It’s been a couple of years since I’ve done any Java work, my last efforts were using Swing. I’m poking around with a cross-platform client app that will interact with a Rails web service. JavaFX is one of the options I’m considering, but I’m concerned at the out-of-the-box aesthetic. Does JavaFX have a native look and feel option for the JavaFX controls (not Swing)?
I’m getting the impression that if I want to build a line of business application in Java, I should probably stick with Swing which is a shame since I like some of the features of JavaFX like binding, a terse syntax, and easy support for REST client programming.
I haven’t see that. At best, you can use the extensive support of CSS styling we got with 1.3 to mimic native look and feel, but that’s a big job! Not even sure how to deal with various themes we got on modern systems…
I suppose the point of RIAs is to bring their own look or to be flexible enough to allow to do your own shinny look, not to look like a random bland application on your platform… 🙂
(Now, if I like skinnable applications, I also appreciate GUI frameworks using native controls or looking as such, like Qt (vs. GTK+ for example), precisely to provide good old “bland” applications not breaking user experience.)