Java on the RIA road
Sébastien Letélié | 18 mai 2007The JavaFX news have burned feed readers, Sun take place on the RIA market against Microsoft and Adobe and it’s a good thing. F3 (i talkin’ about before) which is the base of JavaFX Script is a very great technology, and make easier the Swing productivity in terms of design. But don’t forget Java have always been a RIA plateform with Applet to create RWA applications. Apple understand this and migrated NeXT UI library since WebObjects 5.0. Java Web Start was arrive after making easier, like Web application, the deployment of RDA applications. Sun was in advance in this domain but Applet don’t find success and it’s the asset of Silverlight and Flex because they have GUI design tool (Expression Web, Flex Builder). Bob Brewin Sun CTO, tell us that this tool is a priority [Ed Burnette interview Q6] : JavaFX Designer.
I’m not agree with Simon Brocklehurst, I think that this tool and the designer/developer collaboration are essential, i’m not saying developers aren’t good designer, i think application conception with clean code is an art but design and development are different jobs.
The other difficulty is the JRE size, ~13 Mo where the others turns around 5 Mo, but it will be better.
Finally don’t forget mobile objectives (JavaFX Mobile), Java is really present in this domain and could make the difference.
Chris Oliver don’t choose XML for JavaFX Script unlike Microsoft with XAML. It’s true that JavaFX Script syntax is more intuitive and have advantages but we loose XML extension advantages (XInclude, XPath, XSLT). I was thinking Sun make more interest on JAXX, an XML UI language for Swing. But it’s a reality that JavaFX Script is an easier syntax for UI design.
What about SWT ? Bob Brewin say JavaFX Script could be extended for SWT [Ed Burnette interview Q5], and SWT is going to be compatible with WPF, could we have SWT UI generated with XAML ?
Don’t forget SWT is an UI library for RDA not RWA. The Silverlight, Flex and JavaFX Script objectives aren’t the same than Eclipse RCP, NetBeans RCP, Apollo and WPF. I notice that Silverlight use only 30% of WPF [5mn avec Kevin Gallo, Product Manager Silverlight par Didier Girard] where JavaFX Script can use all Java libraries.
What’s interesting thing is Eclipse is everywhere :
- Flex Builder is based on Eclipse
- Plugin JavaFX Script
- Eclipse on WPF
- Eclipse on Swing
When you choose Eclipse you’re sure make the good choice ;).
To compare JavaFX Script and XAML the pad tool are interesting :
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