JavaFX and Disembodied Reality
Friday, 29 August 2008
Jan Erik opined insightfully about JavaFX’s prospect:
Java.net is disconnected with reality. For every guy who knows Swing/Java there are a 1000 guys who know HTML/DOM/CSS/Javascript. Silverlight is only marginally important because Microsoft controls 90 percent of the desktop marked and is the company behind C#.
JavaFX will ride the JRE in the same way AIR is riding Flash and PDF. So it’s not irrelevant. The problem is that most Java developers don’t know jack shit about developing user interfaces.
Simon Brown has also voiced similar concerns
Why are Sun doing this? : I don’t know, I don’t understand the impetus for doing this, aside from throwing the Java brand and an inferior Flex/Silverlight competitor into the RIA mix.
You know, Jan’s opinion hits pretty close to home truths. I have been mulling over what constituent can JavaFX actually serve well, despite claims from Sun that it is WORA desktops and mobiles.
- Most developers know very little about design (or care about design), with the top 10 percentile remotely capable of mimicking existing designs.
- Existing tools to lay out swing components is adequate. Not much bling, but it is functional.
On the other hand, any one who had played with JavaFX would dread to go back to a world without the “bind” keyword.
Secondly, design is like any other skill. It is possible to think about design algorithmically. “mac is not a typewriter” is one such book.
Thirdly, organisations who would like to migrate their user interfaces from Swing might consider JavaFX ahead of Flex, simplly because it markets itself as 6/8th Java, 2/8th FX. Of course, in reality this is not true, but - hey - word associations worked for JavaScript, and that’s not even Sun’s product. JavaScript was a Netscape invention.
No. 1 — September 7th, 2008 at 8:57 am
[...] once you get past the YAML syntax. Unfortunately, the JVM itself it the issue. JavaFX or not, Sun will not see JavaFX overtake Flash on most web [...]