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Sun Debuts JavaFX As Alternative To AJAX
r7 writes "Internetnews is reporting on Sun's introduction of JavaFX at JavaOne today. Looks like a combination Applet, Flash, Javascript, and AJAX with a friendly programming interface. Does this really spell the end of AJAX? I sincerely hope so. Nothing built on Javascript will ever achieve the security, cross-platform reliability, and programmatic friendliness that Web 2.0 needs. Proprietary solutions and vendor lock-in are also dead ends. JavaFX has the potential to satisfy this opportunity even better than did Java over a decade ago. Along with AJAX, let's hope JavaFX also puts paid to Microsoft's viral Active-X and JScript, and, more importantly, that it really is a web scripting language that developers can grok."
It's the first instantiation that matters.. Applets are so uncommon that the average user will only come across them once per reboot.
Also, because of the most stupid thing Sun ever did, people tend to deliberately close the JVM after that first initiation. Why? Cause Sun puts a stupid little Java icon into the systray. It immediately draws attention to the fact that the JVM is in memory and people think they might get a speed boost or something by closing it. (Or something equally irrational that users think.) This was a pretty predictable result.. and the icon serves no purpose anyway, so why bother?
How we know is more important than what we know.
A demo of JavaFX (embedded in Java WebStart--yuck) can be found at http://blogs.sun.com/chrisoliver/ . Seeing as flash comes up instantly in browsers, even if it takes some time to download code, etc, and that web pages with ajax also render near instantly, I don't see how JavaFX is really going to appeal to end users. The JVM plugin still takes time to load on all browsers and platforms and is quite big. And on almost all browsers and platforms I've ever used, tends to lock up the browser for 10-20 seconds at a time. Further how will JavaFX integrate with HTML? Javascript?
.NET don't have these problems, mainly because flash is a fraction of the size of the entire JVM adn runtime, and .NET is always loaded and ready to go on windows.
.NET (mono notwithstanding). I really want to like Java, I really do.
Flash and
Anyway, given the current state of Java technology in the browser, I don't see this as being any different from WebStart, which everyone loves to hate because it is so clunky.
I dislike the idea of Silverlight entirely, particularly anything that relies on
It's the first instantiation that matters.. Applets are so uncommon that the average user will only come across them once per reboot.
And thus it really depends upon how this is used. If its used deep into a page say for something like an online word processor, where you know and expect to be waiting, versus a homepage which you expect to open instantly. Really its up to the developers to use it where it makes the most sense. Sadly few do.
If Sun is successful in releasing Java under the GPL, this could end up being an open source alternative to Flash/Flex and Silverlight. All three of them claim to be THE alternative to AJAX.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Actually, he was off by 100%. But that's beside the point.
.net didn't support, or worse when .net just didn't work and you had to dig into the javascript and html mess that your neat little .net app generates to find the problem and fix it.
:)
People may be annoyed by 2, 4 or even higher wait times, but they'll put up with them in the right circumstances without complaint.
Showing people a blank screen, not so much. Show them a progress bar, and they might wait for it; especially if it contains something they need.
The whole 'get it on the screen in 2 seconds or you've lost them' applies to online shopping, product reviews, forums, etc. But people are willing to wait 5-10 or even longer for their bank, their credit card, to file their taxes, to play a game, or to edit a spreadsheet. (As long as the 'start up time' is at START UP, and not after every click.)
If 'web2.0 apps' like gmail took 5-10 seconds to start up, but didn't exhibit the html/javascript flakeyness that would be worth it. And a lot of the load time could be addressed with caching, and having the VM preloaded, if that was the only stumbling block, hell they really are more *application* than *webpage* -- with some browser support they could be ready to go in the background, selected like wii channels or something, for commonly visited 'sites'.
AJAX is a mostly a train wreck on par with the spaghetti code that we inherited from the Basic/C/Cobol era. Html/javascript just wasn't designed for this sort of use. AJAX is like writing multithreaded real-time applications in Windows 3.0 or MacOS9 cooperative threading models... you can do it... and it can even mostly work most of the time if you don't bang on it too hard. But its never going to be great.
asp.net was a decent move forward, as at least it mostly shielded the developer from the ajax mess. Unless you needed to do something
But we *really* need to see a good standards based framework on the browser side, that applications can be written against.
Of course, we've always had Java and ActiveX. But Java was proprietary, and was hampered immensely by Microsofts attempts to discredit it, and embrace/extend/destroy it, including their own incompatible MSJVM, and "Visual J++" version of the language. Plus it was plagued by its own problems. Not to mention that the language itself I always found cumbersome. (I think Microsoft really did a good job with C# by comparison.) And ActiveX? Well, the less said about that plague on mankind the better.
JavaFX, at first blush, looks like it might fit the bill.
Hellooooo everyone, the issue is not that historically the JVM takes forever to load or that Flash can be annoying. The key trend is that AJAX/Html are hitting a limit, which leads to all this recent energy about Flash/Flex as a better way to construct rich UIs, witness Microsoft's Silverlight.
... well gee it seems historically this has led the winning vendor treat us all like crap. That's a real bummer when you have this expensive time investment in your website, but it's locked in to some vendor's intellectual property. The only other open rich alternative -- SVG + Javascript -- appears a bit dead.
... that would be awesome. Even if the technology is just ok, the openness would make it worthwhile. Just think ... it could work properly on Linux and phones and what have you. This is very much like what happened with HTML originally. Just an ok spec, but the openness catalyzed all sorts of growth and competition.
Now both Flash and Silverlight are totally proprietary. That's a huge problem. If one of them were to "win" and get a zillion developers
So what's neat about this announcement, is that it's a Flash workalike that's OPEN SOURCE. If it were to "win"
Another way this could work out is that it bluffs Adobe into opening up Flash, which I figure would be just as good an outcome. The key is to not be stuck developing your expensive web app, but with some vendor controlling the underlying technology.