The List
This is a list of features that Sun Microsystems has to implement in order to become a serious contender in the rich Internet application (RIA) and mobile marked. Failing to support all these items will result in total failure.
- Play and record audio.
MP3, MPEG4 and OGG. - Play and record video. Including capturing and streaming live feeds from web, DV and cell phone cameras. Nobody cares if the codecs are proprietary and not open source.
- A JavaFX “look and feel”. Maybe based on Synth ? Ebay wants Ebay colors. Media branding is crucial, but giving the developer too much freedom might result in an ugly platform. Mobile users prefer a standardized look. Desktop users have huge CPU's and GPU's and don't care about performance as long as the application is cool. Several look and feels will probably make mobile users angry.
- Asset management. If I got 60 AI files with vector graphics and 12 PSD's, how long does it take me to update my JavaFX assets ? Hours ? Minutes ? Seconds ?
- A web browser component with deep API's. DOM access is required. Cell-phones doesn't really have to support this.
- 3D and animation. People want tactile and dynamic user experiences. Everyone talks about 3D, but very few actually use it because it's complicated and resource intensive. But the wow factor is always there. Microsoft tried to sell Vista on the “wow” factor and found that most people had laptops with integrated graphics and stamina mode enabled. The “wow” turned into “suck” real fast.
What is this list based on ? This is simply the combined current feature set of Flash, AIR, Nokia/Symbian and the iPhone. Even mobile phones are now more media savvy than Sun's default JRE.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, gives a hoopla about JavaFX documentation, compilers, example code and future developments without these media API's implemented one hundred percent. Without media JavaFX is Pow-Ray on Irix. With media JavaFX is maybe Lingo on OS X Jaguar.
If Sun choses not to implement these features, then JavaFX is just an emotional response to Google Android. Java ME is the only successful "media" API (games) Sun has ever had and now Nokia, Google and Apple are all trying to take over this marked. The seven people who write vector graphics in JavaFX will never create an economy big enough for people to start making money on consulting deals. And therefore the project is lost before it even reached 1.0.
Comments
How about a smaller runtime? Java 6 u10 was a whopping 15MB download when compared to Flash and Silverlight's 1.5MB.
Posted by: Casper Bang | July 9, 2008 05:26 PM
Also, forgot the mention the overhead involved in learning a new language like JavaFX Script. Whereas Flash uses widely known Ecmascript and Silverlight uses any of C#/VB/Python/Ruby.
Posted by: Casper Bang | July 9, 2008 05:34 PM
I don't know why you crossed out MP3 and kept MP4 and Ogg. Isn't "MP4" the proprietary AAC DRM system used by iTunes? Ogg's great, but hardly anybody uses it (except for me, my open source zealot friends, and some linuxers.)
JavaFX faces tough competition: despite many flaws, Flash is well-established. Silverlight is rough around the edges, but it's got amazing promise. Sure, Microsoft isn't promising to support it on Linux, but neither Sun nor Adobe has been all that dedicated to producing runtimes that really work on non-Microsoft platforms.
Posted by: Paul Houle | July 9, 2008 05:46 PM
I crossed out MP3 because we need to move beyond what MP3 offers.
MPEG4 and OGG are container formats for both audio and video. So my point is just that audio on its own was cool when Napster was being slammed by Metallica and pets.com was a billion dollar idea.
Posted by: Jan Erik Paulsen | July 9, 2008 08:07 PM
The Java Kernel project should reduce the amount of data a user has to download.
It's in beta now. They claim that the installer will be around four megabytes for an Applet. More if you need heavy stuff like OpenGL, etc.
Posted by: Jan Erik Paulsen | July 9, 2008 08:24 PM
> They claim that the installer will be around four megabytes for an Applet.
Even if they manage that, by experience, you always need extra libraries with Java based stuff. Whether it's consuming a webservice or sending a mail. I never forgot when I saw Flex consume a JAX-RPC webservice with 4 lines of code and no massive library dependencies. Very impressive.
Posted by: Casper Bang | July 9, 2008 10:12 PM
Yeah, the web service integration in Flex is decent. It's easy to create a simple application, but I doubt that Sun was thinking of stock tickers and Flickr when they did their web service stack.
But even Adobe has been pushing people over to faster remoting systems like BlazeDS, etc. If you got one million users crashing down on your XML web service, shit hits the fan real fast.
Posted by: Jan Erik Paulsen | July 10, 2008 01:20 AM
We are developing a very large scale enterprise application that will utilize JavaFX. Obviously we considered Flash/Flex and Silverlight, but in the end “bet the farm” and chose JavaFX. We have been pleasantly surprised with the advancement of the language and the unbelievable support and commitment we’ve received from Sun. All I can say is that people are going to be ~very~ surprised.
Posted by: Thom Theriault | July 10, 2008 04:29 AM