Tooling
Developers intending to develop a JavaFX application will most likely deal with three technologies: Java, CSS and FXML.
To simplify development, the project provides:
- Java: wizards and templates for projects
- CSS: A specialized editor that understands the JavaFX specific CSS properties
- FXML: A specialized XML editor providing autocompletion based on information gathered from JDT
To help developers to build and deploy their applications, JavaFX provides specialized ant-tasks that aid the developer when packaging an application as an installable unit (msi, rpm, dmg). e(fx)clipse tooling provides a specialized editor to help the developer configure and drive the build process.
For developers who do not want to define their UI in XML, the project provides an alternative format named FXGraph that looks similar to JSON. More information about the format can be found at http://efxclipse.org/trac/wiki/FXGraph
Developers who are developing JavaFX applications on top of OSGi will most likely use PDE as their development tool. Because JavaFX is not on the bootclasspath, PDE needs to be tweaked in order to allow a decent development experience. Besides the low-level integration into PDE, the project also provides wizards to easily bootstrap applications.
Runtime
Equinox
JavaFX is not on the bootclasspath and not JSRed until Java9. So Equinox will not know about it out of the box. e(fx)clipse provides an extension for equinox to fill this gap.
Beside this low level support, the project provides all sorts of utilities, for example easened integration of JavaFX components when run inside OSGi.
Eclipse Databinding
Eclipse Databinding is a technology to bind domain objects to UI-Controls. JavaFX has a custom property and binding system. e(fx)clipse provides adapters for the JavaFX property system so that default Eclipse databinding can be used.
EMF
Developers using EMF to model their domain models often use code generated out of their Ecore definition. This allows them to setup structured controls like List, Table and Tree with very few lines of code. The project provides integration for EMF edit so that developers get the same benefits they do when using EMF in conjunction with SWT.
e4 & Eclipse 4 Application Platform
The Eclipse 4 Application Platform has been designed from day one to be widget toolkit neutral. The e(fx)clipse project provides so called JavaFX-renderers, allowing developers to leverage all parts of the Eclipse 4 Application Platform (Dependency Injection, Application Model, Command-Framework, .....) without using SWT.
