cosmix.org | Although JavaFX has a lot of potential, the technology also has a lot of weaknesses.

Although JavaFX has a lot of potential, the technology also has a lot of weaknesses.

Can JavaFX become relevant? Ars provides a short summary of what’s good and what’s not so good about Sun’s latest RI/desktop app platform. As this is probably the only Open Source effort tackling this increasingly important market segment, I’m very much wishing to see it succeed. Sadly, Sun’s record with Swing is disappointing and JavaFX seems to be suffering from some of the same mistakes.

Posted on 2007.05.10 at 3:23 UTC

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2 Responses to “Although JavaFX has a lot of potential, the technology also has a lot of weaknesses.”

Mark Papadakis says:
| May 10th, 2007 at 21:32
Interesting.

Competition is a such a wonderful concept/sideffect, yet when it comes to Sun’s RIA solution, I feel they are trying to fight a game they lack the skills to be in, in the first place.

The post referenced here is worth reading:
http://beust.com/weblog/archives/000446.html

Speaking or RIAs, I am not that excited about the benefits they bring to the table, mostly because the downsides they are going to introduce make the whole concept a bad idea, IMHO.
Its an application living in a box (confined into a browser of even the desktop). You can’t index that, you can’t really present that ( say, in search engine results), you can’t mess with the textual content within that app ( copy, paste ? search ? ).. the list goes on.
cosmix says:
| May 10th, 2007 at 22:01
Mark,

I believe we are mostly in agreement.

Sun has really botched Java on the desktop and it is disappointing to see how little it has done over the last decade when it could have revolutionised desktop applications with its technology. Having said that, I truly believe they are now trying, although I agree, it’s probably going to be very hard for them to compete with the likes of Adobe (another company which is trying hard to mobilise and leverage its resources and brand) and Microsoft.

I have repeatedly expressed my scepticism on the subject of RIAs and the whole ‘Web 2.0′ debacle (a meaningless term in my opinion as it’s being promoted by mostly ignorant people that confuse reality with speculation or wishful thinking and try to anchor their thoughts on a single vague term), both here and elsewhere. Despite its undoubted benefits over ‘traditional’ applications in terms of ubiquity, it lags in so many other ways that it more or less becomes a step backwards in major areas such as usability, æsthetics, performance, synergy.

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