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e(fx)clipse 0.0.13 released

Just right before EclipseCon 2012 I've released e(fx)clipse 0.0.13. On the feature side the main focus was on runtime, on the tooling I fixed some bugs which hopefully improves your coding experience (especially with fxml-Files).

All in one downloads

To say the all in one-downloads are well received is an understatement - they are a huge success. The 0.0.12 release has been downloaded 1385 time (windows 1200, linux 110, mac 75) - that linux outperforms OS-X is interesting. This release provides you the following updates:

  • Updated to Eclipse 3.7.2 and 4.2-M6
  • Update to egit 1.3.0
  • Update to Xtext 2.3.0-M6: I thought long about this update but finally decided its worth it because while we are entering the final release phase for Juno and the fxgraph stuff uses experimental xtext features this step had to be made

Runtime

Deployment/Provisioning

I've already teasered this new feature in a blog post. When writing and provisioning equinox based JavaFX applications you can now select a deployment model that suites you best:

  • System installation: This deployment model requires your users to have JavaFX pre-installed on their system
  • Next to your app installation: This deployment model requires you to place javafx next to your RCP/IDEs launcher – similar to how you can deploy a JRE with your Eclipse Application
  • As a bundle installation: Here you place your javafx.jar into an OSGi-Bundle and the e(fx)clipse runtime will take care of extracting and wireing - see the tooling section on how e(fx)clipse helps you create such a bundle

e4 renderers

I've invested a lot of time into so called JavaFX-Renderes for the Eclipse 4 Application Platform. The application in the back is rendered using only JavaFX. The one in the front is using SWT as the rendering technology for the workbench stuff (Tab, Menus, ...) and JavaFX for the parts contents (like the list on the left, ...) - in fact the classes making up the inner parts are 100% the same for the JavaFX and SWT-Version of the application Even the Application.e4xmi is the same the only difference is that once the applications starts with the JavaFX-RenderingEngine and once with the SWT one - cool eh :-)

JavaFX in 3.x Views

For those who simply want to use JavaFX to implement a view for the Eclipse IDE (3.x and 4.x) there's a new feature which provides you an easy integration. The feature only holds one class named "FXViewPart".

Tooling

Exporting

I received some mails from Matthias Pieroth - creator of PFRotator.FX which allowed me to track down problems in this area. The exporting of JavaFX-Projects using the ant-tasks provided by JavaFX has been improved. Siging now works as expected and the Webstart export is now useable

Support for javafx-osgi bundle

e(fx)clipse will not provide you pre-packaged JavaFX-OSGi bundles because of various reasons (the most important one is that while 2.1 builds are published weekly this doesn't make a whole lot of sense) but the tooling provides which allows to assemble such a bundle very easily.

Preview

The preview provides you the possibility to scale the previewed content which comes in handy if your UI is to big to be displayed without scrolling. Like the screenshot depicts it looks like the latest Preview builds for JavaFX have fixed SWT/JavaFX-Embeding problems and so I've removed the alpha label from the linux builds.

Bugfixes

A list of bug fixes can be retrieved from our ticket system. I hope they help you get a better developer experience.

EclipseCon

I'm heading to EclipseCon 2012 tomorrow where I'll take part in various sessions and in all of them e(fx)clipse will play a role:

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