Thursday, December 22, 2011

JavaFX 2.0.2 Delivered with Java 7 Update 2

The JavaTM SE 7 Update 2 Release Notes state that this update contains "new JVM (Java HotSpot Virtual Machine, version 22) that improves reliability and performance" along with support for Oracle Solaris 11 and "Firefox 5 and later". Perhaps most interesting of the update's new features, however, is "JavaFX is included with Java SE." These Java 7 Update 2 release notes reference the JavaFX 2.0.2 Release Notes for more details on the version of JavaFX included with Java 7 Update 2. The JavaFX 2.0.2 Release Notes confirm the inclusion of this version of JavaFX with Java 7 Update 2. Specifically, these notes state, "Note that starting with Java SE 7 update 2, the JDK includes the JavaFX SDK and the JavaFX Runtime is installed along with the JRE."

The following images are screen snapshots taken of the Java 7 Update 2 installation process.

Once the JDK 7 Update 2 installation process is completed with JavaFX 2.0.2 installed immediately after the Java JDK installation, the JavaFX SDK and runtime are available at C:\Program Files\Oracle as shown in the next screen snapshot.

As the above screen snapshots demonstrate, the JavaFX 2 JARs still need to be explicitly listed on the classpath because even with their installation as part of JDK 7 Update 2, they are installed in separate directories not automatically included in the Java applications' classpath. This is not as convenient as it will be when JavaFX is formerly included in Java SE and JavaFX classes do not need to be placed explicitly on the classpath, but being able to download JavaFX SDK with the Java SE SDK is a minor convenience.

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