Is it possible to create minimal 'software-only' architecture implementation of JavaFX using Java2D/AWT?

[Dirk Lemmermann]

Are you familiar with JPro? It lets you run JavaFX in the browser. We use
it for the jfxcentral website.

Dirk Lemmermann

CEO Senapt GmbH
CEO DLSC Software & Consulting GmbH
Zurich, Switzerland
+41-(0)79-800-23-20
http://www.dlsc.com
mailto:dlemmermann at gmail.com


Jeff Martin <jeff at reportmill.com> schrieb am Mo. 26. Jan. 2026 um 20:45:

> Thanks Kevin! I admit I was mostly asking out of curiosity - I would love
> to see more JavaFX in the browser. It looks like the WebFX project is doing
> some great things there though. :-)
>
> jeff
>
>
> Kevin Rushforth kevin.rushforth at oracle.com
> Fri Jan 23 21:56:45 UTC 2026
>
>
> No, this isn't possible. Many of the pieces are there to do something
> along these lines, but even our software renderer uses native code.
>
> A combination of the experimental headless glass toolkit, the software
> pipeline, and JFXPanel might get you most of the way there, but it would
> take a fair bit of effort to get it to the point where it was usable
> without any native code. And if you wanted an ordinary JavaFX
> Application (as opposed to a JFXPanel embedded in a Swing app) to run it
> would be even more work.
>
> Long ago (before JDK 7) the predecessor to Glass and the Prism rendering
> pipeline had an AWT-based implementation of the Windowing toolkit and a
> Java2D-based renderer, but those are long gone (except for the "j2d"
> renderer, which morphed into a printing pipeline).
>
> I doubt this is a direction we would be interested in exploring again.
>
> -- Kevin
>
>
> On Jan 23, 2026, at 1:58 PM, Jeff Martin <jeff at reportmill.com> wrote:
>
> I wonder, is the architecture independent part of JavaFX written in 100%
> Java? If so, would it be possible to write a minimal architecture
> implementation using Java2D/AWT, so many JavaFX apps could run with just
> the standard JVM?
>
> I see the repo stats say that ~73% of JavaFX is written in C/C++, and
> obviously Java2D wouldn’t help with the 3D features or WebView, but a
> “software only” JavaFX version could be interesting and let many JavaFX
> apps run in the browser with CheerpJ.
>
> jeff
>
> PS - I did ask AI, but it’s unclear to me whether the architecture
> independent code drops into C before it uses platform dependent code. I’m
> guessing that it does.
>
> https://chatgpt.com/share/6973d226-513c-8013-bcc1-0b70ec07a465
>
>
>
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