Starting with JDK 11, Oracle is making JavaFX easier to adopt by making the technology available as a separate download, decoupled from the JDK. These changes clear the way for new contributors to engage in the open source OpenJFX community. Meanwhile, Oracle customers can benefit from continued commercial support for JavaFX in the Oracle JDK 8 through at least 2022.
JavaFX was publicly unveiled at JavaOne 2007. It was immediately compared with Adobe Flex and Microsoft Silverlight for its scripting and cross platform hardware-accelerated UI abilities. The technology was fully open-sourced in 2011, and became part of the Oracle JDK download a year later. Under Oracle’s stewardship, it continued evolving in the OpenJDK community, attracting a passionate following of its own as a cross-platform desktop application toolkit.
JavaFX has found an audience among developers and ISVs producing unique desktop applications and solutions for specific markets blending together multimedia, web and visualization technologies. There are a number of open source libraries, frameworks and tools available to developers.
With the Java Platform Module System in place since Java SE 9, it now more viable to decouple JavaFX from the JDK, in order to make it available as a separate download. This will make it easier for developers using JavaFX to have more freedom and flexibility with the framework. Moreover, with our focus on increasing the release cadence of OpenJDK, JavaFX needs to be able to move forward at a pace driven by the contributions from Oracle and others in the OpenJFX community. Oracle plans to implement this decoupling starting with Java 11 (18.9 LTS).
A few weeks ago, Oracle announced the extension of Java 8 public updates through at least January 2019 and through 2020 for personal (non-corporate) use. More details are now available in this white paper. The white paper also provides additional information on Applets and Web Start support on Java SE 8 as they will not be included in Java 11 (18.9 LTS). Finally, there is more information about the road map for JavaFX Including Oracle’s plans to ship and support JavaFX in Oracle JDK 8 at least through 2022.
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Source : Oracle Cloud : Donald Smith Sr. Director of Product Management
