IntelliJ IDEA 12.1 supports JavaFX 2

The latest major version of JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA Java development environment, which was released in late 2012, has now been refreshed with a springtime update release that also offers various new features. The headline new feature in IntelliJ IDEA 12.1 is support for developing JavaFX 2 applications. Oracle's almost fully open sourced user interface development technology has become an integral part of the company's Java distribution and is pencilled in to replace Swing at some point in the future.

IntelliJ IDEA comes in two versions: a commercial "Ultimate" edition and an open source "Community" edition. The development environment's JavaFX support is in both editions and includes support for FXML markup, CSS, automatic code completion, navigation and search features, refactorings, packaging tools. and integration of Oracle's SceneBuilder RAD (Rapid Application Development) tool. Both editions also have improved Scala support, Retina display support, and a full screen mode for Windows.

Other updates introduce support for more recent versions of popular frameworks such as Spring 3.2 and Play 2.1 (Ultimate only), provide Groovy 2.1 support (both editions), and improve the integration of the Gradle build tool (both editions). Ultimate edition users will also see enhancements to the application server support, a source-maps-enabled debugger for CoffeeScript and TypeScript, improved SASS support, and Adobe Gaming SDK support.

Users of the Ultimate edition will receive the update for free. The Community edition of IntelliJ IDEA is Apache-2.0-licensed open source software, available as source code or as a pre-compiled binary. Both editions are available as executables to download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

(fab)