JavaFX Preview Released
The battle for the defacto rich desktop application framework has now truly begun with Sun Microsystem releasing the preview of JavaFX.com on Thursday 31st July 2008. JavaFX is a technology not unlike Adobe's AIR, or Microsoft's Silverlight, in that it allows developers to build applications for both the Internet and Desktop.
Sun is coming rather late into the game with their preview version as both Adobe and Microsoft have a head-start on JavaFx in the partially disconnected desktop arena.
Sun has created a completely new programming language called JavaFX script to target "web scripters and content authors who like programming in a visual context", but is also fully object-oriented thereby providing a way in for object-oriented programmers to realize more complex applications.
Sun Microsystems, with their FAQ, seem to be directly targeting Javascript and Actionscript developers. They are attempting to convince the developers that JavaFX script, unlike Actionscript, is not tied to Flash and therefore has broader reach. Java, therefore, is more widely available on desktops and mobile devices than Flash.
The issue is that not only will the Javascript and Actionscript developers need to learn a new language to take advantage of what JavaFX has to offer, the hardcore Java developers themselves will have to learn a new language too. The Java developers will at least be able to reuse their existing Java libraries in JavaFX but will still have to learn JavaFX Script to build the visual experience.
Interestingly, while they indicate the prevalence of the Java runtime on mobile devices a mobile runtime to support JavaFX won't be available until Spring 2009. In that time I am sure Adobe will not be sitting still and is in full development to roll out their own mobile framework that can support AIR through the Adobe Mobile Experience Suite. Microsoft's Silverlight has been available on mobile devices since version 1 .
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P.S. Seams that JavaFX.com link from the post is not working properly.
Adrian.
(I realize many articles gloss over the basic differences, and am wondering whether you quoted someone else here.)
tx, jd/adobe
I will start with the last part that being mobile. According to the linked article silverlight.net they achieve mobility with a browser plugin.
AS for desktop that is acheived through WPF Applications. From what I have read (tutorials) its a matter of copy and pasting a silverlight applications code into a WPF application making a few changes in order to produce a desktop application
Thirdly with the partially disconnected it is apparently only achievable with WPF, or windows Presentation Foundation, applications, but is clarly no where near to what AIR is capable of doing.
I must admit that including Silverlight is a rather thin comparision to JavaFX and AIR, even comparing JavaFX and AIR can be somewhat misleading since the differences between the apparently competing products are more than the similarities.
In this article I should have mentioned AIR/Flash instead of just AIR, where Silverlight seems to be targeting more the Flash area and JavaFX is taking a stab at both.
Thank you for the editorial oversight. The idea behind this article was more to announce the entry of JavaFX into the fray than to confuse the reader with misleading implications of Silverlights capabilities in comparison to Adobe AIR's.
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The JavaFX Preview release consists of the the following components:
* The JavaFX compiler and runtime tools, 2D graphics and media libraries to create highly interactive applications for desktop and browser, as well as tutorials, API documentation and sample code.
* Netbeans IDE 6.1 with JavaFX: Provides a sophisticated development environment to build, preview, and debug JavaFX applications.
* Project Nile: A suite of tools and plugins for Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Illustrator CS3 that enable exporting of graphical assets to JavaFX applications.
* Java Runtime Environment 6 Update 10 Beta release: This new version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) provides a redesigned Java browser plug-in that allows drag and drop of JavaFX applications from the browser to the desktop.
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So if I understand what they are saying here is that they are actually trying to attack Adobe on 2 fronts (products) with a single product. JavaFX against Flex(Flash)/AIR.
It's more like "Silverlight has been *announced* for mobile"... that's the 1.0 version, relying on the hosting browser's JavaScript for interactivity, and it may be easier to just think of that future promise as a codec wrapper:
http://silverlight.net/learn/mobile.aspx
http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1197788
Compiling for WPF could turn a Silverlight project to a desktop project, true. For Windows users. But desktop is not quite the same as "offline" support... data synchronization across sessions is a big task, and is often application-specific, and is a bit larger than "beyond the browser" delivery.
(I'm sorry to drag this off-topic, by the way... a lot of the confusion with Microsoft now is sorting the promises from things actually delivered, which is why I hit that angle in this article on clientside Java.) (And for Sun, if they can pull it off, that's great, it will make Java applets nicer.)
jd/adobe
* Netbeans IDE 6.1 with JavaFX: Provides a sophisticated development environment to build, preview, and debug JavaFX applications.
* Project Nile: A suite of tools and plugins for Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Illustrator CS3 that enable exporting of graphical assets to JavaFX applications.
http://mitutor.altervista.org/link.html