Simon’s Blog

Sun just announced JavaFX? What is it? Here’s the short answer:

• JavaFX Script – the heart of JavaFX. A new scripting language that makes it easy to code sophisticated, dynamic, animated user interfaces. JavaFX Script runs on top of Java SE – think of it as making Swing and Java2D easier and more productive to use
• JavaFX Mobile – This is a new mobile phone OS that can run Java SE; it’s actually the SavaJE IP that Sun recently acquired. Any application you write in JavaFX Script will run on a JavaFX Mobile device, because the device runs Java SE. It’s not clear to me if JavaFX Script will ever be able to run on top of other phone OSes e.g. Symbian, or whether the only option on the horizon for this is a JavaFX Mobile device (more thoughts on JavaFX Mobile, and how it compares to iPhone here).
• JavaFX Designer – This doesn’t exist yet. However, Sun just announced that they are creating new developer and/or designer tools to make it easy to design interfaces based around JavaFX Script. You really need tools develop productively in JavaFX Script – otherwise, you’ll be defining shapes by hand e.g. draw a rectangle 100 units wide and 200 units high.

That’s it. There’s a lot here that Sun will need to execute well on, in order to be competitive:

1. Sun needs to solve the issues surrounding Java SE running inside the browser. Sun has announced today that there are developments planned as Java SE 6 updates that will address at least some of these issues… hopefully, successfully. In other words, if (and it’s a big “if”) Sun can make Java Applets work well in the browser, JavaFX Script will make them really fly. This has the potential to be truly amazing – I hope they can pull this one off. Update: Sun announced on Tuesday May 8 that it was working on a solution to the problems – a new, consumer-focussed JRE to be delivered at end of 2007/early 2008. Features: quickstarter, pre-load cache before launch (not the same as having a running VM) cooperates with the OS. (See more on the implications of this new Consumer JRE).

2. Judging from the JavaOne demo today, the JavaFX Mobile platform still needs quite a bit of work. It’s has a lot of potential. Hopefully, the phone handset makers will be interested – it could be the shortest path to competing with the iPhone UI. I suspect there’s a long road to robust, fast JavaFX Mobile devices (think years, not months). I’d love to be proved wrong on this.

3. Media support. I’d love to see Java SE incorporate the ability to decode audio and video encoded in Open Source audio and video codecs on the client; along with the ability to do cool streaming on the server. Audio, and especially video, is a mess right now – not just in Java, but generally. The proprietary codecs are pretty hard to work with (e.g. it’s hard to convert between them nicely, and re-purpose content etc). There’s an opportunity for the Open Source community to do a better job with media than closed companies have done. Java and JavaFX could play a key role in making this happen.

Sun sure has plenty to be getting on with…