Comments on: JavaFX – just for Java guys?

By: Adrian Johnson

Adrian Johnson — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 06:56:17 +0000

I don’t see having to download the Java runtime as being too much of an issue because it is installed as standard on a lot of PC’s, and has been for some time. The number of computers without Java is comparatively small.

I agree with Jin – I would like to see a comparison between Air, Silverlight and JavaFX. Not just in terms of which works best for the end-user, but in development too.

Adrian

By: Jin Chun

Jin Chun — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 03:07:18 +0000

I think they’ll solve the client runtime part, which is working pretty quickly now in its latest build (applets for example load at about the same speed as swf’s). The beauty is the ability to access the full Java API, as well as the wide ocean of commercial/open source frameworks and libraries. It should be simple enough, for example, to tie together a JavaFX UI with Drools for rule processing integrated with Spring, etc. And with JWebPane integrating WebKit, Adobe Air starts to look silly (have you looked at their native api’s? yuck!). Silverlight and WPF’s advantage over JavaFX is in the ecosystem of 3rd party’s that provide widgets and frameworks, like infragistics, etc, for cheap. Josh, if you are reading this, please ping the JideSoft guys and buy them, OS their whole stack so that the swing labs glacial pace can be replaced with working Swing widgets like real grids, and get someone on the application framework again.

The tools in the Java for the client are there, but they are just hard! You can still in a singe line, whether in AS3/MXML or XAML/C#, bind a table widget to an XML/JSON Web based service (w or w/o SOAP). That part’s missing. The layer that ties the new JavaFX UI semantics to something on the backend and a community driven library of nice widgets.

It would also be interesting to reimplement some of the showcase apps for Flex/Air and Silverlight in JavaFX and compare the 3.

Jin

By: Alan Griffiths

Alan Griffiths — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:06:47 +0000

Tim, also in a similar space (java, client side processing, …) is http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/ – I’ve not had a chance to play yet, but have heard good things about it.

By: tim

tim — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:48:32 +0000

Thanks for the comment Josh. <4mb including JRE + JavaFX is a great goal.

Tim

By: Josh Marinacci

Josh Marinacci — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:30:08 +0000

Hi Tim. This is Josh from Sun’s JavaFX team. The initial download experience is something we are working very hard to improve. Part of JavaSE 6 update 10 (which goes to final release soon), is reducing the download time and startup time of the initial Java install. With improvements in update 10 and more coming in future releases we will get the initial download to half what’s required today (ie, < 4mb).

Also, modularity is one of the focuses of Java 7. This will let us further streamline the install process. We are also adding patch-in-place so updates will be much smaller.

Of course the best download is the one you don’t have to make. We have deals with 9 of the top 10 PC OEMs to get the latest Java pre-installed.

We know download time is important and are working very hard to make Java the best platform for RIAs.