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JavaFX 1.3 Released With Performance And Functional Improvements, TV App Support And UI Composer

by Gilad Manor on May 14, 2010 |

JavaFX is a Java platform designed for the development of rich internet applications that can run across a variety of connected devices. JavaFX has first been announced by Sun Microsystems on May 2007. Last month Sun has announced the release of the JavaFX 1.3 version. The current 1.3 release delivers a range of performance and functional improvements, including:

Support for new UI controls, CSS skinning, and programmatic layout
Run-time Performance improvements
New features and performance enhancements in the production suite
A native JavaFX font family called Amble
TV applications support, including a new TV emulator
Availability of the mobile emulator on the Mac platform

There is also a more detailed top 10 feature list available for this release.

The new release is intended to improve run-time performance in several areas, including:

Data/UI Binding performance
Applet start-up time
Text Rendering
Complex animations

Overall performance of JavaFX UI Controls is estimated to be 50% faster and with a reduction of 33%-50% in memory usage.

The JavaFX SDK 1.3 is accompanied by the NetBeans IDE 6.9 Beta with a JavaFX 1.3 UI composer. A visual editor for form-like user-interfaces. The NetBeans Beta includes a better support for refactoring, and improvements on debugging and profiling.

Changes have been made to the JavaFX Data which is a textual format for storing graphics following JavaFX Script object literal syntax. An FXD schema was created for this release.

An Adobe Photoshop Plugins has been introduced in the 1.3 version attempting to simplify the conversion to JavaFX format and make use of the new libraries, references, and extensions in the FXD descriptions. The Adobe Illustrator plugin has been improved in export of texts and blendings.