I create applications, that are divorced from any native framework. All rendering happens in OpenGL, with a context provided by GLFW, all in C, with no framework to rely on supplying compatibility. As such, standard screen readers like NVDA have no chance of picking up information ( excluding OCR ) and my applications are an accessibility black hole.
How can I provide an interface for screen readers to cling unto? I presume this is a per OS thing... How would that be possible on Windows, Linux, BSD or even android? In the *NIX world, I presume this would be Desktop environment dependent...
I'm finding a lot of information on this, with a framework as a starting point, but have a hard time finding resources on how to do it from scratch.
I'm fully aware this is far beyond the capability of a sole developer and know, that writing programs by ignoring native interfaces is a common accessibility hole, which you are advised to avoid.
However, I have a tough time finding resources and jump-in points to explore this topic. Can someone point me in the right direction?
TL;DR: How to provide screen-reader compatibility from scratch. Not in detail - but conceptually.
As you have already well identified, your app is an accessibility blackhole because you are using a rendering engine.
It's basicly the same for OpenGL, SDL, or <canvas> on the web, or any library rendering something without specific accessibility support.
WE can talk about several possibilities:
Become an accessibility server. Under windows, it means doing the necessary so that your app provide accessible components on demand from UIA / IAccessible2 interface.
Use a well known GUI toolkits having accessibility support and their provieded accessibility API to make your app.
Directly talk to screen readers via their respective API in order to make them say something and/or show something on a connected braille display.
Do specific screen reader scripting
However, it doesnt stops there. Supporting screen readers isn't sufficient to make your app really accessible. You must also think about many other things.
1. Accessibility server, UIA, IAccessible2
This option is of course the best, because users of assistive technologies in general (not only screen readers) will feel right at home with a perfectly accessible app if you do your job correctly.
However, it's also by far the hardest since you have to reinvent everything. You must decompose your interface into components, tell which category of component each of them are (more commonly called roles), make callback to fetch values and descriptions, etc.
IF you are making web development, compare that with if you had to use ARIA everywhere because there's no defaults, no titles, no paragraphs, no input fields, no buttons, etc.
That's an huge job ! But if you do it really well, your app will be well accessible.
You may get code and ideas on how to do it by looking at open source GUI toolkits or browsers which all do it.
Of course, the API to use are different for each OS. UIA and IAccessible2 are for windows, but MacOS and several linux desktops also have OS-specific accessibility API that are based on the same root principles.
Note about terminology: the accessibility server or provider is your app or the GUI toolkit you are using, while the accessibility client or consumer is the scren reader (or others assistive tools).
2. Use a GUI toolkit with good accessibility support
By chance, you aren't obliged to reinvent the wheel, of course !
Many people did the job of point 1 above and it resulted in libraries commonly called GUI toolkits.
Some of them are known to generally produce well accessible apps, while others are known to produce totally inaccessible apps.
QT, WXWidgets and Java SWT are three of them with quite good accessibility support.
So you can quite a lot simplify the job by simply using one of them and their associated accessibility API. You will be saved from talking more or less directly to the OS with UIA/IAccessible2 and similar API on other platforms.
Be careful though, it isn't as easy as it seems: all components provided by GUI toolkits aren't necessarily all accessible under all platforms.
Some components may be accessible out of the box, some other need configuration and/or a few specific code on your side, and some are unaccessible no matter what.
Some are accessible under windows but not under MacOS or vice-versa.
For example, GTK is the first choice for linux under GNOME for making accessible apps, but GTK under windows give quite poor results. Another example: wxWidgets's DataView control is known to be good under MacOS, but it is emulated under windows and therefore much less accessible.
In case of doubt, the best is to test yourself under all combinations of OS and screen readers you intent to support.
Sadly, for a game, using a GUI toolkit is perhaps not a viable option, even if there exist OpenGL components capable of displaying a 3D scene.
Here come the third possibility.
3. Talk directly to screen readers
Several screen readers provide an API to make them speak, adjust some settings and/or show something on braille display. If you can't, or don't want to use a GUI toolkit, this might be a solution.
Jaws come with an API called FSAPI, NVDA with NVDA controller client. Apple also alow to control several aspects of VoiceOver programatically.
There are still several disadvantages, though:
You are specificly targetting some screen readers. People using another one, or another assistive tool than a screen reader (a screen magnifier for example), are all out of luc. Or you may multiply support for a big forest of different API for different products on different platforms.
All of these screen reader specific API support different things that may not be supported by others. There is no standards at all here.
Thinking about WCAG and how it would be transposed to desktop apps, in fact you are bypassing most best practices, which all recommand first above anything else to use well known standard component, and only customize when really necessary.
So this third possibility should ideally be used if, and only if, using a good GUI toolkit isn't possible, or if the accessibility of the used GUI toolkit isn't sufficient.
I'm the autohr of UniversalSpeech, a small library trying to unify direct talking with several screen readers.
You may have a look at it if you are interested.
4. Screen reader scripting
If your app isn't accessible alone, you may distribute screen reader specific scripts to users.
These scripts can be instructed to fetch information to give to the user, add additional keyboard shortcuts and several other things.
Jaws has its own scripting language, while NVDA scripts are developed with Python. AS far as I know, there's also scripting capabilities with VoiceOver under MacOS.
I gave you this fourth point for your information, but since you are starting from a completely inaccessible app, I wouldn't advise you to go that way.
In order for scripts to be able to do useful things, you must have a working accessible base. A script can help fixing small accessibility issues, but it's nearly impossible to turn a completly inaccessible app into an accessible one just with a script.
Additionally, you must distribute these scripts separately from your app, and users have to install them. It may be a difficulty for some people, depending on your target audience.
Beyond screen reader support
Screen reader support isn't everything.
This is beyond your question, so I won't enter into details, but you shouldn't forget about the following points if you really want to make an accessible app which isn't only accessible but also comfortable to use for a screen reader user.
This isn't at all an exhaustive list of additional things to watch out.
Keyboard navigation: most blind and many visually impaired aren't comfortable with the mouse and/or a touch screen. You must provide a full and consist way of using your app only with a keyboard, or, on mobile, only by standard touch gestures supported by the screen reader. Navigation should be as simple as possible, and should as much as you can conform to user preferences and general OS conventions (i.e. functions of tab, space, enter, etc.). This in turn implies to have a good structure of components.
Gamepad, motion sensors and other inputs: unless it's absolutely mandatory because it's your core concept, don't force the use of them and always allow a keyboard fallback
Visual appearance: as much as you can, you should use the settings/preferences defined at OS level for disposition, colors, contrasts, fonts, text size, dark mode, high contrast mode, etc. rather than using your own
Audio: don't output anything if the user can't reasonably expect any, make sure the volume can be changed at any time very easily, and if possible if it isn't against your core concept, always allow it to be paused, resumed, stopped and muted. Same reflection can apply to other outputs like vibration which you should always be able to disable.
Related
As a developer of a traditional ASP.NET web application (non-MVC) who is getting requests for a mobile-friendly version, I'm wondering where I might find some wisdom about the best way to approach the problem. We currently mask most of our database access through web service calls.
It seems like many shops would find themselves in this situation: We have limited resources and don't wish to create a maintenance headache by having versions of an application diverge greatly.
Is there a set of best practices for taking an existing System.Web application and reorganizing code in order to accommodate adding mobile-friendliness. The general approach I'm thinking of is:
Make small stylistic changes on the
client using CSS or even JavaScript.
Make any necessary changes in data,
workflow, or markup in server-side
code.
Keep as much code as possible common
to the two versions by organizing
non-UI logic into separate
assemblies. Conditional compilation
would be used in code-behind where
UIs must diverge.
What are the gotchas that I'll run into with this approach?
Short and sweet:
Read the W3C Mobile Web Application Best Practices
Separate your business/application logic and presentation logic as much as possible
Do server-side detection of mobile devices; serve an extremely simplified UI to mobile devices
Use client-side techniques like CSS media queries and feature detection (such as that done with Modernizr) to do progressive enhancement
The long version:
The most important thing to remember is that as similar as they appear, the mobile web and desktop web ARE different. The analogy I use the difference between a street and a sidewalk. Both of them are made for generally the same purpose - to get people from one location to another. However, they were designed separately and are intended for use by different modes of transport. You can drive a car on the sidewalk, and you can walk in the middle of the street, but neither experience will be optimal.
Long story short, for a good mobile site, you must design specifically for a mobile device. This doesn't mean you can't reuse logic - you definitely should. I'm just saying that using JavaScript/CSS to hide a few elements does not turn a regular site into a mobile site.
For what it's worth, I recently gave a presentation with one of my colleagues on mobile web development strategies. It is mostly targeted towards mobile web in higher education (college campuses) and my campus (UCSB), but many of the strategies and techniques are widely applicable. Interested parties can find the presentation and related resources here: https://it.ucsb.edu/groups/wsg/mobile-web-brown-bag
Resources
Server-Side Device Detection:
DeviceAtlas
WURFL
51Degrees.mobi
Client-Side Feature Support Detection / Progressive Enhancement:
Modernizr
EnhanceJS
Random Resources
Mobile Web Resources (My colleague's reading list)
W3C Mobile Web Application Best Practices
First, these days mobile doesn't necessarily mean doing the things that System.Web.Mobile come, but rather supporting the mobile use case and the limitations of mobile devices. Or, you want to strip down your app to be relevent to mobile users, and you want to do things like limit bandwidth required, browser plugins, heavy scripting and screen size required. But you actually don't need to go back to the bad old days of WAP and such.
From my reading the way forward seems to be to design for mobile first and then customise the layout using #media CSS to introduce more design/functionality concepts in more capable devices.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/07/19/how-to-use-css3-media-queries-to-create-a-mobile-version-of-your-website/
http://www.slideshare.net/arborwebsolutions/practical-beyond-responsive-web-design
I have used Flex for about a year before deciding that I would rather develop Actionscript projects.
At the time, it seemed that the framework was too heavy for the kind of work I was dealing with, mainly small web applications , personal sites, portfolios this sort of thing. I also thought that Flex was like a odd hybrid , something targeting seasoned developers but at the same time , adding some function wizards that seemed to target beginners. It seemed overly complexed in some areas and way too basic in others.
On the other hand, the IDE was great , definitely no comparison with Flash CS IDE , so for me it made sense to stick to AS3 projects and use Flex , now FlashBuilder to write my code.
( I need to point out that I'm not a Flash designer, so working with Flash CS was never an option. )
It's been a while since I had a look at the Flex framework and I'm wondering about other Flex/Flash developers position on this issue.
Would you only consider Flex for enterprise level projects? What are the advantages of using one over the other? If you were a Flash developer and moved to Flex, what were your motivations? If you're creating both Flex & Actionscript projects , what are your choice criteria?
Edit:
Although I have received a great answer, I would have been interested to hear from Flex's users, what's your main practical motivation ( as opposed to philosophical :) ) for using Flex over pure Actionscript projects?
Preamble: my experience is primarily with AS3 projects built using a combination of the Flash IDE (FIDE) and Flash Builder 4 (FB4).
I generally prefer pure AS3 (PAS3) projects over Flex projects for the following reasons:
Size - Flex projects have a much larger minimum size than PAS3 projects. Not suitable for lightweight applications.
Performance - Flash is not known for its performance, and the layout computations required by a complex Flex application will hammer the end-user's machine. To them, things just end-up feeling slow, non-responsive, or "gunky". Unfortunately, this means that the applications where Flex might be most attractive (i.e. a very complex, adaptable, UI) are the exact places where it stumbles. In the end, you end up writing all this bizarre performance-enhancing optimization code that takes away most of the time you gained from using the built-in layout system.
Metaphor and Appearance - Flex aims to allow developers to provide end-users with a mature, flexible UI that has the same widgets and widget behaviors that they are used to from native applications. However, due to the performance problems echoed above, the UI never feels quite as nice or responsive as a native app. In addition, it's missing all of the OS-specific peculiarities that end-users are used to and will expect. I don't really understand the motivation to try to emulate native app development or behavior - you're never going to win that fight. Best to make something that stands by itself, which is what most native web applications are doing.
Flexibility - Dovetailing into the previous argument, Flash's main advantage is its ability to do things that traditional UI widget libraries can't do (at least not very easily). You can make some really, really novel UIs in Flash that just aren't practical to do in native apps without mucking about in OpenGL. Using Flex makes creating novel UI hard again (but it does make creating standard UI much easier, even if it is, in my opinion, sub-standard UI).
I'm curious if anyone has some good examples of Flex being used in any popular, public websites. Grooveshark is the only one that I know about (which is quite nice, but suffers from many of the problems I've outlined, especially on OS X where Flash performance is still poor).
However - it's a tradeoff. Always remember that your time is valuable. Your users might accept a slightly clunky, slightly confusing interface if it lets them do really cool things and that would mean that you could release it now as opposed to later. This brings is to the major downsides of PAS3 development:
Effort vs. Reward - You have to program all of your own UI. All of it. This can lead to some really, really bloated code where you have to define tons of event listeners for every button you want to create. I don't know how many times I've written various kinds of layout code specific to what I was working on. You can try to write your own abstract classes for these (which I have done), but at some point you're just going to end up re-implementing the Flex framework. Hardly worth your time.
Development - You can either use just Flash Builder 4, in which case you have to construct every graphical asset by hand in code (which takes forever), or you use the FIDE, in which case you can make lovely artwork but you're stuck with a stone-age code IDE and it takes forrrrrreeeeeeevvvvver to compile anything. Currently I use a hybrid setup where art generated in the FIDE is automatically imported into my FB4 project, but even that is not a perfect solution. They really need to be integrated better.
Another set of things to keep in mind: things that Flash sucks at.
Flash sucks at text. Do not try to re-implement a web browser inside Flash. Flash is actually quite good at displayed relatively small amounts of text that is unselectable (and, through the use of embedded fonts, is always pixel-perfect), but don't try to create large, expansive text documents inside your Flash project. First, performance will be terrible, and second, users will expect the text to behave the same way all other large text fields do in their native applications (most specifically, their web browser). Selecting text in Flash doesn't feel right because it doesn't feel how your OS does it.
Flash doesn't play nice with mouse and keyboard input - it constantly fights with the enclosing browser for focus. If your system needs either of those things, users need to click on it first. Don't fall into a trap where people will get confused because their inputs are going to the wrong place.
Flash is a performance hog - we've all heard this one, and it's not nearly as much of a problem as people like to think, but it does mean that you'll have to put a lot of thought into the performance of your system. Your UI should run at a stable 60FPS when being used and should not use much if any CPU when the user is not interacting with it. If your FPS dips below 60, then your UI will feel slow and gunky compared to native or HTML5 UI. Also make sure to watch for memory leaks.
In the end: user your head. Both approaches are just tools in your arsenal.
I've chosen Flex 4 as the most appropriate technology to develop a graphically-rich web application (its not a simple content-driven site), but worried about how the recent negative press (i.e. security issues) may effect end-user's trust and ultimately whether the user-base may drop promptly in response. (I don't care if my app works on iphones or ipads for now)
I think Flash Builder 4 is an great development environment and has minimized development time for me/my team. After some basic testing of graphical animations similar to that used in my app - HTML5 didn't perform as fast, is inconsistent with browsers, and some animations are jagged (I expect browser performance and graphic libraries to improve over time). I also 'personally' dislike programming Javascript as I am very fond of strong-typing to uncover mistakes quickly.
If you develop Rich Internet Apps, how are you responding?
Are you preparing to potentially migrate to HTML5/Javascript? Java? No action?
BTW - I don't want pro/anti-flash arguments - just curious to see how the community is responding.
At the end of the day, Flash/Flex aren't going anywhere. If Flex 4 meets your current needs and you're aware of the limitations (ie can't deploy to iOS devices) then I say go for it. Yes it's true that the topic has become mildly politicized - but if you're offering something your clients need then they'd be silly to refuse to use it on the grounds that they support "HTML 5" - when HTML 5 clearly doesn't offer you the tools you need.
Plenty of awesome stuff is coming down the pipe in Flash, much of which simply can't be done any other way - google UJam for an example. I wouldn't let Steve Jobs scare you away from using the technology that works for your needs.
My company plans to continue with Flash, using FlashBuilder 4 and Java back end. We went with Flex/Flash several years ago to get out of the business of supporting all the different browsers and into the business of being productive and giving our users a rich client-side experience.
HTML5/Javascript have potential, but are nowhere near as robust, powerful, fast, or efficient. The class hierarchy, data typing, and event model alone put ActionScript 3 miles beyond any Javascript. So what if Steve Jobs gives Flash the thumbs down? Time-Warner and other big media companies have said they're going to continue with Flash, so it's only a matter of time before Steve Jobs either relegates Apple to permanent niche status or caves and allows Flash on Apple products. (My guess is for the immediate future he will prefer niche status to admitting he is wrong—look how long he maintained a mouse only needed a single button?—but that's just my opinion.) In any case, Flash will soon be available on a multitude of smart phones, including the Droid, so I am not worried.
Adobe will provide tools to convert to HTML5, but they are already following the HTML5 Path with some introductory tools. Just keep watch on adobe. They know what is going on. They just killed mobile flash so even though they argued with apple over it they finally did the right thing instead of stupidly holding on to it just because... hope that helps
I'm a Flex developer, but I think HTML5 is going to be huge. The full features of HTML5 are years away, and I don't think it's totally going to kill Flash. Flex will hold on to some part of the RIA market because it has a lot more going for than just a de facto standard client plugin -- LCDS/BlazeDS, plays nicely with ColdFusion and Java.
I like Flex for the long run. It'll lose some ground to HTML5, but there are areas where Flex will hold its advantage.
Disclaimer: I am author of Web Atoms JS
Flex/Flash is dead already, as usage of non PC devices is increasing everyday. Except old IE (IE<10) almost all features of Flash are already offered by browsers. File API, AJAX upload with progress bar,Canvas API, Indexed DB, Cross Domain message API & Web Sockets. And CSS3, WebGL with 3D can give flash like graphics.
Regarding Component Library & Binding, HTML5+JS lacks component driven development that flash offers. To bridge this gap, we created framework that gives similar functionality with all components to that of flex. Look at following image & see this blog which outlines similarities between Flex & Web Atoms JS.
http://akashkava.com/blog/439/migrating-from-flex-to-html5-with-web-atoms-js/
Here is link to documentation.
http://webatomsjs.neurospeech.com/docs
I've never really learned much about accessibility but it seems like an important topic.
When you build a website or piece of software, or when you're talking to a client about a website, where does accessibility come in? Or from your experience, if you don't have accessibility in something you've built for a client, do you get a lot of requests to include it, or does it limit you in some financial way?
What are the numbers, I guess. What's the return in your business, how many people have you talked to that need it? Do you yourself need accessibility features?
I do mainly Flex/Flash and it seems like I'll have to do a bit of work to have full accessibility.
Thanks for the help.
As a person with a disability myself, I am consious of adding accessibility features when I write software
Accessibility is an area of software design concerned with making software user interfaces avvessibile for people with physical or mental disabilities or imparements. Different people have different specific needs and you can't be expected to cater specifically to each but there are some broad groupings
Visual Imparements:
This includes blindness or color blindness. To assist in this area consider providing "good" alt text (clarified blow) and hints so that screen readers can present a view of your content that makes sense aurally. Providing easy access to links to raise text size and/or access to some high contrast stylesheet options is also a good idea.
Non-Mouse Users
There are a huge number of conditions that can prevent one from being able to successfully mouse, it took a few years for me and my brain, which is somewhat unreliable when it comes to spatial relationships to pick up the skill. For these people keyboard access is really helpful, I don't work in the web space so I'm not sure if there are standard keys to use, but these are communicated by screenreaders and tooltips so having any is better than none.
Hanselminutes episode #125 is quite educational. He talks with a blind user about accessibility on the web and in generalAccessibility is omitted from a lot of design processes, either because businesses don't have an immediate need for it and therefore don't consider it at all, or consider it a low priority feature. Leguslation in various countries has helped a bit in this regard, but the real problem is that accessibility in general is usually an afterthaught to the design process,
1"Good" alt text is judicious use of alt text that accentuates the content or purpose of a page, navigation elements should have alt text describing where interacting with them will take the user, similarly, things that aren't content, like spacers should have no alt text at all, because there is nothinng worse then hearing "Foo's widgets spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer nav_Products spacer nav_support"
I think accessibility is usually completely forgotten about (either implicitly or explicitly dismissed beforehand because of issues like cost) in most software development projects. Unless companies (or individual developers, more likely) already have experience with either people with disabilities or with writing software with disabilities of users in mind.
As a developer I at least try to do keyboard shortcuts correctly in software I work on (because that's something I can easily dog-food myself, since I try to keep hands-on-keyboard as much as possible). Apart from that it depends on whether there are requirements about accessibility.
I do think this kind of thing is part of "programming taxes", i.e. things that you as a developer should always be doing, but...
I am only aware of this - at least more than the average developer, I think - because I have once written software for a software magazine on floppy disk, or Flagazine. This was in PowerBasic 3.2, grown out of BASIC sources in a magazine, making these sources available by BBS and disk, eventually growing a menu around the little applications to easily start them, etc.
One of our primary users (and later members of the editorial staff) was blind and was appalled when we switched from text mode to an EGA mouse driven menu, as his TSR screenreader software couldn't do anything with graphics. It turned out that his speech synthesizer simply accepted text from a COM port. It had a small (8K I think?) buffer that would be instantly cleared on reception of (I think) an ASCII 1 character. And that was it.
So we made the graphical menu (and most other programs on the Flagazine) completely keyboard accessable at all times and in the graphical programs we use a small library I wrote to send ASCII text to a configured COM port. This had small utility methods like ClearBuffer(). With this, and the convention of speaking possible menu actions when pressing the space bar, made all of this software accessable to our blind users.
I even adapted a terminal application for my HP48 calculator (adding a clear buffer/screen on ASCII 1) so I could use that to emulate a speech synthesizer. I would then test all of our software in each Flagazine by attaching my HP48 with the emulator running, turning off my computer monitor and trying if I could use all the software without seeing anything.
Those were the days, about 12 years ago... ;-)
I am a blind individual so have to develop with accessibility in mind if I want to use my own programs. I find my self focusing on accessibility based on the type of application I’m writing. When doing command line or mainframe applications I don’t think about accessibility since those environments are inherently accessible. With web based applications I have to give some thought to accessibility but not a lot. This is mainly because I write simple web applications for limited use so don’t have to worry about making the interface appealing, just usable. The area I spend the most time focused on accessibility is desktop applications. For example using .net I need to make sure accessible properties are set properly and that labels are in the proper position in relation to a text box so my screen reader can find them and associate them with the proper control.
I currently do a lot of work in ActionScript 3.0, I also love to program in Java. Is JavaFX perfect for me? What is the general feeling on JavaFX, will it become a power house, or go down the same path as Java Applets? Could the designers I work with become comfortable with JavaFX to the same extent they are comfortable with ActionScript and JavaScript?
Just wanted to add my $.02... I've been working in JavaFX for the last 4 days on my first little side-project using it. As some background, I've been programming professionally for about 9 years, starting with C, and have been doing Java and C#/.NET for the last 6 yrs.
IMO, JavaFX its way more frustrating that it should be. Here are some gripes:
The syntax is just odd at times. It could easily be more like Java, since its JavaFX. But the syntax isn't an easy transition from Java.
The order of items in a .fx file actually matters, which means you run into stupid circular reference errors, and "oh you can't use this variable yet because it hasn't been initialized" problems that the compiler should handle with ease, but doesn't.
Random things just don't work. Actions/events on Swing controls don't always work, for example SwingSliderBar's onKeyPressed/released don't seem to be called.
Error handling is just bad. If an exception occurs that isn't handled, there is no real way to tell other than the Java console, and UI elements start to react funny. For example, make a SwingText box and bind its value to a variable. Now trying to edit the value in the text box will throw an exception because you cant edit the bound variable. However in the UI, the text box just starts having funny things happen. some characters only 1/2 paint, sometimes backspace does nothing, sometimes it deletes a character, sometimes you can press 2 keys ont eh keyboard like "1" and "2" and the text box will end up having "21" entered in it instead of "12", etc...
Although my absolute #1 problem with JavaFX development right now is Netbeans. It is pathetically bad at JFX. Can't debug, errors display wrong in the IDE (I've had it flag comments as errors!), the intellisence only works like 40% of the time, event he code templates preprogrammed in the IDE for drag & dropping controls aren't correct. I forget which one, but one of them drops a "&" at the end of the inserted code that is never valid and always has to be manually deleted... its just plain awful, and is unacceptable for a company like Sun.
Another gripe is general documentation. Its just lacking. Somehow the JavaFX API doesn't even come up as the #1 search result on google when searching for methods/classes. Tons of "examples" out on the web don't work any more as every version has major refactoring changes, and classes removed or renamed.
Overall, I give JFX a 4 out of 10. I want to like it, but JFX 1.1 just doesn't cut it... its definitely not what I would consider "production ready".
A resounding "meh".
When I looked at it a year ago, they had a one-way SVG to JavaFx conversion tool. Great, so you can author your visual content once, mark it up with a lot of behaviour, and then the next time you want to make it look good, then what?
If you take a look at this tutorial you can see what I mean. We're drawing stuff by dragging shapes from a palette into source code. OMGWTF. I am not showing that to my graphics department.
I hope I'm wrong about JavaFx, but I don't think they get it. Please, won't somebody at Sun give us a presentation layer that doesn't have its tentacles inextricably intertwined with code?
I left my last job to move from Java to .NET development.
There were a number of reasons for making the move, but the single biggest reason was that I was sick and tired of trying to build 1st class UI software with Java & Swing. It has been six years and I'm so glad I moved on. I see no reason to believe that Sun finally understands UI development with JavaFX.
I am convinced that Microsoft is finally in the process of giving us a platform to build rich interactive applications in the browser. I say that after having built commercially available software which was delivered as a Netscape Plugin 13 years ago, followed by ActiveX controls and Java Applets, and seeing all of these platforms fail to become ubiquitous in the enterprise for one reason or another.
I realize that Silverlight 2 is still lacking in depth and maturity, but Microsoft has shown me enough commitment at this point that I believe it will be the dominant RIA platform in a few short years - at least for projects which require a "real" programming language. I am sure Flash et al. is not going away anytime soon, but Flash is not appropriate for the kinds of software my company builds.
The icing on the cake for me is the fact that I will still be able to use Visual Studio, C# and a large percentage of my current code base (the core engine which is entirely separate from the UI). Of course, if you are coming from ActionScript, this would not help you.
One more important point is the fact that Silverlight and WPF share so much in common. Our plan is to share a large amount of implementation between Silverlight and WPF versions of our software. It is only a matter of time before WPF is the standard for Windows applications – I don’t know whether that is a couple of years or ten years, but it will clearly happen over time. Being able to target the most popular browsers / OS’s with Silverlight and Windows from the same code base is a tremendous advantage IMO.
If you know Java then moving to C# is a piece of cake. And unless you are using one of the nice (not free) Java IDEs, then even the free versions of Visual Studio will be an improvement over what you are used to. The hurdle will be learning the new way of doing things with XAML – but it’s some pretty cool stuff so you might actually enjoy it.
Although it appears fairly powerful in terms of capabilities, I'm kinda blah about JavaFX because of its structure and implementation. It seems like a really half-hearted attempt at getting into the Flash/Silverlight market. Too scripty.
I would argue in favor of going the Silverlight 2 route, but I'm primarily a C# developer so I'm a little biased there. If you don't like that route for whatever reason but still want a richer UX for your users, I'd suggest Flex; it seems much better organized than JavaFX to me.
Just my two cents on the subject.
If you know Java but want to do the stuff you thought was only feasible in Flash - then yes JavaFX would be good for you.
Without a doubt it's going to be much more easier to merge your Java knowledge with the design stuff.
And I believe the tooling will only get better which will make it simpler to use.
Unless you’re working on an internal app I would stay away from it. Users generally don’t want to have to deal with another program that accomplishes the same thing as Flash. I don’t think its install base is large enough yet to make it convenient for end users.
I've been developing Flash Applications with Flex for about 2 years now and I decided to give a try to JavaFX because we are constantly getting user complains that they cant use the applications from their IPhones (and I love Java).
That's one strike for Flash (no wide mobile support).
To be honest I was quite impressed with JavaFX (in a very bad way).
The documentation is incomplete.
The script is simply awful; its this weird hybrid between JSON and R with a feeling of a Java-deja-vu.
I spent the first 3 days painting polygons and making gradients with CODE... WTF!!
I tried to convince my graphic department to try it and they simply don't seam to grasp how the production suite is supposed to work, they keep complaining that Flex skinning is way easy and looks better in the end (Which is absolutely true).
The "CSS support" is simply a bad joke.
It generally feels like a mediocre attempt to offer an option for RIA frontend.
I can only think of a couple of good things about it:
It can be run from an IPhone / IPad and almost all mobile devices.
You have access to all the Java code you want which is great considering the limitations that ActionScript has (no overloading, no private constructors, etc). This is a great thing for us the programmers, but lets remember for a second that this is a frontend/presentation technology... that means that users will have to actually see the thing, so if it doesn't look good and have cool animations / effects they wont dig it.
The Script is way less verbose that MXML files are (with the cost of being unintelligible).
Talking about performance... Flash Player is this huge green blob that keeps growing and growing until no RAM is left compared to how JavaFX runs (JVM rocks! unfortunately this has nothing to do with the actual JavaFX API its just that the JVM... well it rocks!).
It has this cool feature where you can drag the applet outside the Web Browser.
In the end, Im happy I have an option to go mobile but this is light years way of the matureness that Flex/Flash has accomplished regarding RIA applications. The future of Flex/Flash as a wide distributed web technology is not clear (it may end up being used only for annoying banners and online games), no one wants to depend in a close technology as the Flash Player is, that's why the whole Web community is striving to get Flash out of the picture (HTML5 video support, No Flash Player for Apple devices, etc). So an attempt to have an open one is always welcomed, it's just that JavaFX feels like this incomplete rushed beta version of something that Sun felt obligated to come up with in a weekend during a bad hangover.
I Hope this is useful to someone (and offensive to someone at Sun/Oracle =p ).
I've spent the weekend 'playing with it. I see nothing useful in it. It's a iteration of swing / awt. I guess it will be nice for mobile devices but beyond that its nothing useful.
Ideally I'd like to use flash but find it painful to intergrate with a backend of any type.
Well, the syntax of both ActionScript and JavaFX seem to share a lot of similarities, so maybe "Yes".
I'm learning JavaFX script at the moment and I actually like it. But what I don't like, and is maybe it's biggest drawback, is it's awful documentation, which is often not up to date or incomplete.
I've been working on a JavaFX application for several months now. Personally, I love the language. They seemed to me to have made some very smart decisions in choosing the syntax and language constructs (I can bore you with a list if you'd like). I've been programming in it for a few months now and it seems like a very efficient and even enjoyable language to program in.
I think its best use right now is for desktop applications and/or applications deployed through webstart. On the desktop it has a rich set of features and can still make use of the other features of Swing and the rest of Java. From what I hear applets are still slow on some systems, and without Android support the mobile capabilities are non-features. The applet/mobile/TV/web support seems to me more like a bonus for desktop developers then as key features that would get you to use the technology.
So it really all depends on what you plan to use it for. If you are building desktop applications that you want to run on the Java VM that can make use of easy multimedia and rich ui controls, then I think there are good reasons to look at the language. WebStart has improved quite a bit and makes for a nice deployment tool. If you are looking to build web applications, then it might be interesting, but for now I'd say HTML5/ajax are more relevant (you might want to look at ZK in this case). However even with HTML5 ajax has its limitations, and if you find yourself running into them then JavaFX may offer you options. For mobile platforms it won't be relevant until there is stable Android support - in that case I'd just stick with the Android platform itself for now.