Letter to Gluon about B4X and Scene builder

[ThRuST]

[My email to Gluon]

Dec 1, 08:42 EET

Name: Roger Lindfors

Email: [email protected]

Website: http://www.duologic.se

Comment: Hi, as a user of B4X RAD (www.b4x.com) development environment, libs and tools I want to kindly as you to support B4X. The author Erel Uziel in Israel am doing a fantastic job to offer such a great multiplatform development environment, However he recommends people in his community forum to use the internal designer, when I have found that Scene builder is a very powerful and userfriendly alternative. As the community consist of many competent programmers who contribute to the forum with code snippets and libraries to extend the functionality, it would be nothing but great if you add support for B4J and 3rd party libraries so that they can be visible and used in Scene builder. There's a whole community that would benefit from this including myself. As you maintain Scene builder on long term I highly recommend that you considder support the B4X community since it's the best development arsenal to this date. To be able to use Visual Basic.NET syntax and develop for native JAVA is amazing and should be widely recognized. Many users would like to see an option to see external libraries made for B4J and change properties in scene builder. You should get familiar with B4J and contact Erel and have his permission to promote new versions of scene builder in the B4X community. I am sure that will be highly appreciated by many developers out there.

Thanks for doing a terrific job with Scene builder,
Merry christmas,

Roger Lindfors
Duologic Software

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[Answer from Gluon]

Gluon (Gluon)

Dec 2, 15:50 EET

Hi,

This looks very interesting and we will certainly look deeper into this. Although I should already mention that we prioritize our roadmap based on customer feedback, and we haven't heard many requests like these yet.

One question though: Are you aware of our other Gluon products like Gluon Mobile? I'm not sure, but looking at b4x.com it looks to have a big overlap in functionality with Gluon Mobile.

Thanks,
Erwin

Gluon

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[Erel]

You should get familiar with B4J and contact Erel and have his permission to promote new versions of scene builder in the B4X community

B4J internal designer is the same designer as in B4A and B4i.
There are no plans to promote any other designer.

Scene Builder was introduced when B4J was first released and before the internal designer was available. The internal designer is in many aspects more powerful (designer scripts and custom views for example) especially when it is combined with B4J IDE.

 

[Cableguy]

In my "simpler" way of doing things, I trend to work in a "I need this functionality, how can I achieve it". Same goes for views/controls... If I need a control that is not already available, I try the next best thing... I try to (re)create it myself...
In my point of view, this is the internal designer single weakness, that makes it also it's stronger point... We are free to create as simple or as complex controls we want...
In fact, it was the lack of the internal designer that first kept me away from b4J.

 

[ThRuST]

Dear Erel, I am not questioning the competence of the internal designer, it is as you say very powerful and the scripting functionality is superior to that of scene builder.
But as Gluon seems to be completely unaware of B4X it is only good that they know about your excellent products which will, in this case they add further support for
B4J in any way, come to be a major promotion boost for your company which will will be a huge benefit for both you and future customers who are today not familiar with your products. What I like with scene builder is that there is a way to hierarically drag and drop the controls in a way, were you easily can see their parent and
child status, and the nodeId is really great. That was the reason I used scene builder in the first place, because I missed that in the internal designer.
This post is a great chance for users to say their own experience about the comparison of the two, so that the internal designer can be even better if possible
I set the question poll for 12 month, so that users reading this thread can vote and then it will become clear what they like. I still love B4X, so no need to worry.
If you see scene builder as a compatitive force a great idea would be to create a similar designer with scripting support. Perhaps also with HTML/CSS/java-script support and with the support for custom controls you simply can't go wrong. That will make your product the best of the best. That was my personal oppinion. Let me also say
this, B4X franchise is the best thing that happened to the programming world ever since the introduction of Visual basic. Check the voting poll and see for yourself. Cheers Roger

 

[ThRuST]

Cableguy, don't forget to vote you can find the question poll on top of this thread. Please everyone that reads this post make sure that you vote. This will help Erel. Thanks

 

[Cableguy]

I was the first to vote for the internal designer, so...

 

[ilan]

I did not used b4j because scene builder. i find it very complex. after erel updated b4j with the internel designer i cant stop using b4j.

So my vote is 100% for the internel designer!

 

[LWGShane]

Internal Designer. SceneBuilder was too complicated and thus why I used B4A first.

 

[ThRuST]

I forgot to mention that the votes is only relevant to B4J users. I suspect that Android users will vote which makes the whole voting poll pointless,
but it is a great way that YOU can express your comment about either one of the designers, so I think it wasn't a bad idea after all

 

[inakigarm]

I forgot to mention that the votes is only relevant to B4J users.

Well, I think you're not taking in account one of the B4X strength/motivation (including the designer) : a cross platform development; even if layouts are not exportable between B4X products is far more easier to work with a layout on one product and recreate on the other
I code for B4J but also for B4A and for me, Scene Builder was also too complicated (even if I've used in the past); I suppose there're several users that work only with B4J but I think there're more users that code in more than one B4X product (B4J,B4i,B4A and B4R)
Lately, I even code the B4A apps first on B4J and translate later to B4A, and with internal designer is easier.
For Anywhere Software point of view, having a good and upgradeable Internal Designer (after Oracle left support of Scene Builder) was a must and for now, not depending for third party for designer is a benefit for B4J

 

[ThRuST]

I agree completely, when it comes to B4A and B4i which I've spent more time with before I 'discovered' B4J, I must say the internal designer is a blessing.
But with the scenario B4J I found that Scene builder was very complicated at first, but then I read the tutorial by Erel and played around with it and I was amazed how easy it was to work with it back and forth between the IDE and Scene builder. So I was happy to see that there were some support for it in the first place.
FXML is really great and is for JavaFX what WPF scripting is for C sharp. I just hope Anywhere software will support Gluons work on future support for Scene builder.
I mean, it would be sad to let Gluon work for only native JavaFX users, especially when B4J is so mature allready. I certainly hope both roads expands the years ahead.

 

[jmon]

I think even after Gluon took over the Scene Builder, they haven't brought so many new features or changes for the last 2 years.

The Internal designer is great for that, because of so many updates and improvements (almost every months). I totally follow Erel on this, because so far, I'm not disappointed at all with the way the whole B4X goes. I like the idea of not depending on 3rd party software, because who know maybe one day they could be dropped or bought by a different company, and we wouldn't be able to use it anymore. I think he has a vision of someone who actually uses the software for his own apps, and not just someone running a business. So this is why all the updates always make so much sense.

I have one request though: please don't drop the Scene Builder compatibility! It sounds contrary to what I said above, but I built an entire app with more than 30 layouts done with the Scene Builder.

What I think is missing from the internal designer, is all the VBox, HBox, Anchorpane, Grids, FlowPane, BorderPanes, Accordions ..etc.. All those controls are quite important to do a good desktop application. But at least there is now the possibility to do a customview for each of those, just have to do it

 

[sorex]

in my case the scene builder was slow and acted very buggy.

I was more than happy that the internal one was added or I wouldn't be using B4J at all.

 

[ThRuST]

Taken from Oracles Docs website:

Why Use FXML

While you can use FXML to create any user interface, FXML is particularly useful for user interfaces that have large, complex scene graphs, forms, data entry, or complex animation. FXML is also well-suited for defining static layouts such as forms, controls, and tables. In addition, you can use FXML to construct dynamic layouts by including scripts.

 

[Beja]

You are requesting SB to support B4X libraries and (if this is correct) then the right forum to post this is SB forum, not here (I guess)

 

[ThRuST]

Beja, since my letter was for Gluon staff only it's up to them to decide to support B4X or not. Any future support may not be a priority since they have not earlier got any such requests. If you think it's good that Gluon supports B4J in the future you can ask such requests yourself, as this will benefit the community and not only single individuals.

My question

Hi, as a user of B4X RAD (www.b4x.com) development environment, libs and tools I want to kindly as you to support B4X.

Gluon

This looks very interesting and we will certainly look deeper into this. Although I should already mention that we prioritize our roadmap based on customer feedback, and we haven't heard many requests like these yet.

Anywhere software

B4J internal designer is the same designer as in B4A and B4i.
There are no plans to promote any other designer.

Scene Builder was introduced when B4J was first released and before the internal designer was available. The internal designer is in many aspects more powerful (designer scripts and custom views for example) especially when it is combined with B4J IDE.

 

[Beja]

Sorry Roger if I misunderstood what you said.. but I think if they supported b4x then this is good for (their) community, not us. please correct me if mistaken.

 

[ThRuST]

Personally it feels awkward and tedious work to study native Java just to use the Scene builder with JavaFX, especially ever since I discovered B4J.
For my personal needs I would very much like Anywhere software to write a similar editor, with visual GUI like in Scene builder, and include the hierarcy
placement of controls, with scripting support for both B4J and FXML. There should also be HTML/CSS/Java-script support. Support for custom libraries with
properties visible similar like in Unity. You should be able to load a control into the designer and it will show properties in it, that you can edit.
This will in my view make use of scene builder not neccessary as Anywhere software will steal all of Gluon customers. Don't tell anyone I gave Erel this idea

 

[ThRuST]

Perhaps also an info field that displays name of control and author. Standardized for internal designer. So you can easily create own controls and libraries and have them shown in the internal designer. Now downvote this