Swing vs JavaFx for desktop applications

Question

I have a very big program that is currently using SWT  The program can be run on both Windows  Mac and Linux  and it is a big desktop application with many elements  Now SWT being somewhat old I would like to switch to either Swing or JavaFX  And I would like to hear your thoughts on three things   My main concern is what will be better for a desktop GUI application   I looked online and a lot of people suggest that JavaFX is just as good as Swing  but I didn t see many valid arguments except simple opinion flame wars   It has to work on both Windows  Mac and some popular Linux distributions    What will be cleaner and easier to maintain  and what will be faster to build from scratch    I am using MVC methology in my application  if that is of any help

User · Answer

As stated by Oracle  JavaFX is the next step in their Java based rich client strategy  Accordingly  this is what I recommend for your situation      What would be easier and cleaner to maintain    JavaFX has introduced several improvements over Swing  such as  possibility to markup UIs with FXML  and theming with CSS  It has great potential to write a modular  clean  amp  maintainable code       What would be faster to build from scratch    This is highly dependent on your skills and the tools you use    For swing  various IDEs offer tools for rapid development  The best I personally found is the GUI builder in NetBeans  JavaFX has support from various IDEs as well  though not as mature as the support Swing has at the moment  However  its support for markup in FXML  amp  CSS make GUI development on JavaFX intuitive        MVC Pattern Support    JavaFX is very friendly with MVC pattern  and you can cleanly separate your work as  presentation  FXML  CSS   models Java  domain objects  and logic Java   IMHO  the MVC support in Swing isn t very appealing  The flow you ll see across various components lacks consistency    For more info  please take a look these FAQ post by Oracle regarding JavaFX here    JavaFX Frequently Asked Questions

User · Answer

I don t think there s any one right answer to this question  but my advice would be to stick with SWT unless you are encountering severe limitations that require such a massive overhaul    Also  SWT is actually newer and more actively maintained than Swing   It was originally developed as a replacement for Swing using native components

User · Answer

What will be cleaner and easier to maintain    All things being equal  probably JavaFX - the API is much more consistent across components  However  this depends much more on how the code is written rather than what library is used to write it      And what will be faster to build from scratch    Highly dependent on what you re building  Swing has more components around for it  3rd party as well as built in  and not all of them have made their way to the newer JavaFX platform yet  so there may be a certain amount of re-inventing the wheel if you need something a bit custom  On the other hand  if you want to do transitions   animations   video stuff then this is orders of magnitude easier in FX   One other thing to bear in mind is  perhaps  look and feel  If you absolutely must have the default system look and feel  then JavaFX  at present  can t provide this  Not a big must have for me  I prefer the default FX look anyway  but I m aware some policies mandate a restriction to system styles   Personally  I see JavaFX as the  up and coming  UI library that s not quite there yet  but more than usable   and Swing as the borderline-legacy UI library that s fully featured and supported for the moment  but probably won t be so much in the years to come  and therefore chances are FX will overtake it at some point

User · Answer

No one has mentioned it  but JavaFX does not compile or run on certain architectures deemed  servers  by Oracle  e g  Solaris   because of the missing  jfxrt jar  support  Stick with SWT  until further notice

User · Answer

I d look around to find some  3rd party   components that do what you want  I ve had to create custom Swing components for an agenda view where you can book multiple resources  as well as an Excel-like grid that works well with keyboard navigation and so on  I had a terrible time getting them to work nicely because I needed to delve into many of Swing s many intricacies whenever I came upon a problem  Mouse and focus behaviour and a lot of other things can be very difficult to get right  especially for a casual Swing user  I would hope that JavaFX is a bit more future-orientated and smooth out of the box

User · Answer

On older notebooks with integrated video Swing app starts and works much faster than JavaFX app  As for development  I d recommend switch to Scala - comparable Scala Swing app contains 2  3 times less code than Java  As for Swing vs SWT  Netbeans GUI considerably faster than Eclipse

[java] Swing vs JavaFx for desktop applications

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