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Forgive me if this question doesn't make complete sense, I'm not an expert at GUIs in Java.

I'm curious if Oracle's plan is to phase out Swing for JavaFX2. From this Layman's perspective, I found it a lot easier and effective to use JavaFX2 despite its infancy, and had a not-so-nice time using Swing. Also it seems like Oracle are pushing JavaFX2 a fair bit, and plan to include it in the standard libraries as of a forthcoming update.

So what's the situation? I need an expert to inform me! :)

Geesh_SO
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  • See my answer to a similar question from a couple of year's back: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2060806/netbeans-ide-under-oracle/2060864#2060864 . It was informed guesswork then, but the current trends seem to corroborate it. – APC Dec 19 '12 at 11:37
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    It's unlikely that Swing will ever be deprecated, because there are countless legacy applications build on it. – Philipp Dec 19 '12 at 11:43
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    Here is a [viewpoint on the technologies](http://fxexperience.com/2012/06/javafx-the-10000-foot-view/) from Richard Bair, Oracle's chief client architect. – jewelsea Dec 19 '12 at 15:53
  • This video ( towards the end) says JavaFX will become Java's Default Client. http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/1193176128001 – ShaggyInjun Dec 27 '12 at 20:00

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I'm not an expert either but in my opinion Swing and JavaFX are not rival technologies. Swing is primarily designed for typical desktop applications (eg. office apps with many forms/dialogs/etc) while JavaFX is better for multimedia applications (eg. animations, games). Of course you can write games/animations in Swing/AWT too, but JavaFX makes a lot of things easier. I think JavaFX was originally planned to be some kind of Java-alternative to Flash, rather than replacement for Swing. I don't think Swing will be abandoned in near future due to its wide adoption nowadays.

Adam Dyga
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  • I actually hope it will, I have written a few apps in swing and recently tried javafx. it makes it much easier to wrap your program logic around ui imho, which is the most time consuming thing when developing desktop apps. – Dreen Dec 20 '12 at 11:19