Yep, it’s another scripting language for Rich Interface Application development. The first releases of JavaFX  aroused mixed feelings, in fact, these were just enhanced Swing components. But latest 1.2 release is showing some fine effects and possibilities. And as soon as I watched some presentations and examples of applications, I thought: “let’s give it a try”.

In the case of choosing anything better than a notepad, we have two options: NetBeans and Eclipse. The latest release of the first one comes with inbuilt JavaFX support and that’s fine. If we choose Eclipse – we have to install plugin first. And here we have two choices: first plugin available on http://javafx.com, the second one is still hot – and it comes from Exadel site.

NetBeans

This IDE can be downloaded with just JavaFX support so its size is considerably low. Creating New Project running on JavaFX is very simple and intuitive. Few clicks literally. And here we are – simple ‘Hello World’ application is provided. Code highlight and nice snippets collection are handy for beginners – adding any snippet results in adequate library importing. I  started from NetBeans and really enjoyed it. Then I switched to…

…Eclipse…

…and decided to try out Exadel plugin. It requires at least 3.4 version of IDE. After downloading and installing plugin, I’ve created New JavaFX Project (appears in ‘New Project’ menu only when JavaFX perspective is active, otherwise we need to choose ‘Other’ and there it is). It’s a little bit harder than in NetBeans, we have to assure appropriate file naming (NetBeans creates ‘Main.fx’ automaticly). Bad thing – no ready-for-use snippets. Bad for beginners of course.
The second plugin gives NetBeans-like possibilities – snippets palette is also available. Additionally sometimes it brings a sort of context menu, where we can set a lot of given component parameters.
Both plugins for Eclipse offer code highlighting and compiler error highlighting (NetBeans as well).

What gave me a headache was the conflict between Eclipse plugins. I was forced to reinstall my IDE because of that thing.

A few words of summary

For all Eclipse-oriented  people I recommend JavaFX plugin. Exadels is a nice one, but for beginners the lack of ready snippets may be a problem. All in all, my choice is NetBeans. Definitely. Until, of course, JavaFX Authoring Tool is released.