Sun offers JavaFX road map

Sun Microsystems executives at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco on Tuesday hailed the potential of the JavaFX RIA (rich Internet application) development and deployment platform, which had been formally unveiled at JavaOne in May 2007. Company executives set forth some firm product delivery dates for JavaFX and touted a couple of development projects: Project Hydrazine for cloud computing and Project Insight for collecting feedback on application usage.

To show Java's prominence in multimedia, rock icon Neil Young made an appearance onstage to promote his video and music catalog offering based on Java and Blu-ray technology. A Sun official also briefly commented on Sun's predicament in trying to put Java on the Apple iPhone, leaving the ball in Apple's court to help make that happen.

With JavaFX, Sun is set to take on rival platforms in the growing RIA space. Rival technologies such as Microsoft's Silverlight and Adobe's Flash platform also seek dominance.

"We're taking on the marketplace," with Java, said Sun president and CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

JavaFX enables application deployment across multiple types of interfaces, including devices. A demonstration showed a JavaFX application being moved right from the browser onto the desktop.

"In fact, [JavaFX] runs on all the screens of your life," said Rich Green, Sun executive vice president of software. JavaFX features components such as a runtime, a media codec framework, and the JavaFX Script scripting language.

Sun set forth a road map for JavaFX: