Great news today, the public Beta for JavaFX 2.0 has been released! The beta includes a handful of samples, including Ensemble which is the sampler for JavaFX and will be beefed up over time to include tips and tricks and other such things. There is also javadoc (though, beware, there are still JavaFX Script examples. The docs for new code is better than old code). If you find bugs, submit them to the JavaFX JIRA bug tracker.

There is a lot of great stuff in this release, including binding, observable collections, sortable and filterable observable lists, many more UI controls, enhanced animation support including for game loops (AnimationTimer), properties (observable!), and more. There are a few things we’re still adding (including some important things!), but for the most part, the features are all there and functional, so go try them out! Please do file bugs, write blogs, and let us know what you think of the APIs. Things are definitely more verbose in Java than they were in JavaFX Script, though in large part this will be solved with lambda’s in Java 8.

Especially, if you have use cases that our APIs prohibit (as opposed to API we just need to add) please please please! file these in JIRA! The reason we’ve released the beta is to get exactly this kind of feedback. API is forever, so all the feedback you have on the API please file, and the sooner the better!

Ensemble