| As we complete the final edits and our printing deadline looms, we’re excited and grateful to be involved with JavaFX. In February 2009, JavaFX reached the 100,000,000th download of the JavaFX runtime.1 The ranks of JavaFX developers will undoubtedly grow as more developers see the flexibility and power of JavaFX. This synergy, we believe, will fuel continued development of the language and enhancements to the runtime environment.
This book is designed to get you up to speed quickly with JavaFX. JavaFX is a scripting language. It’s not Java, but it’s built on top of the Java runtime. You don’t need experience with Java to succeed with JavaFX. Indeed, JavaFX’s declarative syntax makes life easier if you don’t think like a developer. Instead, JavaFX encourages you to think like a designer.
What does it mean to “think like a designer”? Basically, it means to visualize the structure of your application or widget and compose your scene out of simple shapes and other building blocks. In JavaFX, you compose a scene by declaring objects. |