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There's nothing technical that prevents beautiful, fast Java apps. I thought that Java FX looked pretty in the screenshots[0]. It just so happens that Java is m

There's nothing technical that prevents beautiful, fast Java apps. I thought that Java FX looked pretty in the screenshots[0]. It just so happens that Java is mostly targeted towards people that value functionality over GUI design or performance. Swing[1] (especially in it's default Metal look and feel) isn't the prettiest, but it is skinnable. It's used because it's platform independent (because its predecessor wasn't), and supports more than Windows, Mac, and Linux (think things like Solaris, HPUX, IRIX, etc). [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=javafx&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=javafx&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=image... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_(Java) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_(Java)

ptx 8y ago
Java FX does look pretty, but the menu bar implementation is as broken as the one in Swing: * Switching to a different window with alt-tab will have moved keyboard focus to the menu bar when you switch back. * Holding down the mouse button, pointing at menus to open them and releasing to activate an item – the way people did it in ancient times and which has been supported everywhere forever – does not work. * To avoid submenus disappearing as you try to move the cursor towards them, GUI toolkits use either a small delay or something more clever to keep the submenu for a bit while you try to reach it. Except for Swing and JavaFX, which do neither, leading to a frustrating user experience. Interestingly, they have documented the correct behaviour in the JavaFX wiki[1], but it's apparently not implemented. (They had similar design documentation on the Swing wiki, which I can't find now, which was also never implemented.) (The Swing menu bar is broken in many similar ways, but in case someone is wondering why it works in IntelliJ, they implemented[2] the expected behaviour themselves.) [1] https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/OpenJFX/Menu+User+Experience+Documentation https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/OpenJFX/Menu+User+Expe... [2] https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/blob/master/platform/platform-impl/src/com/intellij/openapi/wm/impl/IdeMenuBar.java https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/blob/master/...

ptx 8y ago

Java FX does look pretty, but the menu bar implementation is as broken as the one in Swing: * Switching to a different window with alt-tab will have moved keyboard focus to the menu bar when you switch back. * Holding down the mouse button, pointing at menus to open them and releasing to activate an item – the way people did it in ancient times and which has been supported everywhere forever – does not work. * To avoid submenus disappearing as you try to move the cursor towards them, GUI toolkits use either a small delay or something more clever to keep the submenu for a bit while you try to reach it. Except for Swing and JavaFX, which do neither, leading to a frustrating user experience. Interestingly, they have documented the correct behaviour in the JavaFX wiki[1], but it's apparently not implemented. (They had similar design documentation on the Swing wiki, which I can't find now, which was also never implemented.) (The Swing menu bar is broken in many similar ways, but in case someone is wondering why it works in IntelliJ, they implemented[2] the expected behaviour themselves.) [1] https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/OpenJFX/Menu+User+Experience+Documentation https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/OpenJFX/Menu+User+Expe... [2] https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/blob/master/platform/platform-impl/src/com/intellij/openapi/wm/impl/IdeMenuBar.java https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/blob/master/...