JavaFX 17 Highlights

JavaFX version 17 has been released and embarks a new LTS release after 11. We’ve tailored down some of the most exciting parts of the release in this document.

New features:

• Stylesheets and Images support data-URIs
• “Print to File” support added to JavaFX
• Spotlight, a PointLight that can radiate light in a cone in a specific direction, has been added to JavaFX 3D

Improvements:

• New API to query states of CAPS LOCK and NUM LOCK keys
• Developers can now make use of new SkinBase API to (un)register invalidation/listChange listeners
• Hardware cursor can be used on Monocle-EGL platforms

Removal and Clean up:

• Marlin rasterizer (single-precision) has been removed

The community came together to fix 87 bugs in the last 6 months. Following are major bug-fixes that went into 17:

• Better touch support in JavaFX:
  • Touch inputs fixes for touch enabled devices running Windows and Linux
  • Scroll events fixed from touch input in window mode Better support for HiDPI displays with the following fixes:
  • Origin coordinates were fixed for EGL and HiDPI
  • HiDPI scaling fixed for linux platforms
• MediaPlayer’s seek used to freeze video. This issue was fixed.
• Memory leaks were fixed in Scene, ControlAcceleratorSupport and ProgressIndicator

Finally, these are some dependency upgrades in JavaFX 17:

• Update Mesa 3-D Headers to version 21.0.3
• Update GStreamer to version 1.18.3
• Update glib to version 2.66.7
• Update GStreamer to version 1.18.4
• Update to 610.2 version of WebKit
• Update ICU4C to version 68.2
• Update libxml2 to version 2.9.12

A more comprehensive list of all the changes in JavaFX 17 can be found on Github.

Kudos go to the fine people at Gluon who took care of the bulk of the work on JavaFX 17. Do check their JavaFX Long Term Support services.