Details on the Sun NetBeans based vector tool are still scarce, and a release date is unknown, in the meantime, ReportMill Software, introduces new features to its JavaFX animation tool, JFXBuilder. Some of the new features include:

Animation along an arbitrary path.



Click Here to launch the jnlp file. This lets you see the animation running (the Freeway animation is cool and shows the power and flexibility that you can achieve with JFXBuilder).

You specify how far along a pathway a shape should be at various keyframes, and JFXBuilder does all the work of figuring out the exact location and possibly rotation needed to draw the frames in between. And of course you can apply all the interpolations like easein, easeout, accelerate, etc. to motion along the path.

Shape Morphing in JFXBuilder



One of the latest features introduced to the JavaFX spec is the ability to do shape morphing. JFXBuilder has already implemented this feature, in their latest release.

We also added the ability to animate the "Morphing" attribute, so the real fun comes when you move the morph shape over time in a scene and modify it?s morphing at different key frames.

Improved Key Frame Animation with tweening



The animation panel lets you animate almost any shape attribute: x, y, width, height, rotation, scale, skew, opacity, color, stroke color and stroke width. To define an animation, you simply draw a shape or drop a component, move the animation time slider to a different time, and change the attributes for the new time. JFXBuilder will automatically interpolate all the values between the two key frames.

Animation Interpolations& Event driven Animations



The standard interpolations include: EaseIn, EaseOut, Bounce, SingleStep, and various others. In addition, you have the ability to create your own custom interpolations, (provide your own subclasses). In terms of mouse Events, included are the most standard events, like MouseOver, MousePressed, etc?

SlideShow macro components/functions
This is a set of components with built in functionality that lets you easily create multi slide/page shows.

We added a few buttons whose actions are pre-bound to javafx operations the multiple-slide canvas understands, such as "pageForwards" and "pageBackwards?. You simply drag these buttons from the gallery onto your slides, hit "Preview JFX" and voilá - you?ve got a slide show, complete with animations, sounds, Swing components, etc., etc.

In conclusion
As you can see this is an impressive list of new features, that enable designers to jump in JavaFX animation with ease. You can also subclass much of the functionality and create your own custom versions of certain animation elements, like interpolations (one of the examples includes a Perlin Noise interpolator).

With these new features, JFXBuilder takes the lead in terms of JavaFX editors. It will be interesting to see if the NetBeans tool can compete with a company that has many years of experience in building graphical editors. Have you tried JFXBuilder?

It's a click away: Launch JFXBuilder

Give it try and let us know what you think about it. I am sure the ReportMill engineers will appreciate the feedback.

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