Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my wife, Tracey, my daughters, Caitlin and Gillian, for their loving support and sacrifices. A special thanks to my daughter Caitlin, who helped with illustrations and brainstorming fun examples. A big thanks to Jim Weaver for recommending me to this project and being so encouraging. I would also thank Josh Juneau for his advice and guidance throughout this journey.

Thanks also to David Coffin with his uncanny ability to know my intentions and provide great feedback. I want to thank the wonderful people at Apress for their professionalism. A special thanks to Jonathan Gennick for believing in me and whipping me into shape.

Thanks to Annie Beck for keeping me on track when things got rough.

Thanks to all who follow me on Twitter especially the ones related to Java Swing, RIA, and JavaFX. Also, thanks to the authors (Jim Weaver, Weiqi Gao, Stephen Chin, and Dean Iverson) of the Pro JavaFX book for allowing me to tech review chapters. Another thanks to Stephen Chin and Keith Combs for heading up the awesome JavaFX User Group. Most importantly all the past JavaFX 1.x book authors that helped inspire me. Thanks goes out to my employer BCT-LLC and their customers who make a lot of things possible. Lastly, I want to give a big kudos and acknowledgment to the people at Oracle who helped me (directly or indirectly) as JavaFX 2.0 was being released: Jonathan Giles, Jasper Potts, Michael Heinrichs, Richard Bair, Amy Fowler, David DeHaven, Nicolas Lorain, Kevin Rushforth, Sheila Cepero, Gail Chappell, Cindy Castillo, Scott Hommel, Joni Gordon, Alexander Kouznetsov, Irina Fedortsova, Dmitry Kostovarov, Alla Redko, Igor Nekrestyanov, Nancy Hildebrandt, and all the Java, JavaFX, and NetBeans teams involved. Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31).