[JavaFx//Eclipse RCP] Good idea / Bad idea (/other ideas ?)

Question

Hello all,

I have recently been asked to make an Eclipse Rcp view that would be "pretty". In that purpose I had fist looked at Java2D (after my boss advised me so) before the client's query turned to be more like

"It would be smooth if you could do some flash or something ..."

From there JavaFx seemed appealing to me however I never had a chance to use it before. I then were wondering if before to dive "head first" anyone (who would have preferably used it seriously) had any advice, warning or any constructive comment to do about using this product in an RCP view (so based on SWT).

I really long to know if JavaFx meets it's promises.

Thanks in advance and have a good day !

[EDIT]I dont want an Eclipse Fancy skinning or to make views appear with light effects or in a CompizFusion way,

What I want is to display fancy animations and pretty visual effects within a specific view that will be called sometimes. (Sorry I wasn't clear in the first place :s)[/EDIT]

*I'll pass on the "What's pretty and what's not ?" and other "Tastes are a personnal thing" debates, here "pretty" simply means to qualify a view containing convoluted transparancies and subtle animations ...

Answer 1

JavaFX uses Swing as default layout engine, so you'll gain nothing using it rather than Java2D.

On the other hand, using either your home-grown toolkit or Swing is generally a bad idea when working with Eclipse, as it already embeds the SWT toolkit. The main advantage of SWT over Swing is that it use the OS native widgets. Using another toolkit will lead to the following issues:

• Poor integration with Eclipse look&feel.
• Poor integration with Eclipse views and editors management.

Answer 2

Eclipse RCP can also be customized in the way it looks, e.g. when you dont want to have the Eclipsi-L&F. Its called Presentation API, I saw a quite amazing UI once in a presentation but I cannot find it right now. Anyway, I just want to point you the direction, since I personally havent used this API (yet).

There are also some "skins" available for download.

1. Nebula
2. MP3 Manager

EDIT: Just found the slides. It goes quite into detail, but when you have a look at the last slide...it doesnt look like the Eclipse you know :-)

Answer 3

The answer is simple. No, you can't use JavaFX yet. The problem is that JFX script can't be embedded into Swing nor Eclipse SWT. We already know about such an issues. (The is some kind of hack how to embed JFX into Swing APP only.)