Nandini Ramini, Director of Development for Client Java at Oracle, show a stunning demo of client-based graphics, showcasing the latest advancements in JavaFX, including a “video wall” comprised of 160 concurrently playing media streams, with a curvature to the wall achieved by applying 3D transforms to the 2D media views
So, one of the big news from JavaOne is the death of JavaFX Script. Very bad news. A few people think it’s good since Oracle will better focus resources, but it sounds as they are reasoning in the past. Over are times of the Java steward being in lack of resources, as it happened in the last Sun years. In the past, Sun dismissed a project mostly when they couldn’t afford it; now Oracle dismisses what they think isn’t interesting for their business. Since from the January announcements, when Oracle said it would go on with NetBeans, but “leave other languages support to the community”, it was clear that Oracle has no interest in other languages than Java. I think it makes sense (for them), it doesn’t hurt me personally, as I don’t have any special interest in other languages; it should make some parts of the community sad, and not happy.
By now it is old news that JavaFX 2.0 will be decoupled from JavaFX Script. JavaFX 2.0 will provide a Java API while JavaFX Script will not be developed any further. My perception, from reading blogs and tweets, is that there have been mixed responses to this news. I personally welcome the change, and the main reason is it will instantly open a new door of opportunity: tooling.
Though we can also adhere to the principles of clean code by keeping methods small and proper naming, at the same time we would like to keep a code which is not only more readable but also reflects the structure of the GUI.
Speaking at JavaOne was challenging, but fun this year. With the surprise announcements about JavaFX 2.0 there wasn’t a lot of time to respond, but I managed to refocus all my talks in a very short amount of time. This blog contains embedded SlideShare and download links for my final two talks.
One of the questions asked in my JavaFX 2.0 blog post, and also at my second JavaFX 2.0 talk on Thursday at JavaOne was around Swing integration for JavaFX 2.0. I wanted to clarify what my current thinking is, and give you a chance to respond….
Surely one of the biggest announcements at JavaOne 2010 was the new roadmap for JavaFX, laying out the journey towards a 2.0 release that will be radically different from what had gone before — not so much evolution, as total revolution. While the details, when they arrived, contained a fair few surprises, the overall radical nature of the roadmap was not totally unexpected; many had suspected some kind of upheaval was on the cards.
In the midst of all the good news about JavaFX 2.0 and the reinvested interest in the Java Swing Platform by Oracle at JavaOne, I have to ask myself: what happened to JFileChooser?
Whatever happened to Christopher Oliver? What would he say now about the state of the affairs in JavaFX development? I wonder whether if he would be pleased or disappointed with the fact that Oliver are deprecating support for JavaFX Script in JavaFX 2.0. In fact, Chris Oliver, the inventor / creator of JavaFX Script is conspicious by his absense.
It’s clear in the blog of Amy Fowler that JavaFXscript is dead(“And to those of you who are upset that we are killing JavaFX script, I say that I feel this pain also.”) and the focus goes back to Java (“And now that we’re converting JavaFX to a proper Java library, you don’t have to learn a new language to use it”). This is awesome news for Java developers.
It was 3 years of JavaFX, A waste of time and efforts that Sun could do it better for Java, Swing/Java2D, J2ME etc. We have to recognize that Sun did a bad move on that one. Now it will take 1 or 2 years more on Oracle ownership to get Java GUI and client side on track.