Interview about JavaFX Mobile

Here is an interesting interview with Jacob Lehrbaum about JavaFX Mobile. Besides the disturbing background noices, you can find out that Sun really wants to sell a complete integrated software stack for mobile devices to the handset manufactures. Let's see if there's really the need for another platform on heterogenous mobile market....

Once again JavaOne...

... is over. And once again I picked up many interesting things; things I will have a closer look on, things to tell other people, things to be observed in the future, and hopefully things I will use in real projects. I also met several nice people there and had interesting discussions. Thanks to SUN for this event ;)

JavaOne and "crisp"

I've been in several sessions right now and one really good thing I recognized is that terms like "user experience", "user interface", "rich graphics", "crisp", "shiny" etc. are mentioned quite often. Not only JavaFX but several other developments reflects a new thinking in this "gray" java world. People have understood that a good, compelling user experience is mandatory for a good product. Thanks to the iPhone and other products, java will hopefully loose the old image of heavy-weighted, boring, gray and not compelling user interfaces.

JavaFX script...

...is more then a pure scripting language. Looking at the examples, and listening to Christopher Oliver at the JavaOne today, JavaFX script looks like a combination of a classic scripting language like ECMA script and UI descriptive elements as known from SVG. To give an example you will find things like

Rect {
arcHeight: 30
arcWidth: 30
stroke: black
strokeWidth: 3
transform: translate(10, 0)
height: 300
width: 330
fill: Pattern {
content: picks()
}
};

which reminds me somehow to SVG, as well as things like

operation MotoProducts.doDrop(yStart, yEnd, f(y), delay, bounce) {
for (b in [false, true]) (dur delay linear){
if (b) {
var d = if bounce then 1000 else 800;
var ys = if bounce then [[yStart..yEnd], [yEnd..yEnd -10], [yEnd-10..yEnd]] else [yStart..yEnd];
for (i in ys) (dur d) {
f(i);
}
}
}
}

which reminds me to... mmmmmmm.... ECMA script?

JavaOne and JavaFX

JavaOne is on the second day and JavaFX is still the "big" thing. To correct my previous post, JavaFX is not just the scripting language, but JavaFX script is the correct term. It looks like JavaFX is mainly the so called F3 project. You can already get demos and source code for JSE 6 here: https://openjfx.dev.java.net/
More infos on JavaFX are listed here: http://java.sun.com/javafx/
Additionally to that, there is the Term JavaFX Mobile. It looks like this is a full JavaOS for mobile devices including a JavaFX script runtime. SUN showed some demos on linux based mobiles. Probably this is based on the SavaJe technology, but this is just a guess from my side.
How JavaFX Mobile is fitting to the CDC / CLDC and MIDP roadmap, and how it relates to JSR 226 and SVG is still a mystery for me. If anybody has ideas around this, feel free to comment!

JavaOne KeyNote

Just a short note from the JavaOne: SUN announced JavaFX a script language for java based, "flashy" user interfaces as far as I understood.
But there are 1000 of questions open, especially when it comes to mobile devices... I will recap that later.

JavaOne and Marathon

Next week I will attend JavaOne and I'm really looking forward to this. But right before that I have to finish my part of my relay team on the Düsseldorf Marathon.
You can follow our activities on the marathon on sunday on this page.