JavaFX

Most of the content of this web site is bundled into a JavaFX Reference presentation, an application described below. In addition there are summary PDFs for the most of the parts of the presentation:

There is also a summary diagram for menus:

The FX Reference Application

The FX Reference application is bundled in a Jar file that can be downloaded here. If your computer has the Java run-time system installed you should be able to execute the program by double clicking on the icon for the Jar file.

The browser pane at the top of the application window is a minimalist web browser that only views a web presentation about the primary types of objects in a JavaFX application, or one of its major subsections. The presentation has numerous example applets along with their code.

When you navigate the browser pane to a page that has an applet, the applet is displayed in the applet pane at the bottom of the application window. For each applet there are also reference pages linked into the browser pane from Oracle's tutorial and class documentation web sites.

Using the FX Reference Application

You can set the font size for the presentation text and applets with the "Font Size" menu. You can toggle between normal size and full-screen display by clicking on the F11 keyboard key.

You can navigate through the presentation using either the menu on its left or your keyboard keys. You can get more information on navigation in the browser pane here.

Note: When you operate controls in an applet it gets the focus. This means that characters typed at the keyboard are sent to the applet so keyboard navigation for the browser pane does not work. To get it working again just click somewhere in the browser pane.

The best place to start is "Introduction to JavaFX". Its explanations are only intended to give the reader some basic terminology and a feel for the objects and their interactions. Then details are presented in the other presentations.

The other presentations are intended as reference material. They show common uses of the various types of JavaFX objects, with limited discussions of alternative uses. In order to enhance their value as references, they have links to more complete web pages such as Oracle's JavaFX tutorials and JavaDoc pages.

There is a lot of information in the presentations; more than most people can easily memorize. Plan on looking up information for quite a while after you start writing JavaFX code. You will automatically remember the information that you use most frequently.