Posted by: Josh Marinacci on: November 10, 2009
Posted by: Josh Marinacci on: November 2, 2009
JFXStudio Challenge: Five is now completely over. We got several entries that I’m excited for you to see. Unfortunately I won’t be able to get them judged this week as I am in Sweden for the OreDev conference, but rest assured you’ll find out the winner, and next month’s theme, very soon.
In the mean time, here’s a great article on doing bitmapped graphics in JavaFX. Keep in mind that everything in this article uses non-public APIs that may change in the future, but it’s fun to play with. Fortunately some of the ideas in this article are influencing API design for future versions of JavaFX, so you may be able to do these sorts of tricks in a supported way one day. (and of course with blinding speed.
Posted by: Muhammad Hakim on: October 31, 2009
Finally, today i decide to enter this month jfxstudio challenge, here is my submission:

Muslims are supposed to perform five prayers every day. Each prayer is given a certain prescribed time in which it must be performed. this application show current time & five prayer time for muslim specific for my current city (Bandung, latitude:6.54 & longitude: 107.36), with polar clock as visualization.
to compute prayer time, i use formula that described in this site http://tanzil.info/praytime/doc/calculation/.
source code:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by: Josh Marinacci on: October 27, 2009
The deadline for this month’s challenge is almost here: Saturday, spooky October 31st. However, if you are still coding until the last minute you’ll get a few extra hours.
This Saturday I’m flying to Sweden for the OreDev conference. It’s quite a fun event that I greatly enjoyed last year. I get a chance to interact with lots of people and learn about technologies outside my usual sphere (things like Silverlight and Ruby). If you live in Europe I highly recommend attending.
Since I’ll be somewhere over Greenland at midnight I’m going to give everyone until I reach my hotel room in Malmo, which is roughly Sunday evening.
Have fun coding. I can’t wait to see what you cook up this month.
Oh, one more thing. Here’s an interview with Mark Nankman, last month’s winner.
Posted by: Mark Nankman on: October 22, 2009

Mayan Calculator screenshot
Yesterday, I submitted my entry (just 29 lines of code) for this month’s JFXStudio coding challenge to Joshua. It is a simple Mayan Calculator (see screenshot above). The Maya’s used to count in a base-5 numeral system. See, you learn new things everyday! You can read more about my application here.
Posted by: ubivent on: October 14, 2009
Accessibility is a prime concern for software nowadays. Various countries and organizations have passed accessibility laws (section 508) or guidelines that regulate how accessibility for computer software should be achieved. However, there is no native accessibility support in JavaFX. We have developed a package to achieve at least basic accessibility – mainly for assisting visually impaired people with using our virtual event platform through a Screen Reader.
As Swing directly supports accessibility via javax.accessibility, we have added a Swing component to the enclosing JFrame via the non-public API of Scene. This Swing component then accesses the nodes in the JavaFX scenegraph which implement the Accessible interface in order to determine the position of the nodes and their content. The Screen Reader then queries the graph to gather information for output (e.g. text-to-speech, sound icons, or a Braille output). The source code of the solution can be found at:
http://code.google.com/p/fxaccessible/
To use the accessibility support, you just have to use the fxaccessible subclass instead of the JavaFX nodes. Also add some descriptionText for the non-text elements. Everything else should be automatically be done by Swings accessibility support. We have currently only tested the solution on with Apple VoiceOver. It would be great to get feedback for some other Screen Reader systems.
Posted by: Josh Marinacci on: October 8, 2009
This month’s coding challenge has the same rules as last month. 30 lines or 3000 characters to do something cool. The winner receives a 20$ gift certificate to Amazon and a webbadge.
This month’s theme is Five and the deadline is October 31st.
To inspire you I created my own entry entitled Five Eyes.

The Five Eyes will follow your mouse.
As before, please email your entry to joshua.marinacci@sun.com with the subject: JFXStudio Challenge: Five
Posted by: Josh Marinacci on: October 7, 2009
I’ve had an idea for a scenegraph debugging tool for years. Over the weekend I finally built one for JavaFX called SideHatch. Here’s what it looks like:
The basic concept is a single jar which you can put into your app and invoke with a single line at the end of your run method:
sidehatch.SideHatch.activate();
Once activated SideHatch will show you the view you can see above. If you click on Info it will list all set system properties. If you click on graph it will give you a list of all public nodes in all of your app’s stages (windows).
The really fun part is the Overlay button. It will put a translucent overlay on your windows that draws the visual bounds of your nodes. When you mouse over them you’ll see information about the node under the mouse cursor. If you click on the node SideHatch will take a core sample of your app. This core samples visually shows what’s under the cursor, digging down through each node and group and control. It represents it as the vertical diagram you see on the right side of the SideHatch window, with each area colored the same as the node.
SideHatch is now part of JFXtras.org and you can find the latest app and jars on my Hudson server here.
The tool has a lot of potential and would go far if we get some more interested developers.
Posted by: Josh Marinacci on: October 4, 2009
The challenge this month, Time, was competitive. We received some really great entries. I’m happy to say the winner was Pacman Clock, by Mark Nankman. He’ll be receiving his Amazon gift certificate and webbadge.

This month we are having the same challenge, 30 lines or 3000 chars, with a new theme: Five. The challenge ends October 31st at midnight. I can’t wait to see what you create.
You can try out all of the entries from Challenge:Time by clicking on the images below.
Reaction Time by Matthew Hegarty

Purple Spinner by Muhammad Hakim

Posted by: carldea on: October 1, 2009
Wow, it is amazing at what you can you do in 30 lines of JavaFX code or 3000 characters. JFXStudio is running a contest and the theme has to do with “TIME”. Although I posted my entry very last minute, there will be other chances for you to enter. Please visit http://jfxstudio.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/jfxstudio-challenge-small-is-the-new-big/
My entry including the import statements are just at 30 lines with each line containing less than or equal to 100 characters. Click on the image to launch the demo. or
Instructions:
To see the code and read more go here.