JavaFX is the new graphical user interface promoted by Oracle. The Java programming platform offers numerous different graphical user interface frameworks; however, JavaFX is robust, well designed, and suitable for a large range of applications. JavaFX is a large framework. Having well-structured documentation as a reference is therefore essential. Within that context, the motivation of Learn JavaFX 8 is rather clear: to be the most complete reference on the JavaFX platform.

The book can be seen as the ultimate guide on various aspects of JavaFX. It contains 30 chapters, each detailing a facet of JavaFX. The chapters I really enjoyed reading are on beans property management and observable collections (chapters 2 and 3), embedding web pages (chapter 16), 3D rendering (chapter 19), animation (chapter 22), chart drawing (chapter 23), and FXML (chapter 29).

The book contains many long sections of Java source code. Fortunately, all of the code is downloadable from the Apress website. The downloadable archive is well structured and clean.

This is a complete and therefore thick book, at over 1,000 pages. An e-book version is available in case you wish to travel light.

Surprisingly, the book is far more than a description of a user interface (UI) framework made of traditional widgets. It covers the necessary infrastructure to easily manage UIs, such as observable lists and properties. The book not only gives recipes, but details implementations; this is essential for those wishing to be proficient.

The examples in the book are apparently written in a Windows environment (for example, all of the screenshots are taken from the Windows platform). I personally use Mac OS X, and I have not noticed any problems when trying some examples on my machine. When relevant, NetBeans is presented. Parallelism to C# is also discussed sometimes, which I find very relevant.

JavaFX 8 was released at the beginning of 2014. The previous version of JavaFX, numbered 2.2, was released at the end of 2012. It is therefore unlikely that a new version of JavaFX will happen soon. The book’s content should therefore remain relevant for at least a couple of years more.

The book assumes readers will have decent knowledge of Java, particularly Java 8. They should understand generics and lambda to fully enjoy reading it. Moreover, readers should have a clear understanding of how to build a UI in general. If they know Swing, then they will not feel lost.

The book is not a tutorial, but a reference. It does not contain exercises. It uses incrementally built, independent examples.

Although the book mentions 2D and 3D capabilities, people looking for resources to build video games should probably look for other books dedicated to that topic.

People who wish to design a user interface framework may have an interest in chapters about modeling containment, layout, and animation. Kishore Sharan, the author, does an excellent job at motivating and revealing relevant implementation details.

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