ResponsivePane

In the previous posts I have blogged a lot about the ‘one code base’ application that runs on all popular platforms, from desktops like PC and OSX, mobile like Android and iOS, and finally on web with the use of JPro’s brilliant library. The core of that application was the fact that depending on the available screen size, or better: scene size, a different layout was automatically selected. Below on the left the MigPane based layout for desktop, on the right the same controls put into a TabbedPane for mobile.

Beside changing the actual layout, also a different stylesheet was automatically loaded, so (for example) the arrows in the data picker became more touch friendly. This worked perfectly, even dynamically adapting as you resized the application while running on the desktop or in a web browser. However, the code for doing this adaptive layout was intermixed in the application, and I decided to extract it into a layout manager called ResponsivePane. (more…)

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Multiplatform JavaFX for real – polish

Things work, they look pretty good, so it is time to start polishing. First we focus on those hard coded values for host, user and password that are so convenient for testing. The thing that is needed here is a kind of cookie, something stored locally on the device, that holds the last typed host and user. But the file system on Android and iOS are very different, so that would be quite a challenge to set up. But again Gluon already solved this problem: from the PlatformFactory you can get an instance of Platform, which again provides an implementation of the SettingService, and that is a platform specific key-value store. Perfect! Just store the values after a successful login, and retrieve when starting. That was an easy score. And the Platform class holds many more gems, like the PositionService, which most likely will come handy in another app. (more…)

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Multiplatform JavaFX for real – material design

After having established the communication with the backend, and the functional part of the UI on both PC and Android, the next step is to make it look a bit better by attempting to apply Google’s Material Design. Basically that would mean that I needed to start doing a lot of CSS and emulate the different UI aspects. FlatterFX could be a good starting point… Maybe use JFoenix controls… But after reexamining Gluon, it turned out that they already have done exactly what I was about to create from scratch; menubars, actionbars, views, layers, popup views, and all styled in Material Design… Well. Ahm. Ok. That settles it then.

Refactoring to Gluon’s view based approach was not that difficult; a View extends BorderPane, so you can add your own controls as the center node. The first result was quite pleasing.

dh2fx_phone0.9_hours

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Multiplatform JavaFX for real – basic layout

The development is progressing nicely. Because I do not like to reinvent the wheel, I decided to try as many of the available libraries as possible. The thing that struck me most was that a lot of the libraries aren’t using retrolambda, even though they can without any problems (because streams are not used that often), and that many are really suited for running on tablets and smartphones. And I blame myself as well, because MigPane (the port of MigLayout for JavaFX I started) was not using it either. But that I could easily fix: as of the 5.1-SNAPSHOT MigPane runs on Android, and quite well I may add. (I know people have been asking for this.)

One of the first libraries I tested was FlatterFX by GuiGarage.com. A styling intended for touch devices, but not compiled with retrolambda. Is that strange? But also easily fixed, and the local snapshot build quickly integrated into the application.

dh2ria_flatterFX

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Read more about the article Multiplatform JavaFX for real – Hessian

Multiplatform JavaFX for real – Hessian

I’ve already blogged about running JavaFX on Android and discovered that my first generation Nexus 7 is quite able to run such an application, including an animated gauge. So it is time to step up the ante and go for a fully working application.

As the (unwilling) candidate I chose my own time registration application. It is a 10+ year old application that I helped write and was sold commercially. As a rent-a-nerd I’m now using it myself to keep track of my hours, for billing at the end of the month. It’s main component is an applet that acts as the primary user interface, and it talks with the backend using Hessian. Remember, this was all before SOAP and REST became popular and Javascript on browsers was mostly disabled.

dh2_applet

Yes, applets / Swing applications can look pretty decent as well. And I think it hasn’t lost much of its looks in these 10 years, it even has some animation going on. The backend also had a web application for administrative functions, but I now just SQL the stuff straight into the database, I don’t need all the fancy logic that was in the web application.

Recent developments in browsers means that I can only start the applet in IE at the moment, and Oracle will discontinue the plugin completely. So that means I either convert the applet into webstart application, or write a JavaFX version, that just happens to also run on Android and other mobile hardware.

There isn’t much challenge in the first option, is there? So the choice was easy. (more…)

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JFXMobile – first attempt

Who would not like to be able to write a single code base for desktop and mobile? I know I want to, and the applet I’m using for time registration is getting into a pinch with all the browsers dropping support for applets, so why not give JavaFX a try? And see if things go as smoothly as Gluon’s tweets make it sound?

HelloWorld
So, first things first and setup a nice virtual machine for this project with Java and Eclipse, hookup the old 1st gen Nexus 7, then download the HelloWorld demo project from Gluon. Finally a “gradlew androidInstall” should do the trick… (more…)

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Layout in Android (and JavaFX)

One of my clients allowed me to write an Android application. I have done Java and mobile development before, so it basically comes down to learning the new framework. And that’s something Java developers do on a fairly regular basis. There were some special things, like connecting to a bluetooth barcode scanner, but nothing that some coding-by-googling wouldn’t fix. The application initially was aimed at Android 2.2+ and phones, but in the meantime it’s been upgraded to Android 4.0+ and 10″ tablets, because it needed a stronger visual screen (with loads of images) and the screens of the phones were simply too small.I’d like to share some of the experiences I had with this project.

ReindersAndroidScreenshot_2012-12-10-10-56-39

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