I would really like to see a non-trivial app built on JavaFX in Kotlin, with the following properties:
- Does not look ugly.
- Is not composed of _merely_ OEM widgets. But includes custom elements, like one would normally see on websites (and by extension, Electron apps).
- Is lightweight and response, not just in terms of CPU and RAM, but in terms of user experience (think VSCode vs Android Studio).
I started with swing then shortly thereafter switched to JavaFX and it was a joy to use it for this usecase. Really easy to make what we needed in small amount of code and it is performing well and is really stable (runs 24h/7 without problems)
Gluon is taking a pretty neat approach with javafx (think reactive native with javafx):
I haven't browsed their repos but if you were to look for anyone promoting jfx it would be these guys.
Additionally, their design are bad(I mean their Java API).
We spend a whole year making an app with it, at the end we decided move away from it, like the rest of the java community if fact that do not really support desktop applications anymore.
I don't see why the custom XML should be a problem. Definitely you are not supposed to edit the .fxml files by hand, especially when you have apps like Scene Builder that allow you to design everything from a GUI.
> And it requires custom CSS too.
That's true only for a few JavaFX-specific properties. The CSS syntax doesn't change very much. Also, it's not a surprising feature: QT, the C++ GUI framework, also uses custom CSS.