JavaFX 2.1 Developer Preview for Linux Release Notes

The JavaFX 2.1 Developer Preview for Linux includes the JavaFX Software Development Kit (SDK), which provides the tools and technologies for developing JavaFX applications.

This release provides Java APIs for JavaFX, which opens the capabilities of JavaFX technology to all Java developers and enables the many existing Java developer tools to be used to create JavaFX applications. In addition, this release provides:

  • A high-performance graphics engine that provides high-level support for making rich graphics simple, smooth, and fast.

  • A media engine that supports playback of web multimedia content.

  • A web component that enables HTML to be embedded in a JavaFX application.

  • An extensive set of UI controls, such as Charts, Tables, Menus, and Panes.

  • An XML-based markup language called FXML for defining user interfaces.

  • Sample applications that showcase the features of the JavaFX 2.1 technology.


Note:

Web Start applications and Web applications (plugin) features are currently not supported on the Linux platform. 3D features are supported for Nvidia cards (proprietary drivers only).

System Requirements

JavaFX 2.1 Developer Preview for Linux requires the following software

  • Ubuntu Linux 10.4 or higher (32 or 64 bit),

  • JDK 6 update 26 or higher

  • gtk2 2.18+

  • For JavaFX Media: libavcodec52 on Ubuntu Linux 10.uv or equivalent, or libavcodec53 on Ubuntu Linux 11.xy or equivalent. (Encoding type: AAC, MP3 audio, and H.264 video.)

Installation

The JavaFX SDK for Linux is available as a zip file.

To install: 

  1. Download the JavaFX SDK zip file from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javafx/downloads/devpreview-1429449.html

  2. Extract the SDK files from the zip file to a directory on your local file system.

Samples

Sample JavaFX applications are available at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javafx/downloads/devpreview-1429449.html

Download the zip file that contains the samples and extract the files to the directory that contains the SDK. After extracting the files, your directory structure should look as follows

javafx-sdk2.1.0-beta/
    bin/
    docs/
    javafx-samples-2.1.0-beta/
    rt/
    .
    ..

To run a sample, use the command java -jar filename.jar

The source code for each sample is in the javafx-samples-2.1.0-beta/src directory. To view the source code, go to the javafx-samples-2.1.0-beta/src/sample directory, where sample is the name of the application in which you are interested. Each of the sample source directories is a NetBeans project. Follow the steps in Setting Up NetBeans IDE with JavaFX to create a JavaFX-enabled platform in NetBeans IDE.

Getting Started

To get started with the JavaFX SDK, review the documentation provided at http://docs.oracle.com/javafx/

Good starting points include:

Known Bugs and Issues

The following issues are known to exist. The numbers following each item refer to reports in the JavaFX issues dashboard.

  • Tooltip windows will not render correctly on systems without the Xcomposite extension. Users without composite window managers will experience this. The only solution is to run a compositing window manager. [RT-18510]

  • Second Stage (or Popup) with Effect (such as Tooltip) corrupts rendering on Linux using the es2 pipe. [RT-19902]

  • LCD text on buttons of a newly created Stage look bad when rendered on the es2 pipe. [RT-19764]

  • A RuntimeException may occur if stage.show() is invoked before assigning a scene to the stage. [RT-18489]

  • Multichannel AAC encodings such as 5.1 are currently not supported on Linux. [RT-18520]

  • On the es2 pipeline, exiting fullscreen mode causes a crash. You must use the j2d pipeline for fullscreen applications. [RT-19975]

  • Scene switching does not work correctly when a scene is not animated or otherwise forced to redraw (for example, by setting a background color). [RT-19973]

  • Swing applications that embed JavaFX will crash on disposal of any swing dialog. The workaround is to hide Swing windows when embedding JavaFX. [RT-20756]

To see a complete list of open issues, log in to the JIRA project for JavaFX at http://javafx-jira.kenai.com/.