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Developers can now tinker with JavaFX SDK


By Robert Mullins
July 31, 2008 — 
Sun Microsystems released a preview software development kit today for its JavaFX platform for creating rich Internet applications, which the company sees as a way to compete against RIA platforms such as Adobe’s Flex and Microsoft’s Silverlight.

Sun argues it will have a head start into the RIA-building market thanks to an army of 6 million Java developers and Java running on 2 billion phones and 85% of the world’s desktop computers.

The JavaFX Preview Release SDK includes access to a library of Java APIs; a set of tutorials; examples of RIAs that can be created with JavaFX; plug-ins to Sun’s NetBeans 6.1 integrated development environment; and sample code to let developers tinker around writing application prototypes, said Jacob Lehrbaum, senior product line manager for JavaFX, at Sun.

The SDK preview is available for free at www.javafx.com.

Also included is a feature Sun calls Project Nile, which allows a developer to take graphical assets that have been created in design tools, such as Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, and incorporate them into the JavaFX code.

“Folks … can incorporate those assets, manipulate them, do all sorts of animation and transformations, and [do so] as the graphic designers continue to iterate those designs. There are no changes needed to the code itself,” unlike an embedded image file, said Lehrbaum.

With JavaFX, Sun is seeking to improve workflow between developers and designers, Lehrbaum added, pointing to a chronic tension between software designers who want the application to look attractive and the developers who want it to work as it’s supposed to.

Another idea behind JavaFX is to enable developers to use common APIs from the SDK to build RIAs that will operate in a Web browser, a desktop, a TV or a mobile device, without requiring additional coding for each instance. Sun began promoting the marketing catch phrase “Across all the screens of your life” when it detailed JavaFX plans at its JavaOne 2008 conference in May.

“If you’re writing to the common API set, your content can be run across any of the devices,” that run Java, Lehrbaum noted.

The SDK also includes the Java SE Runtime Environment 6 (JRE) Update 10 Beta, added Param Singh, senior director of Java marketing for Sun.

Operating a JavaFX application in JRE allows developers to do some interesting things, Singh explained.

“We can allow Web scripters and designers to create applications that can be in the browser, much like any RIA application, but then we can also take the same applications and literally drag and drop it out, break free of the browser and run it on the desktop,” he said.

That and other demonstrations of JavaFX capabilities wowed the crowds at JavaOne.

Although JavaFX applications are intended to run on multiple platforms, the JavaFX 1.0 slated for release this fall is only for developing desktop RIAs, Lehrbaum explained. A version for mobile and other platforms is due in the spring of 2009.

“There is still a lot that Sun has to engineer in the underlying JavaFX runtimes, so that they can behave consistently across all of the very different platforms,” he noted.


Related Search Term(s): Java, RIA, software development, Sun


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