.javafxpert.ui;

import javafx.scene.*;
import javafx.scene.control.TextBox;
import com.javafxpert.model.SingletonExampleModel;

public class CustomNodeA extends CustomNode {
  /**
   * Reference to the model class
   */
  var model:SingletonExampleModel = SingletonExampleModel.getInstance();

  /**
   * Define the scene graph for this custom node
   */
  public override function create() {
    var tbRef:TextBox = TextBox {
      text: "Change me!"
      columns: 15
      action: function():Void {
        model.myString = tbRef.text;
      }
    }
  }
}

CustomNodeB.fx:

package com.javafxpert.ui;

import javafx.scene.*;
import javafx.scene.text.*;
import com.javafxpert.model.SingletonExampleModel;

public class CustomNodeB extends CustomNode {
  /**
   * Reference to the model class
   */
  var model:SingletonExampleModel = SingletonExampleModel.getInstance();

  /**
   * Define the scene graph for this custom node
   */
  public override function create() {
    Text {
      content: bind model.myString
      font: Font.font("default", FontWeight.BOLD, 24)
    }
  }
}

Finally, here is the main script that puts the custom nodes shown above in a scene on the stage:

SingletonExampleMain.fx

package com.javafxpert.ui;

import javafx.stage.Stage;
import javafx.scene.*;
import javafx.scene.layout.VBox;

Stage {
  title: "Singleton Model Example"
  scene: Scene {
    width: 300
    height: 200
    content: VBox {
      translateX: 50
      translateY: 50
      spacing: 30
      content: [
        CustomNodeA {},
        CustomNodeB {}
      ]
    }
  }
}

Using this technique, any number of view classes can access a single, shared, model instance.

Regards, and please leave a comment if you have any questions,

Jim Weaver
JavaFXpert.com

Turn the Page, Revisited: An Updated Book Component for JavaFX

Some of you remember that prototype versions of JavaFX had a custom UI component named BookPanel that had a simple book-like user interface.  I used to use it for presentations, putting each slide on its own page.

Chris Campbell has created a book-like custom node for JavaFX that has a very fluid and graphically pleasing page-turning feature.  You can try it out, as well as download the code, from the JavaFX.com site.

Nice work, Chris, and thanks for this useful UI component!

Regards,
Jim Weaver
JavaFXpert.com

ReportMill Hacks JavaFX Puzzler - Wins Free Pro JavaFX Book Anyway :-)

ReportMill Software has been an active member of the JavaFX community from the beginning.  Their innovative JFXBuilder tool has been featured on this blog, and they have an extremely powerful Java-based reporting tool named ReportMill.  Imagine my surprise when I found out that they drastically bent the rules to solve JavaFX Puzzlers #1 and #2 in order to win a Pro JavaFX early access eBook (of course you know that I'm just joking now).  Here's a screenshot of their solution to JavaFX Puzzler #2, which quite frankly looks very different from the screenshot shown in the puzzle's requirements :-)

All kidding aside, ReportMill has a tool named DataBox that they've dubbed "the Instant Java Rich Application Builder."  They used DataBox to solve the JavaFX puzzlers, and even though the DataBox tool doesn't generate JavaFX (yet?), their puzzler solutions are so cool that I've deemed them an additional winner and have given them an eBook.

Congrats, ReportMill!  Let's see how you do with JavaFX Puzzler #3 :-)

Jim Weaver
JavaFXpert.com