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

[Jeff Martin]

JPro definitely seems amazing for deployment - but wouldn’t help with my use case (building/running JavaFX apps client side in the browser).

jeff


> On Jan 27, 2026, at 3:16 AM, Dirk Lemmermann <dlemmermann at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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 <http://www.dlsc.com/>
> mailto:dlemmermann at gmail.com <mailto:dlemmermann at gmail.com>
> 
> 
> Jeff Martin <jeff at reportmill.com <mailto: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 <http://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 <mailto: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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