I have enjoyed bringing the JavaFX Weekly Dazzle to my audience but I would like the assistance of anyone who reads this to determine what I should do in the future with this (ideally) weekly series of posts.
The main issue is that while I know the global JavaFX community is not extremely large, I am surprised and somewhat disheartened what the analytics for this series of posts have been telling me.
Basically, each week after posting there are about 40 views on the Dazzle Zone site in total with around 25-30 unique visitors. This seems rather small and I’m not sure if it’s because I don’t promote the posts effectively or if there simply isn’t much interest in them.
An even more significant observation is that only a small fraction of the visitors actually click on any of the links in the post which basically defeats the purpose of the posts.
It may surprise you just how much effort goes in to collating and curating all JavaFX content for a week, writing the post, checking all the links etc. and I need to know if there is justification for me to continue to do this.
I am more than happy to keep contributing to the world of JavaFX in this small way if there actually is demand for it. I’ve made no secret of my ongoing health issues so it’s important that I prioritise my time carefully and wisely.
Please respond using the “Leave a Comment” link at the top of this post if you are reading this and then hopefully I will know what’s best to do going forward.
Graciously,
John-Val Rose (@Rosethornian)
This is the JavaFX news update that covers all blogs, articles, links and activities in JavaFX world for the past week.
Once again there has been a lot of JavaFX related content:
I hope you found value in this JavaFX news update for the past week.
As will always be the case, if I overlooked anyone’s tweets or posts or there’s anything else you think should be included here then please use the Contact page to let me know and I’ll be sure to include them in next week’s blog.
Graciously,
John-Val Rose (@Rosethornian)
This is the JavaFX news update that covers all blogs, articles, links and activities in JavaFX world for the past week.
Once again there has a lot of JavaFX related content:
I hope you found value in this JavaFX news update for the past week.
As will always be the case, if I overlooked anyone’s tweets or posts or there’s anything else you think should be included here then please use the Contact page to let me know and I’ll be sure to include them in next week’s blog.
Graciously,
John-Val Rose (@Rosethornian)
This is the weekly roundup of all the news, articles, links and activities in the Unity universe. On this occasion it is a “tri-weekly roundup” as I was unavailable to produce the last 2 week’s posts so it’s thrice the dazzle!
I’m still finding it rather challenging to curate this post simply because of the enormous amount of activity (tweets, blogs etc.) that happens with Unity within a week.
So once again I decided to turn to my friends at GameDevHQ for assistance. If you’re serious about Unity, you really need to check-out GameDevHQ for amazing content, assets, courses, seminars and challenges and their brilliant Filebase Unity Plugin. Check-out their membership plans and go Pro to get an amazing amount of exclusive content to progress your Unity skills and career.
Thanks to GameDevHQ I don’t have to trawl through the plethora of #MadeWithUnity tweets as they already do that and produce a “Best of Made With Unity” video on YouTube each week.
Here are their three most recent videos:
With GameDevHQ themselves, they have been extremely busy as usual with running seminars and continuously upgrading their Filebase Unity Plugin, now at version 3.06.
I will be releasing a post soon devoted entirely to Filebase as I truly believe it is one of the best and “best-value” Unity Plugins available.
In other news, in the last few weeks, 3 new versions of Unity have been released:
As will always be the case, if I overlooked anyone’s tweets or posts or there’s something you’d like to see included here then please use the Contact page to let me know and I’ll be sure to include them in next week’s blog.
Graciously,
John-Val Rose (@Rosethornian)
This is the weekly roundup of all the news, articles, links and activities in JavaFX world. On this occasion it is a “tri-weekly roundup” as I was unavailable to produce the last 2 week’s posts so it’s thrice the dazzle!
Once again there has been a high level of JavaFX related content:
As will always be the case, if I overlooked anyone’s tweets or posts or there’s anything else you think should be included here then please use the Contact page to let me know and I’ll be sure to include them in next week’s blog.
Graciously,
John-Val Rose (@Rosethornian)
This is the weekly roundup of all the news, articles, links and activities in JavaFX world. On this occasion it is a “fortnightly roundup” as I was unavailable to produce last week’s post so it’s twice the dazzle!
Did I hear someone say JavaFX is dead (again)? Just look at the hive of activity here:
As will always be the case, if I overlooked anyone’s tweets or posts or there’s anything else you think should be included here then please use the Contact page to let me know and I’ll be sure to include them in next week’s blog.
Graciously,
John-Val Rose (@Rosethornian)
This is the weekly roundup of all the news, articles, links and activities in the Unity universe.
Being the first post of this kind, I have to say I found it rather challenging simply because of the enormous amount of activity (tweets, blogs etc.) that happens with Unity within a week.
So I decided to turn to my friends at GameDevHQ for assistance. If you’re serious about Unity, you really need to check-out GameDevHQ for amazing content, assets, courses, seminars and challenges and their brilliant Filebase Unity Plugin. Check-out their membership plans and go Pro to get an amazing amount of exclusive content to progress your Unity skills and career.
So there’s a Twitter hashtag #madewithunity and the number of tweets with that hashtag per day is overwhelming. I simply don’t have the time to go through everyone of them and curate the best for inclusion here.
Thanks to GameDevHQ I don’t have to – they already do that and produce a “Best of Made With Unity” video on YouTube each week.
Here are their two most recent videos:
With GameDevHQ themselves, they have been extremely busy as usual with running seminars and continuously upgrading their Filebase Unity Plugin, now at version 3.01. They have an awesome workshop coming-up on C# Fundamentals which shouldn’t be missed even if you’re already quite familiar with C#. There’s also a great workshop on Level Design Using Filebase coming later this month.
In other news, in the last couple of weeks, 3 new versions of Unity have been released:
As will always be the case, if I overlooked anyone’s tweets or posts or there’s something you’d like to see included here then please use the Contact page to let me know and I’ll be sure to include them in next week’s blog.
Graciously,
John-Val Rose (@Rosethornian)
This is the weekly roundup of all the news, articles, links and activities in JavaFX world.
As will always be the case, if I overlooked anyone’s tweets or posts then please use the Contact page to let me know and I’ll be sure to include them in next week’s blog.
Graciously,
John-Val Rose (@Rosethornian)
It’s been well over a year now since I started Dazzle Zone with starry eyes, excitement and big plans for an awesome blog focusing on UI/UX and the secrets to creating dazzling apps.
I was hoping to post at least fortnightly, include lots of useful samples and really help people with what can be a daunting subject, especially if you are a software developer who rarely works on front-end apps or who doesn’t feel particularly “artistic” or visual-oriented.
Then just as soon as I launched the rocket, it nose-dived and came crashing back down to Earth. I got sick. Very sick. And for more than a year I was in and out of hospitals and only able to tweet occasionally or like and retweet the work of others.
Dazzle Zone lay dormant and you’d be forgiven for thinking it was dead and buried or simply abandoned.
Fortunately my health has recovered, at least to the point where I can re-launch this rocket and make it even greater than my original dream.
The new Dazzle Zone is here and I hope it will become helpful for many people.
JavaFX has undergone some significant changes since I first posted and is now looking extremely healthy and being adopted more widely. This is thanks mainly to Gluon who are actively maintaining OpenJFX and have made the seemingly impossible dream of enabling JavaFX to run on mobiles and tablets a reality.
Unity had to be included in my toolkit selection simply because of its enormous capabilities for producing everything from AAA games to enterprise apps. I am also a foundation member of GameDevHQ which provides a huge amount of added goodies to get you pumping out amazing creations with Unity.
Check-out the GameDevHQ membership plans and choose to go Pro for a wealth of epic Unity assets, courses and other very useful material.
Qt has been actively developed for 25+ years and is included as a toolkit here because of its versatility and its coverage of devices from small, low-resourced embedded devices all the way up to powerful graphics workstations. It is very performant on all these platforms and uses C++ for the programming language, JavaScript for scripting and QML for declarative UI specifications.
Qt has an excellent IDE named Qt Creator as well as a 3D Studio enabling creation of a vast array of kinds of applications.
You can subscribe to individual posts and/or follow @DazzleZone on Twitter for announcements.
I truly hope that Dazzle Zone will become a vital and very useful resource for anyone involved with UI/UX development. I welcome comments, both constructively critical and encouraging so please get involved and let’s see where this goes…
Graciously,
John-Val Rose (@Rosethornian)
Welcome!
It may seem unusual to discuss a specific technology such as JavaFX as the first post on Dazzle Zone but I am doing so because I would like to make sure everyone is aware of recent developments in the planned future of JavaFX and why JavaFX is the toolkit I have chosen to use for all code samples and demos that will be in future posts.
The About page describes the purpose and goals of the Dazzle Zone blog.
Here’s a link to the official announcement from Oracle regarding the future of JavaFX and its place in the Java ecosystem: The Future Of JavaFX
So, in summary, as of the release of Java 11, JavaFX will no longer be part of the JDK itself. This may at first seem like the “last nail in the coffin” for JavaFX but, in fact, I believe it’s the best thing that could possibly have happened.
Why? Well, Oracle are very much positioning themselves as an “enterprise” or “cloud” solutions company and a graphics toolkit like JavaFX simply doesn’t really have any role to play in that strategy and, given that it generates little or no revenue for them, it was inevitable that the ever-shrinking team of JavaFX developers at Oracle would be “let go”. The already limited budget that Oracle had allocated to maintain or enhance JavaFX could not be justified and for quite some time these financial constraints actually stifled the evolution and advancement of JavaFX.
Now, it is as though JavaFX has been set free. Free from any restraints & shackles, not held back by bureaucracy, JavaFX is now more accessible to the extremely vibrant, passionate and talented community which will enable true innovation.
Although there doesn’t appear to be an enormous number of JavaFX applications out there in the marketplace, it is certainly used in-house in many corporations across the globe. Additionally, there are some true “rock stars” out there who basically “bleed” JavaFX like Gerrit Grunwald, Johan Vos, Chris Newland, Dirk Lemmermann, Almas Baimagambetov & even someone who is developing software so advanced that NASA could use it, namely Sean Phillips.
One man really stands out though for his incredible recent contributions and that is Laurent Bourgès whose MarlinFX contribution to JavaFX considerably improved performance and was a massive undertaking for an unpaid individual. We need more people like Laurent!
And there are many others who just love JavaFX and want it to not just survive but to thrive. People like myself for example 🙂
Though not absolutely vital for JavaFX to succeed, it would be ideal if a cashed-up corporation took over stewardship of JavaFX. There are many contenders including Apache Software Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, IBM or even a smaller business like Gluon who have already done some absolutely amazing things with JavaFX on mobile platforms and sustaining such vital tools as Scene Builder.
And, yes, even Microsoft.
No, it’s not April Fool’s Day. Often perceived as the arch enemy of Java and rather “platform selfish” (i.e. any OS is fine as long as it’s a flavour of Windows), Microsoft are releasing their own version of Linux! I guess that old saying “Never say never” still holds true. Now, if there were some way to confirm that perhaps Hell has frozen over, JavaFX would be an excellent investment for Microsoft. Indeed, Jonathan Giles, one of the most prominent former members of the Oracle JavaFX team who is responsible for much of the design of the excellent JavaFX controls has recently joined Microsoft to work on enhancing Azure support for Java.
Jonathan wrote this article on his post-Oracle views on JavaFX. The key take-aways from his article are his quote “The King is dead. Long live the King!” and that he mentions that a large amount of work has already been done to facilitate easier involvement in the OpenJFX project including setting-up a GitHub mirror and a number of other important actions.
He also comments on his coworkers and it is certainly true that over the years there have been some extraordinarily talented developers working on the JavaFX team and I personally would like to thank them all for their wonderful efforts and to wish them well for their future endeavours.
So, despite what I initially viewed as bad news, I am now invigorated and full of excitement for the future of JavaFX. I had already selected JavaFX as the technology for code samples for Dazzle Zone prior to Oracle’s announcement but now I am even more confident that I have made the correct choice.
From now on, Dazzle Zone will release a series of posts, each one addressing one or more aspects of UI or UX and often accompanied with demos and code samples that are free to be used for any purpose by anyone.
I personally hope to manage my own time so that I achieve a balance of family, working my “day job”, blogging on Dazzle Zone and I also really hope to make some significant contributions to OpenJFX myself.
Graciously,
John-Val Rose