JavaFX

So Sun has announced JavaFX which appears to be based on Java F3. My first impressions are: (1) it comes across more as a GUI shorthand language than a full general purpose scripting language and (2) it doesn’t add anything substantially new to the RIA (rich internet application) space. The first point isn’t a criticism, just an observation. I’m interested to see if anyone uses JavaFX for general scripting and not for just UI development.

The second point is that JavaFX is about making UI development easier which is very different from improvements in RIAs. As far as I can tell, there’s isn’t anything one can do in JavaFX that one couldn’t do before in Java. Improving Java UI development is a laudable goal worthy in its own right. But it’s only one piece of a larger puzzle when it comes to RIAs where deployment is a major factor. I didn’t see anything about improvements to Java WebStart or a slimmed down JRE for RIAs. Without those features, JavaFX applications are still stuck with applets and WebStart.

In summary, JavaFX looks very intriguing from a technical point of view and I hope to see many better looking Java apps out there because of it. However, the marketing spin on this launch is a bit over the top: Sun Radically Simplifies Content Authoring It’s only radically simple if you’re used to the complexity of Java.