Hi Shawn,
JavaFX was announced at last year (May 8th 2007) and since then haven't heard anything else.

I wrote a blog post covering the technology and what it is last year:
http://blog.benhall.me.uk/2007/05/what-is-javafx.html

Ben

Ben,

Thanks a lot. I must have missed it, though it if was announced last year, I am surprised that there still isn't a public preview of it. Any word on that?

The info I found was pretty new so perhaps there was a new announcement last week?

Shawn

This is a sure loser!

The only games in town are SilverLight and the Adobe RIA's.

Adobe has the clear lead, but SilverLight, with Beta1, is coming up fast.

Hi Shawn,
JavaFX Script is only one part of the platform with JFX Desktop coming this fall and JFX Mobile and JFX TV coming next year.

As for being a step backwards, I don't think I agree with that. I think you can compare JavaFX to the Xaml part of Silverlight, it's basicly just the RIA UI you're doing in JavaFX but the rest is still plain old Java (or whatever language you chose to run on the JVM), just like you're still doing Silverlights code behind in C# or some other CLR supported language.

Some interesting parts of JavaFX include hardware accelerated 3D, which is something I'm really missing in Silverlight, and the ability to run the same application in a browser, on your desktop (you just drag the applet from the browser to the desktop) and mobile devices without having to recompile or repackage it in any way.

As for a public preview, I believe the SDK released last year only included the JavaFX Script support. It looks like a new preview release will be made this summer and I'm assuming that release will include the Desktop and media components (through a partnership with on2) that will be part of the fall release.

It's also worth noting that JavaFX runs on top of the Java Runtime, so millions of desktop and mobile devices which already have Java support will get the FX support through runtime updates. Updates which as of JDK 6 update 10 will be a much nicer experience than it is today.

I too was surprised that there was no new release of JavaFX together with the new announcements, but then again, there are still 3 more days of JavaOne, so who knows.

Dewey,

The same was said of Silverlight when it first launched as WPF/E so I wouldn't hold your breath. Us in the .NET community (and Flash guys too), tend to think that the Java guys are passe or don't know what they're doing, but I don't agree at all. Lots of great ideas that we know use daily came from that side of the development mindset.

Sure they have to play catch-up, but don't count them out.

Hi Shawn,

You can download the JavaFX Script Addin for NetBeans IDE from http://javafx.netbeans.org/

It looks like the SDK still hasn't been released. Maybe Sun are making another push after working on the technology for the past year. I don't think many people where jumping for joy the first time around.

Ben

The story I heard was: After Adobe acquired Macromedia's Flash and made a Flex out of it, Sun felt shown up b/c this was supposed to be their Applet game. So Sun decided to set Adobe straight w/ JavaFX. Ironically, while Adobe decided to make its ActionScript like Java, Sun designed JavaFX to be like a hybrid of mark-up and script. I personally don't like mixing those two things together but we will see what eventually Sun releases. Samples from last year looked a bit messy tho.