Develop Reference

Java desktop application frameworks vs. JavaFX

There are a lot of Java "application frameworks" such as those listed in http://pivot.apache.org/demos/ which pretty much all use Swing as the GUI toolkit, or in the case of Eclipse, SWT.
However I have not seen any obvious frameworks for JavaFX. Why is this?
If looking at the "Hollywood Principle", where the framework calls you, I would think JavaFX already does this, but then I'm confused because it would seem Swing and JavaFX do mostly the same role, which is as the GUI layer. But they both do event loops and callbacks/events/observer patterns, etc.
Does merely implementing an event loop and calling your event handler not qualify as an "application framework"?
If not, are there any frameworks based on JavaFX directly (rather than embedding JavaFX in a Swing control)? What would such a framework provide that JavaFX standalone does not?
Sorry for the "obviousness" of this question, but it's not obvious to me.
thanks.

There are plenty of them looks like your research has not been very thorough
http://efxclipse.org/ - in fact it leverages the same core stuff than the Eclipse 4 IDE / RCP 4 but replaces the SWT layer with JavaFX
http://www.jrebirth.org/
http://www.drombler.org/drombler-fx/
http://jacpfx.org/
As I'm the author of e(fx)clipse I'm biased but I know first hand that it is used on (big) commercial projects

In my opinion, Swing, JavaFX and also SWT are graphical toolkit, providing a set of basic widgets. There are not "Application" frameworks because their main goal is to display an User Interface. But you can use them to build an application without any other library by using basic features.
A good sample application can be found here: https://github.com/angelicalleite/museuid
It looks really nice with data picked from a mysql database, but if you read carefully the source code you can notice that all SQL queries are performed within the UI thread which will slow down the UI responsiveness.
This is one of the reason you should use an Application Framework.
Their goals vary and are numerous but they all are dedicated to ease your application development by keeping complex things (like multithreading, messaging) out of your application code.
Your choice shall be done according to your personal convictions about architecture and dependencies you want to use (or don't).
I'm the author of JRebirth (disclaimer), but I sometimes have a look on other frameworks, so you can make your choice by asking yourself some basic questions:
Do you want/need OSGI support ?
=> Yes efxclipse, DromblerFX, DEMUX
=> No JRebirth,JacpFX, DataFX, griffonFX, afterburner.fx
Do you want a minimalist framework?
=> Yes afterburner.fx
Do you want/need event messaging?
Do you want to share code?
Do you want modularization?
Do you require Java 7 support ?
How do you want to manage your application threads.
I certainly forget a lot of questions.
In fact you SHOULD use one of these Application Framework (building your own will be time-consuming), it will defintely speed up your developments and secure them, the remaining questions are :
What AF will fit your needs ?
What AF will be convenient to use for you and your team ?
Choosing an AF using patterns you don't like could be painful, in any case you can contribute to any available AF because they are all open sourced.
Hope it helps,

The simple answer to this is: JavaFX is much younger than Swing - at least as a standard JDK library. As a matter of fact, it only became a "real" standard part with Java 8. If you check the history, you see the following facts:
Before JavaFX 2 (released 2011), developers needed to learn a scripting language.
Also before JavaFX 2, the implementation aimed at being platform independent and therefore made no use of system-specific resources which can make a big difference in graphics and animation.
Read through it, and you'll find some more interesting details which can be summed up in that probably most developers have only been "seriously" noticing JavaFX within the last 5 years or so. Swing goes back much further (especially as being baked into the standard Java Runtime Environment), so naturally there are far more libraries aimed at Swing than at FX.

Converting an existing web app to desktop application

I saw some other similar questions on this topic here but they were not very helpful so I a posing this question.
What is the fastest way to convert a reasonably sized, simple web app to a Java desk top based client targeted for pc and mac? Unfortunately I can not share a whole lot of details about the app here due to various reasons. The most complicated UI in the app though is a page that contains a multi level threaded discussions (please see here for an illustrative example of what I am talking about.) The current web app is based on python so I can not re use anything from the server side code (dont think this is an issue)
I have never done any swing or awt or any other Java based thick client GUI work. My thinking is more or less defined by web based applications. I am capable of doing end to end web app development (including backend and decent UI using HTML, CSS and JS) using Java or python. For your answers please focus on Java solutions only.
So here are my questions
What is the best framework or tool I should use? I found some of the following tools on the web as part of my research.
Awt - does not look like this is a good choice.
Swing which I believe is bundled with regular Java SDK/JRE. - This may be my best
bet.
SWT which seems to compliment Swing in some fashion.
Griffon based on an article here. This framework uses Groovy ( I
have no clue about Groovy, btw) Adobe Air flex. Any open source
frameworks?
What are some of the other issues that I need to keep in mind? Some that I would like your comments on are:
How does the fact that it needs to be deployed on the client complicates things? Since we are using Java, I believe this to be a non issue. I am aware of the usual trade offs between a web based app and a desktop app (e.g. ease of deployment and upgrades etc etc.)
How easy is it to create a one click installer and bundle the app and the environment needed - eg. JRE etc?
The product needs to work on Mac and Windows. Does that complicate things in any way (Again, since it is Java I am assuming there are no gotchas but would like to be forewarned if there are any)
What is the framework or technology that may be good to have on the resume as a skill set?
My deadline is a max of 2 months - would that be enough for a reasonably simple web app given that I need to learn all of these technologies? I am just trying to get a sense here - I know it is most likely impossible to give an accurate answer - just assume I am smart enough and can pick up any unfamiliar tech stack fast enough.
Thank you!

GUI toolkit
Given "Mac and Windows", I'd say that settles my recommendation as "Swing" (perhaps with SwingX1).
I agree with your assessment of AWT. It does not support formatted text in any component out-of-the-box. It also lacks trees, tables (and other components) & people with recent experience using it. Note though, that it is also "bundled with regular Java SDK/JRE" just like Swing, it is just that it is older and less enabled than Swing generally.
If anything complements Swing it would be SwingX. SwingX is built on Swing and provides advanced controls that are not available 'out of the box' in the J2SE.
Swing and SWT are mutually incompatible - use one or the other.
I have no experience with Griffon.
Swing is the most used of the options outlined, so for getting help (ignoring other potentially important factors in the decision), it would be a good choice.
Note 1) Add SwingX if they have any groovy components that present threaded conversations easily, but I suspect a JTextPane would suffice.
Deployment
As far as deployment goes, that is a little more tricky than it seems. Many desktop computers do not come with Java as standard. Those that already have it, might have an old version.
To ensure a JRE of the right minimum version to run the app. is available, use the deployJava.js (mentioned, with links, in the JWS page below).
To provide a 'one click' launch experience for the user, look to Java Web Start.
Cross-platform gotcha's
Unfortunately, though Java is x-plat, there are plenty of things that programmers can do that stuff that up. E.G.
Not accounting for the platform default:
File encoding (file.encoding2)
Line break (line.separator2)
File separator (file.separator2)
Coding fixed size ('absolute layout') apps. that will be shown as different sized apps. on other OS.
...
Note 2. That is showing the property to use for each.
Timetable
Obviously I cannot speak for you, but I can tell you that I would have had no chance of going from 'which technology' to a 'deployable app' within two months.
Hope you're more capable than me! ;)

You said that you wanted a Java solution, but be aware that there are plenty of Gui options in Python, and you already have your web application written in Python.
Groovy is a different programming language than Java, but Groovy runs on the JVM. Do you want a Java solution or a JVM solution? I ask because you mention Griffon.
Assuming you want Java, I think your main options are Swing, SWT, JavaFX 2, and Apache Pivot. Oracle has said that they intend for JavaFX to replace Swing as the GUI platform of choice. That said, JavaFX 2 is in its infancy, and only a preview release is available for Mac right now. The upshot of JavaFX and Apache Pivot is that you could use the same code for your web application as your desktop application.

You can try doing so in small steps:
* As a first step you can create an applications with SWT and embed your application in a browser control.
* Then you should move pages and some controls from the web app to the desktop one by one.
In this way you can get a minimal application in hours :)
P.S. If you want an iOS app with this approach it's worth looking at this open source project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhoneGap

Cross-platform desktop development

I need an advice for cross-platform engine/framework for desktop PC application development (Windows, MAC, Linux). I see 3 possibilities, Qt, Java and Adobe AIR.
It must be easy to install (run-time is a drawback, but C++ wrapper and/or installer can solve the issue I think).
It must be fast and have a rich GUI (not 3D game, but definitely some 2D graphics).
The development environment must be easy to establish and the UI development tool must have drag&drop functionality to define application layout.
Target application must have native look and feel. The professional paid support should be available.

All of these criteria are met by Qt, with the exception of "native look and feel". There is no such thing as a cross-platform framework with native feel, especially on OS X, where users are very demanding about the "feel" of applications. If you really want native look and feel, you are best served by writing a shared framework in C++ or C# and then providing native GUI on each platform (you can use MonoMac to provide a native Cocoa UI using C# instead of the native Objective-C, if that's your cup of tea).
That said, we've been very happy with Qt (and the Commercial support) for cross-platform development. Particularly the new OpenGL accelerated 2D Scene API makes animated UIs quite easy. QtCreator is a decent IDE with visual designer support.

Contrary to others, probably due to the fact that I worked on a real-time trading Swing application, I consider Java to be the best answer to your requirements (however, i consider this question as subjective, as previous answers already shows). Let me develop.
It must be easy to install (run-time is a drawback, but C++ wrapper and/or installer can solve the issue I think).
Using Java, you can rely upon Java Web Start, which is, as far as i know, the best solution for easy to use applications : you click a link on the browser, and the application is installed in start menu/desktop and started as soon as it is downloaded. Seems like Adobe AIR offers an equivalent feature, but to my mind Java Web Start integrates, due to the deepness of its ecosystem, far more powerfull distribution solutions (like, as an example, the easy ability to generate the .jnlp file on demand).
It must be fast and have a rich GUI (not 3D game, but definitely some 2D graphics).
Contrary to most popular belief, generating good graphics in Java is possible. Take as an example a look at excellent filthy rich clients companion site of the excellent book.
The development environment must be easy to establish and the UI development tool must have drag&drop functionality to define application layout.
Eclipse is a defacto industry standard for IDEs, and it integrate multiple DnD IDE builders. I would simply take as example the recently liberated Windows Builder Pro.
Target application must have native look and feel. The professional paid support should be available.
Well, Swing default look'n'feel is indeed a little different from system one. however, there are excellent third-party ones, listed here, as an example.
Finally, some examples :
the excellent Palantir Technologies blog list some outstanding Swing applications
Gephi is a rather complete and efficient high-volume graph viewer
My previous work (don't consider it as a masked ad, it's only a way to show some rather solid Swing).

I would not recommend Java for desktop development. I do not care what other say, Java is still slow compared to native languages like C++. I would go with Qt. The IDE has a GUI builder and can be integrated into Eclipse or Visual Studio.
Here's a helpful resource:
http://qt.nokia.com/products/

Have a look at Appcelerator Titanium: it basically wraps a web app in a browser. You can have anything you want in a GUI using wen tech, but it looks like an ap[p.

Strangely, nobody mentioned Real Studio (now Xojo) which does meet all your requirements:
It is easy to install and does not require a separate run-time
It compiles to native code so is reasonably fast
It has a good UI library that is native for each platform
The IDE is very nice with drag and drop UI designers
Target applications are fully native and use native controls

First of have to mention http://wxwidgets.org/ , one of the most popular X-platoform frameoworks. Depending on the complexity of your application and the requirements to the "nativeness", a cross-platform framework may work for you. The x-platform applications built with framework usually feel a bit "alien", especially on the Mac, but workable. A good example is http://taskcoach.org/.
If your users are tolerant to hearty download sizes, hefty memory requirements and a bit of non-native look-and-feel then plain Java, eclipse RCP or NetBeans platform can work for you. You may save quite a bit of development time going this route.
However I am not aware of cross-platform framework that satisfies all your requirements.
If you need to get to a production-level application, the strategy that I have seen worked best was to stay native but split the UI-dependent code into cross-platform (e.g. C++ business logic) and UI. This way, you will use native interface building tools (each platform has something good there). Depending on the complexity and "finish" requirements of your application you may actually save time going this route.
A great overview of the "Native X-Platform" process can be found in this answer by Chris Hanson.

tool to graph method calls over time

I'm looking for a tool that can graph method calls over time for a java app. Perhaps a profiler or other log parsing tool?
I know I can write something in python and I'll work towards doing this. I was just hoping not to reinvent the wheel.
edit:
What I ended up doing was writing some python to parse my logs and take snapshots at 5 second intervals. Then I used google docs and a spreadsheet to visualize my data with a chart that had 2 columns of data: time and frequency. Google docs was super useful. Use the "move chart to own sheet" for a nice fullsize view. I'll post my python when I clean it up a bit.
here is the output graph from the method I specify in my comment

Check out JProfiler. I wouldn't suggesting writing your own tool, this is a space with lots of players already....unless you're really looking for something to do. :-)

you can also check the NetBeans profiler, that's quite straight forward if you application a standard Java code (I mean, it's a bit more complicated with projects deployed in Glassfish for instance)
(from Google Image from Dr. Dobbs)
EDIT: sorry, after another look at your question, it's not exactly what you were looking for, but it might be interesting anyway

YourKit Java Profiler is probably the most powerful Java profiler out there. It is not free but not unreasonably expensive either. If it doesn't have the feature you are looking for, I kinda doubt any application would.

VisualVM is a visual tool integrating several commandline JDK tools and lightweight profiling capabilities. Designed for both production and development time use, it further enhances the capability of monitoring and performance analysis for the Java SE platform.

Has anyone used "GWT Designer"?

Haven't seen anything about it here but it seems to solve one of the problems with GWT - the fact that you have to write Java code to generate your GUI. Instead this software allows you to design the GUI using drag-and-drop tools - a WYSIWYG interface.
I'm not trying to sell the product, by the way.
I just want to know whether it works as advertised, is effective, easy to use, etc?
Anyone have any experience to answer these questions?

GWT-Designer is now freely available as the product has been acquired by Google. http://googlewebtoolkit.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-relaunches-instantiations.html
Google will improve the product which is already quite good.

I don't think that the lack of a GUI editor is a problem with GWT. Consider HTML, there are plenty of WYSIWYG editors for that (like Dreamweaver) but most experienced web designers don't touch that stuff with a barge pole, they hand code it. Not because they're masochists, but because they want control over the source, they want to make it clean and readable. Coding is a scientific artwork, best left to Human Beings ;)
I tried GWT Designer very early on, and I found that it was fairly poor (and only worked on Windows because it had some dlls that went along with it), but things may have changed drastically since then.

I'm using GWT Designer for my Capstone project. I did start from scratch, and it worked quite well. I'm no fan of WYSIWYG software, so I was pleasantly surprised. Here's a link to a post I did on it:
http://benarchie.blogspot.com/2010/12/gwt-designer.html

GWT-Designer is getting better all the time. Give it another look some time, it's catching up to things like visual studio in my opinion.

Personally I like GWT Designer for Eclipse and it is free.
It is a rapid development tool. Not a solution for non-programmers however it will accelerate a Java coders ability to learn how to use the GWT API. Once you learn the tool it will reduce coding time.
I found it necessary to frequently switch between code and WYSIWYG editor to get things exactly how I wanted them. The two editors work well together. You will still need to refer to Java Docs to gain a full understanding. Most of the Java Docs have excellent Java and UiBinder code examples in them which are ready to cut and paste.
Creating GUIs in UiBinder is definitely the way to go because it simplifies the hierarchical nature of laying out GUI elements. The API is missing some information about how to hand code in UiBinder however between GWT-Designer, Java Docs and Google, you will find an answer.
The built in Jetty web server also simplifies deploying and testing on your local machine. I was able to make small code changes and see the effect in the web browser immediately.
Try these tutorials.
http://code.google.com/eclipse/docs/gwt_uibinder.html
http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/tools/gwtdesigner/tutorials/stockwatcher.html

I've tried GWT Designer recently. It still looks poor. If you don't want to lose flexibility, I would recommend to use GWTLab

Just tried it then. Most of my ui.xml files wouldn't open because it doesn't currently support #UiField(provided=true).
The ui.xml files that didn't use this feature would often crash with things like UnableToCompleteException.
Maybe if you started from scratch using designer you might have more luck.

I had a year's subscription but did not renew it, being a bit disappointed with the product.
1) The designer injects all Java code adding creation/property setting/event handling to the module you are building in a most unecomic way. Additionally, it is pretty difficult to modularize the application. Compared to Flex, for instance, the number of lines of code gets easily double or triple in a module and seeing the forest from the trees is not easy.
2) Web applications I built only a a couple of years ago CEASED WORKING possibly due to changes in Javascript engines. That was something I did not expect and is very possibly GWT's fault.
3) The GUI designer needs A LOT of CPU power and so does the build phase.
The concept is nice, however, I admit and GWT designer is the only of its kind. The feeling of difficulty in modularizing may well be my lazyness.
EDIT: Shortly after I wrote the above comment Instantiations/Google introduced the UiBinder concept which makes a lot more sense than the original amalgamation. Now it is a lot more professional.