Java 10.2.4 Extended Support

Question

Does esri have an intention on revisiting swing? I personally prefer swing to JavaFx and have never successfully fielded an application using JavaFx technology. However, I have been successful in deploying good location applications using both the 100.3 .net and the java 10.2.4 SDKs.

I have been wanting to revisit the esri JavaFx development kit but after looking through oracle's client roadmap JavaFx has been moved to open source and swing is going to be actively developed and supported at least through 2026. A long time ago, my first development revolved around using Adobe's Flash technology and for those of us old enough to remember, it fizzled out once Apache got its hands on it, which seems like this is where JavaFx is heading.

So, it's nice that 10.2.4 is going to be supported for another year but it would be even sweeter if 100.X could have swing support. It is my firm belief that JavaFX will die.

Any thoughts?

https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/the-future-of-javafx-and-other-java-client-roadmap-updates

EricBader · Answer

GREAT news, Tom. Thank you for sharing!

thomasbales · Answer

Eric, thank you for your response. After your post I felt comfortable enough with JavaFX having longevity that I have started a rewrite of existing code that incorporated some JFXPanels to an app that is 100% JavaFX. However on a note, I did choose to drop FXML in my design pattern and I am using custom interface listeners to manage component communications. This method seems to be working very well in managing code bloat.

Thanks,

Tom

EricBader · Answer

Hi Thomas,

There are a lot of conflicting stories and misinformation about the health and outlook of JavaFX. The truth is, all of the leads from both Oracle and OpenJDK are reassuring users that JavaFX is alive and well. I like the messaging in this article. Oracle is actively working on JavaFX and contributing to it in the OpenJFX and they are strongly encouraging the community to continue doing the same.  In the Java 9 effort to split the JDK into mods, many old pieces that didn't make sense anymore were simply cut. Web Start and Applets are gone. Not JavaFX. Nor Swing for that matter. JavaFX was put into OpenJFX and will remain there and continue to thrive through the community contributions.

Having blabbered on too much about that, I appreciate your preference of Swing with Runtime. At this time, Esri has no plans to engineer anything Swing-specific back into the product. However, as long as developers can continue to bridge Swing and FX for Runtime applications, we will continue to assist as much as we can. The mixing of Swing and JavaFX is more common than folks might imagine.

Good post, Thomas. Please keep sharing your thoughts and feedback!