Hello guys, thanks again for all your replies. Rather than answering them one by one I'd like to provide following "classification summary". Looks like there are three major streams of opinions:
1. Experienced Swing/FX developers willing/being forced to move closer to Web 2. Experienced Swing/FX developers (sort of) OK with current state 3. Experienced Web developers wishing to code for NetBeans with their technology I belong into the category #1 - while I like Swing and I see its value for development of desktop applications, I know that these days projects don't start with desktop being the primary target. Everyone wants to get to cloud, and the remaining ones want to get mobile. None of that can be done with Swing. Even Zoran admits that he'd like to write his application in a style that would allow him to run it from a web site as well as NetBeans. That (in my opinion) rules Swing out and that is the reason why I designed HTML/Java API & co. The category #3 isn't huge. Why would somebody who have seen "the future" looked back? Why would a Java developer tried to learn COBOL? In spite of that we have one active voice among us - Christian. I am thankful for having him around and I wish him to survive our attacks against JavaScript and HTML well. If we want to move forward with support of HTML(/Java) in NetBeans we need his knowledge of contemporary build and coding practices used by the web developers. The category #2 is surprisingly (to me) huge (I am counting suggestions to use SWT or OpenGL here as well), but there is a truth in such position: Swing and JavaFX are here and they aren't going away. If they work for you, there is no reason to search for something else. They will always continue to work. Knowing the categories, I'd like to offer something to each of you with the goal to keep you motivated to work with us towards a goal you can agree to: The NetBeans Platform roots are built around Swing - e.g. #2 category - and I am 100% sure we want to keep those roots untouched. If you are happy with NetBeans Platform as it is, don't worry - it will continue to work for you. We have a long time track of keeping backward compatibility while moving the system forward (for example the HTML/Java is already in and nothing bad happened), so we can promise that your Swing/FX usecase isn't going to be affected. I am dedicated to move more and more HTML based UI into the system. I have to: I am asked to develop web based solutions and I don't want to write my code twice. I want to write code that works in the web as well as in NetBeans. I am looking at that from a category #1 perspective - e.g. I want Java oriented tools most of the time. On the other hand I understand the desire of Christian to improve the #3 point of view. That shall happen as well: make sure web developers can extend NetBeans without major problems. Hopefully Christian will be able to help with that. Geertjan asked for a vision for the NetBeans Platform, here is one: ideally I want to have a replacement of core.windows module (which organizes Swing based TopComponent, menu and toolbars in a Swing JFrame) with core.htmlwindows reimplementation (that would show a browser and rendered everything - menu, toolbar, components - via browser pipeline). Of course such module would be fully optional. Right now we can mix Swing and HTML based UI next to each other in a JFrame context, with the above module the same shall be possible[1] in an browser-like renderer. It is a long term vision, but if there is enough will, it is not unrealistic to achieve it. In any case, thanks for a lively and inspiring discussion we had so far. -jt [1] There was a request to render Swing in HTML. I am glad to say that I have a Graphics that renders in HTML and I managed to render Visual Library scene this way. The result was 1:1 and the branch of my experiment is here: https://github.com/apache/incubator-netbeans/compare/master...JaroslavTulach:jtulach/PortableVisualLibrary?expand=1 - help with improving the Graphics context to render JButton (for example) is more than welcomed.
