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Client-Side Java: Rolling Out JavaFX at JavaOne

Today Sun Microsystems announces renewed interest in Java on the client side
By Yakov Fain
Article Rating:
May 9, 2007 05:15 PM EDT
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 20,197
Yakov Fain's Blog

JavaOne opens today and it'll be interesting to hear more about this renewed interest of  Sun in Java on the client. While James Gosling and Rich Green have already given some details on JavaFX in this InfoWorld publication, I'd like to hear more technical details rather than marketecture.

So far, based on the available info, I can see that JavaFX is announced as an alternative to AJAX.  One day JavaFX may start competing with Adobe Flex and Microsoft Silverlight. JavaFX will appeal to enterprise "Java-Or-Die" developers just because it'll run on JVM. As to consumer-facing applications, I don't expect any serious competition to Flex or Silverlight unless the following two issues are resolved:

1. Sun or someone else will come up with a way to eliminate the install process of the JVM that will be needed to run JavaFX on the client - any trucker from Alabama should be able to install it, and the process should be as simple as with Flash Player today.

2. The size of the JVM should become substantially smaller. Today's JVM is 16MB, while Flash 9 weighs 1.2Mb, and Silverlight's Dynamic Language Runtime  is about 4MB.

Overall, renewed attention to Java on the client is great news, and I'm looking forward to seeing a technical presentation of JavaFX in action.

Published May 9, 2007 – Reads 20,197
Copyright © 2007 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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More Stories By Yakov Fain

Yakov Fain is a Managing Director of Farata Systems, consulting, training and product company. He has authored several Java books, dozens of technical articles. SYS-CON Books released his latest co-authored book , Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex and Java: Secrets of the Masters in Spring 2007. Sun Microsystems has nominated and awarded Yakov with the title Java Champion. He leads the Princeton Java Users Group. He is an Adobe Certified Flex Instructor. Currently Yakov works on the book for O'Reilly "Enterprise Application Development with Flex". He twits at twitter.com/yfain.

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Most Recent Comments
NixLover 05/14/07 06:14:32 PM EDT

I like Sun and Apple products. When I saw Sun using Mac Notebooks during JavaFX launch, I shook my head because Sun sells its own operating system (Solaris) but was using the Mac (MacOSX). It's like selling Pepsi Cola while drinking Coca Cola. Tsk, Tsk..