Check out Processing http://processing.org and Laszlo http://openlaszlo.org for some 'early' options. Processing is still scripting/programming based and outputs Java applets but is a decent start to a Flash alternative using Java. Laszlo is an XML + Javascript language for creating web applications that currently outputs to swf. There has been talk about publishing to Java and DotNet. Laszlo also has an IDE plug-in for Eclipse.
While neither Processing or Laszlo are nowhere near as easy to use for designers as Flash is - they are a start. Problem is programmers are required to make the ide tools for non-programmers to use.
This seems like it would be an ideal fit for services such as Flickr as it would allow for image (or other binary media files) to be sent with xml data - in a compressed binary format.
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Check out Processing http://processing.org and Laszlo http://openlaszlo.org for some 'early' options. Processing is still scripting/programming based and outputs Java applets but is a decent start to a Flash alternative using Java. Laszlo is an XML + Javascript language for creating web applications that currently outputs to swf. There has been talk about publishing to Java and DotNet. Laszlo also has an IDE plug-in for Eclipse. While neither Processing or Laszlo are nowhere near as easy to use for designers as Flash is - they are a start. Problem is programmers are required to make the ide tools for non-programmers to use.
This seems like it would be an ideal fit for services such as Flickr as it would allow for image (or other binary media files) to be sent with xml data - in a compressed binary format.