Comments on: JavaFX: the worst marketing spin in history

By: RIP_tractorboy

RIP_tractorboy — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:17:59 +0000

Just what we didn’t need, to go with Silverlight (which we also didn’t need).

Enough of these “me too” web 2.0 widgets, we’ve already all got Flash and it works!

Later…

By: BoD

BoD — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:07:34 +0000

About the “hostile browsers” bit, I think it had nothing to do with “money-making browser companies”.
Browsers can be seen as ‘hostile’ by *developers* as they come between your app and the user for no good reason. For example you want to make a desktop like application inside the browser: your application now has two menu bars! Your app’s menu, and the browser’s menu, how inconveniant.

Also ‘hostility’ comes from the fact that all the browsers have annoying specificalities and of course you must target them all.

I guess JavaFX is trying to address these problems… I agree that maybe the statement was not tactful and poorly worded…

By: Osvaldo Doederlein

Osvaldo Doederlein — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:20:34 +0000

@Martin S: I understand your “dogfood” argumetns, but remember that FX is just too new. Microsoft didn’t use Silverlight massively, even in their Silverlight development sites, when they had just released 1.0 – and certainly not before that (with prereleases of 1.0). Eating alpha/beta-quality dogfood is stupid because the product is obviously buggy and incomplete and it won’t serve any purpose to make a bad first impression. And while JavaFX 1.0 is already FCS, that’s just really true for the Windows patform. It runs on Macs but apparently with inferior performance (the good stuff in 6u10 has yet to be ported to the Mac – and that is a problem because Apple, not Sun, does the port). Linux and Solaris are also missing both 6u10’s client-side goodies and any kind of support for JavaFX (you can actually unpack the FX runtime and run most stuff on Linux and other platforms, but without important pieces like all the video/audio codecs which are platform-specific). So, making a website heavily based on JavaFX, for example for all the navigation, would mean that Linux users wouldn’t even be able to browse the site. I expect the “dogfood” adoption of FX to increase gradually, as Sun closes the gap in support for at least the mac and Linux platforms (both very popular with developers, if not with the general public).

By: Martin S

Martin S — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:23:32 +0000

Sun COULD’ve cornered the marked if they had followed through in their original applet endeavor. Why they would venture into the RIA market so late, with such a clunky and convoluted runtime, is anyones guess. With all the people that left Sun, I’m guessing some of their engineers thought so as well.

@Osvaldo: If the install experience is streamlined enough, sure it does. That’s how Adobe (Flex) and Microsoft (Silverlight) does it. I personally found it annoying how the javafx.com site was full of Ajax and Quicktime video – but no JavaFX up until the launch.

By: Osvaldo Doederlein

Osvaldo Doederlein — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 20:54:05 +0000

The videos at the channelsun.sun.com site are Flash, but the video at the javafx.com homepage uses a Java FX player. You surely understand that (a) the channelsun site predates Java FX, and (b) there is a chicken-and-egg problem – it doesn’t make sense to require Java FX for most of its marketing, as FX is brand new and not too many people have its runtime installed yet, right?

By: technogeist

technogeist — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 04:20:05 +0000

Why didn’t they think of this stuff 8 or 9yrs ago when browser compatibility was a real pain in the arse?

Flash was around back then and Sun could have swept it away when they had all the accolades foisted upon them.

2008, Asleep at the wheel.