JavaFx the way forward?

Hello Hendrik,
I congratulate you for your book "Mastering JavaFX 8 Controls".
But i am just wondering, is JavaFX the right thing to learn for a near future? I guess many devices are yet to use the technology and i do not not know of many websites that run with JavaFX.
I wish you great success.

Hi,
Thanks
JavaFX isn't a web technology. Therefore you won't find websites that are running with JavaFX. Like Swing JavaFX is a UI Toolkit for desktop applications. But next to desktop applications you can use JavaFX to create UIs for embedded devices (Raspberry Pi, etc.) and mobile devices (Android, iOS). So if you plan to only create web applications JavaFX isn't right for you. But if you want native clients or roll out your application on a lot of different platforms you should have a look at it.

Hendrik Ebbers wrote:you can use JavaFX to create UIs for ... mobile devices (Android, iOS).

I have been curious about this. Is this what one needs to do: https://bitbucket.org/javafxports/android/wiki/Building%20and%20deploying%20JavaFX%20Applications, and the recommended approach? Or are there other projects/approaches one should rather use instead?

You will find all informations here: http://javafxports.org/page/home

Thank you, that is precisely what I had been looking for.

Are there devices in the market that use
JavaFX technology? If no, how long will man.
have to wait for manufacturers to adopt it?
Kind regards.

Manufacturers? Never, IMO. What would it even mean to "adopt JavaFX"? Oracle gave up on mobile when they geared JME 8 towards embedded. And if what Hendrik posted about JavaFX on Android and iOS works, there isn't even a point in manufacturers supporting it.

Manufacturers? Never, IMO. What would it even mean to "adopt JavaFX"?

By "adopt JavaFX" i meant them building consumer devices which can support JavaFX applications. There is a lot that is being said about JavaFX but i wonder if programmers have a high interest on it. Some years back just by curiosity, i developed a small JavaFX application that i could run in a browser or in the device emulators provided by the SDK. It was in a desktop(windows) environment. I spent sleepless nights trying to get it to work which i succeed in but i got discouraged learning it when i was told that there are very few if not no JavaFX compatible devices in the market. The situation might have evolved but still, i am yet to find success stories.

JavaFX requires Java SE as its foundation, which is nowhere to be found on mobile devices. So I think efforts such as the one Hendrik mentioned -basically recompilation, if my understanding is correct- will be the only possibility. Which raises the question how the look and feel of such apps will compare to apps that are native to the platform in question.

Ulf is right. When having a look at roboVM you will see that the Java app will be recopiled to an Objective-C app. I don't now many interna here, sorry. On Android there is is a port of JavaFX that runs on the Dalvik VM. Android use Java and therefore a JavaFX application could run on Android. To do so you only need to negate the difference between the JavaSe VM / JDK and Dalvik. That is currently done by JavaFXPorts and Johan Voss.
But next to the mobile devices you can run JavaFX on embedded devices. here you don't need a port or cross compilation because JDK 8 canb run on embedded devices / ARM chips. The Raspberry Pi has Java preinstalled, for example. Here you can start any JFX application like you would do on a desktop PC. Next to this JavaFX supports a lot of embedded specific features like touch events (all the stuff you might now from iOS, etc.) or a on screen Keyboard. Next to the Raspberry Pi there are other devices like the Beagle Board that can run JavaFX.

Because of this I hope / think that JavaFX will have a really bright future on embedded devices.
Another topic is the installation on deskop PCs. Soimeone mentioned that JavaFX depends on JavaSe and therefore you need a preinstalled JRE on the computer. This isn't right. Java 8 has a new tool called javafxpacker. With this tool you can create a native (*.exe, *.dmg) application of your JavaFX programm. This application contains everything you need to run the app: your compiled app and all needed parts of the JRE. Therefore you can run the app on any device that doesn't have a JRE preinstalled. The application will use it's own JRE to run the app. Even if there is a JRE installed on the PC the pp will use it's own. By doing so you won't have any bugs or starnge effects if another Java version ist installed on the OS. you can find a tutorial here: http://docs.oracle.com/javafx/2/deployment/self-contained-packaging.htm