Sun gears JavaFX for consumer move

Other clues as to what will be happening at the conference can be found in the JavaOne session program. Among the sessions planned for is a presentation by Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation for open source tooling. This will be Milinkovich's fourth appearance at JavaOne, a foundation representative said. Sun is one of the few major holdouts from Eclipse participation.

Milinkovich and Eclipse's Wayne Beaton plan to talk about this year's Eclipse project releases and will demonstrate a Java-based application for laptops, a Linux server, and a mobile device. Entitled "The Many Moons of Eclipse," the session will focus on writing code for OSGi-based applications. OSGi is a key technology used by Eclipse.

Also featured at JavaOne will be a session on the 6uN update of Java Platform, Standard Edition 6, which is now available in a public beta release. The update has a new Java Plug-In technology that supports applets in the browser.

"This 'next generation' Java Plug-In technology combines the best architectural features of the Java Plug-In and Java Web Start technologies and provides a robust new platform for deployment of Java and JavaFX technology-based content in the Web browser," the session program states.

Also included are capabilities for deploying consumer content, such as the ability to increase heap size and specify command-line arguments on a per-applet basis. Enterprises gain the ability to select a particular version of the Java Runtime Environment for an individual applet. Better integration is offered between Java and JavaScript. Support for the Java Network Launching Protocol enables applets to immediately reuse extensions originally designed for Java Web Start applications, such as the components of the JavaFX platform.

JavaOne also will feature a session on Project Sailfin, an extension of the GlassFish Java EE application server used to build a SIP-enabled (Session Initiation Protocol) communication application server.

Also planned is a session on Project Nimbus, billed as the "new face" of the Swing desktop client platform. "Nimbus is the stunning next-generation cross-platform look-and-feel for the Java platform, perfect for skinning Swing components in existing applications and new FX applications," according to the program.

JavaOne also gives a nod to scripting languages such as PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). A session entitled, "The Duke and the Elephant: PHP Meets Java Technology -The Best of Both Worlds," covers the Project Zero architecture, which is an IBM incubator effort focused on agile development of dynamic Web applications. Project Zero features a PHP runtime that executes in a Java virtual machine and an Eclipse IDE.

Another session will focus on predictions for server-side Java, and will take a look at programming models, standards, languages, innovations, and challenges.

Also on Tuesday, Sun and the Java Card Forum announced availability of version 3.0 of the Java Card specification, which provides a Java platform for small, resource-constrained devices such as credit/debit cards and SIMs for mobile handsets. New features in version 3.0 include an embedded Java Web server, network-orientation via TCP/IP, the ability to leverage standard Java development, and backward compatibility with previous releases.