Linux - will it work?

Question

Hi,
I am member of a university team working on our diplomma now. Our subject is a desktop app that would help writers in writing books - novels mostly. One of our major goals is to make it work both on Windows and Linux. We are writing it in Java and we want something else for UI than ugly and unfriendly Swing. JavaFX 2 looks very promising (and would be great thing to learn and put in our resumes). But the question is - will it work? Is it reliable enough? Can it work on Linux despite no official release yet? End of 2012 is way too late for us, we need something working within a month. But what we need are just some UI controls - to make main interface, that is all menus, navigation, etc [similar to what Word has]. Is it possible with current OpenJFX release? If yes, is there any maven archetype to start working on the project? Or some sample app (just showing "it works!" when opened) to expand? With 2.0.2 you can distribute JavaFX with your app, so does it change anything?

Answer 1

902516 wrote:
Hi,
But the question is - will it work? Is it reliable enough? Yes, although "reliable enough" is quite a personal thing. There are still plenty of issues in the bugtracker that need fixing, but that doesn't mean they are issues that will affect you. But...
Can it work on Linux despite no official release yet?On Linux probably not yet, since it is not finished yet and won't be for another year. Note that I wouldn't neglect the Mac. Linux, as Oracle indirectly proves through JavaFX by neglecting it, has a far smaller user base for Java desktop applications. Windows and MacOS should be your priority in my humble opinion.
End of 2012 is way too late for us, we need something working within a month. Eh, and you think you can do that even when you have to learn JavaFX from scratch? This fact alone would make me choose Swing, even if you hate it. Stick with what you know if time is short. If the look of it is really a problem, take some time to check out available third party cross platform look & feels like Synthetica.
http://www.jyloo.com/synthetica/screenshots/
There are plenty more, Swing apps really do not have to be ugly.
Or some sample app (just showing "it works!" when opened) to expand?Check out the official website I'd say.
http://javafx.com/
Given that the technology is quite new, there aren't any good books yet that I know of, I've been eying for one myself. The only ones I see are the early adopter books with "beginning" in the title, which are usually rushed with broken example programs and only contain information directly available on the net. Perhaps "Javafx 2.0: introduction by example" will turn out to be something, but I'll wait for user reviews.
With 2.0.2 you can distribute JavaFX with your app, so does it change anything?Not really IMO, if I read the download page correctly:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javafx/downloads/index.html
Quote:
"Starting with Java SE 7 Update 2 and JavaFX 2.0.2, the JavaFX Runtime is co-installed every time the JRE is installed". It seems users already get JavaFX for free when they install the latest Java 7. No need to distribute anything.