While I am good, I am not that good. Many of the example programs are from JavaFX For Dummies by Doug Lowe.
JavaFX is the latest iteration of a graphics API for Java. The first, AWT or Abstract Window Toolkit, was Java's first foray into GUI development, allowing the creation of windowed applications across platforms. However, cross-platform compatibility was ensured with a standard set of GUI elements that looked identical across platforms. Consistent, but ugly. Several years passed, and Swing was introduced. Swing was also an attempt at cross-platform GUI elements, but unlike AWT used native GUI elements. Applications built with Swing looked native, whether running on Windows, OS X, or a flavor of Linux.
We, however, are in the future. Applications exists still for traditional computers, but we live in a world of tablets, smartphones, smart TVs, game consoles, and even tweeting refrigerators. JavaFX was developed as a library to provide a standard GUI API across all of these devices, and more to come in the future. Beginning with Java 8, JavaFX comes standard with the JDK.
This will be a fairly lengthy unit. JavaFX is a very large library, and while we will be spending some time on it we will only begin to scratch the surface.
So, without further ado, let's begin!