I do not think that JavaFX is aiming at replacing flash, HTML and javascript
are doing a great job there, hence animations are not equally important as they
were for flash.
Tom
On 24-11-2014 10:46, Felix Bembrick wrote:
I am surprised more people have not expressed an opinion on this. To me,
it seems absolutely *vital* to the long term (or any term) success of
JavaFX.
Haven't any of you ever programmed in Flash? Can you imagine trying to
create any of those complex (or even the simple) animations and
visualisations *without* a visual editor and by doing it code alone? It
wouldn't have been practical (read possible) and similarly, and with JavaFX
having even richer features, to do this "by hand".
To me, this is the reason why we haven't seen any great
animations/visualisations/applications using JavaFX and we probably never
will until a visual animation editor is available. Specifying and
controlling the motion and appearance of numerous complex objects and their
transitions relying exclusively on code would not be possible for even the
"gunnest" JFX coder...
On 18 November 2014 at 02:48, Richard Bair <richard.b...@oracle.com> wrote:
I’m afraid at this time there are no plans for adding an
animation/transition effect editor to Scene Builder, certainly not in the
short-term.
Thanks
Richard
On Nov 13, 2014, at 7:34 PM, Felix Bembrick <felix.bembr...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Java applets were the first "programs" to run inside a web browser and
for
a (little) while they were flavour of the month.
But then along came Flash which had several advantages such as faster
load
times, consistent loads and antialiased fonts/graphics and soon
completely
surpassed applets.
But the MAIN reason why Flash was initially so successful and went on for
years and years of domination is that the Flash tools had an
Animation/Timeline Editor pretty much from the beginning. This enabled
even a novice to drag images around and draw the path they wanted them to
move along, add all sorts of bouncing effects and sounds and the result
was
the birth of the online greeting card company.
But Flash soon went on to be so much more. As the Adobe tools improved,
so
did the SWFs and soon entire websites were written in Flash.
Meanwhile, applet programmers had absolutely nothing remotely similar and
had to try (and I stress try) to tediously hand code any animations and
transitions and effects and I don't think it ever worked.
Fast forward 15-20 years and now we have JavaFX which doesn't need to run
in the browser, has even more features than Flash, uses hardware
acceleration for superior performance, has a wide range of built-in
animations, transitions and effects but STILL we have to hand code any
animation/transitions.
This is INCREDIBLY inefficient and unless Scene Builder incorporates a
powerful, sophisticated animation/transition and effect editor VERY, VERY
SOON I fear that the advanced graphics features are never going to be
used
to their full potential (much to the detriment of JavaFX itself).
Does anyone know if one is in the pipeline? I see this as one of the
most
vital features for the JavaFX ecosystem to achieve more penetration and,
eventually, survive.
Felix
