javafx

[fireside]

Anybody try javafx?  I guess the beta is out.  I don't know what good it would be for or anything.  They were talking about adding 3d bindings, but they were going to use JOGL, and now they haven't mentioned it for a while.  I don't know if lwjgl would go over to JOGL if they included it in the libraries or not.  It would save some download time if they did.

[EgonOlsen]

IMHO, this effort comes years too late. Flash and the upcoming Silverlight from MS will continue to dominate the rich internet application market. No one will take Java seriously for that kind of applications except for some very special cases where applets still have their place. SUN screwed it years ago...

[fireside]

I agree.  Things don't change much once they take hold and Flash has pretty much taken over as the cross platform mulitmedia device.  I have my doubts about Silverlight also.  Microsoft just isn't any good at cross platform applications.  C# is doing all right because it's a language, but I think it will get more used server side.  It's going to be more and more devices that aren't even computers anymore that log onto the internet.  Java has a slight advantage in the mobile platforming arena so that will help somewhat in it possibly gaining ground in the future, but Sun just isn't very smart.  They should have included more multimedia type things in the JRE a long time ago but they went for the big money in servers and kind of ignored the rest, and wanted a one size fits all approach so they didn't think opengl was important enough. I think they could still do some damage if they included opengl bindings in the JRE, but they won't do that as usual until it's too late and there are more cross platform, 3d accelerated alternatives.  If they were going to pick a script language, they should have picked jython because there are a huge number of people that already know python and would probably use it.  Now they are forcing everyone to learn another language.  One more dumb move.  Java is already technically a script language, though, all they needed to do was simplify some of the mulitmedia and web behavior.

[EgonOlsen]

I honestly think that SUN has a special division for screwing up things. Another great example: I recently tried to get a JRE from java.com because i tested my game on a machine with 1.6u10-ea, which was quite buggy. So i figured that java.com is the fastest way to get a JRE....i had to click "Download" two times on buttons that didn't act like buttons, i.e. you didn't get a "link-symbol" as mouse cursor when hovering over them...anyway...after the second click, a page with a spinning circle opened, telling that i have to wait some time. On the bottom of the page, Firefox complained about a missing plugin and nothing else happened. I clicked on the plugin-symbol to install the plugin and it was....THE DAMN JRE which i was about to download. Only SUN manages to build a web page that requires a JRE to download the exakt same JRE...

[Melssj5]

jajajaja that was LoL 

[fireside]

Most of the fight for rich internet apps is going to be won by javascript and ajax, anyway.  At least Sun is making some progress in the applet type area, it sounds like there are some applet changes in release 10 that will make them work more like webstarts.  It makes everyone nervous when they have to allow signed applets and they really don't load fast enough, so they have to have more multimedia libraries on the JRE.

[JavaMan]

I agree with the idea that Sun is great at screwing things up. They should have updated the JMF years ago, and when they did that created the jit, instead of waiting until jre5 to speed things up. What was the speed difference between 4 to 5? It was huge! Why couldn't Sun have done that with 4?

I have tried the javafx preview out, and I do really like it. The javafx script is pretty simple to learn if you understand java, and the libraries are simple to use. What I really liked was the Media object that played a sound file properly and then played a video file properly, and was very fast at loading the video file. If Sun can somehow get some attention for JavaFX and do things correctly, I think they will have something that may compete with Flash. But, then again someone in that fool company will think, "Oh, let's sue Google for not purchasing a jre for the Android platform, and force them to use Jfx Mobile."