It's (almost) official: JavaFX Preview SDK

Sun promised to release JavaFX Preview on July 2008. Yesterday is the last day of July, and they really released it as they promised! Compare to the JavaOne 2008 preview, this release is very impressive. The SDK is bundled with NetBeans 6.1. If you have previous version of JavaFX installed in your NetBeans, you need to remove them first.  I find it easier just to uninstall the NetBeans and let the bundle reinstall from the scratch. On Mac OS X, I simply drag my NetBeans.app into the trash, open Console and rm -r .netbeans* in my home directory.  The installation is simple, and there is no need for other configurations.

The new JavaFX SDK in NetBeans has a lot of enhancement. For people not familiar with the language (that includes almost everyone), the JavaFX Palette provides a quick way to drag-and-drop code snippet into the editor. With the help of the Palette and some online tutorial, I managed to get my first JavaFX test in 20 minutes.

/*
* Main.fx
*
* Created on Aug 1, 2008, 5:19:32 AM
*/

package javafxapplication1;

import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.application.Stage;
import javafx.application.Frame;
import javafx.ext.swing.ComponentView;
import javafx.ext.swing.Label;
import javafx.scene.geometry.Circle;
import javafx.scene.paint.Color;
import javafx.scene.transform.Rotate;
import javafx.scene.transform.Translate;
import javafx.scene.text.Text;
import javafx.scene.Font;
import javafx.scene.FontStyle;
import javafx.ext.swing.Button;
import javafx.scene.geometry.Rectangle;
import javafx.scene.effect.*;
import javafx.scene.paint.*;



Frame {
title: "MyApplication"
width: 200
height: 200
closeAction: function() {
    java.lang.System.exit( 0 );
}
visible: true

stage: Stage {
    content: [
        ComponentView {
            transform: [
                Rotate { x : 0.0, y : 10.0, angle: 0.0 },
                Translate { x : 5.0, y : 5.0 }
            ]
            component:
                Button {
                    text: "Button"
                    action: function() {
                    }
                }
        },
        Rectangle {
            x: -40, y: 140
            width: 300, height: 90
            fill: Color.LIGHTGRAY
            transform: [
                Rotate { x : 0.0, y : 10.0, angle: -10.0 }
            ]
        },
        Circle {
            centerX: 100, centerY: 70
            radius: 40
            fill:
                LinearGradient { startX: 0 startY: 0 endX: 1 endY: 1
                stops: [
                    Stop { offset:0 color: Color.web("#ffff00")},
                    Stop { offset:1 color: Color.web("#5f0101")}
                ]
                }
        },
        Text {
            font: Font {
                size: 24
                style: FontStyle.PLAIN
            }
            x: 30, y: 65
            content: "Hello JavaFX"
            transform: [
                Translate { x : 0.0, y : 100.0 }
            ]
            effect: DropShadow {
                offsetX: 2   offsetY: 2   radius: 6
                color: Color.BLACK
            }
        }
    ]

}
}