I just posted an interview on InfoQ.com that I did with Stephan Janssen where we discuss his latest project, Parleys.com, and the RIA landscape. He has built a pretty sweet AIR/Flex application, and is playing with a number of the other RIA platforms. So, it was interesting to learn more about what he is up to.
You can check out the interview at: http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/03/stephan-janssen-parleys-ria.
Last year at JavaOne, Sun introduced JavaFX - their new RIA platform. Multiple people have told me that a very limited amount of time went into grabbing this from the labs and presenting it at the conference (like measured in days – not even weeks). Combining that with Sun’s lousy track record with Java UI technologies, I quickly wrote off the release / platform.
As of late, I have started to think differently about JavaFX. My change of heart comes from two main reasons:
Reason one, Adobe AIR of course! As I blogged about earlier this week, I can picture all of the cool things that our industry will be able to build as the browser and desktop merge (it’s not just about moving web technologies to the desktop – duh!). AIR is cool and I hope to build some interesting things on it, but it does have some significant shortcomings. First off, no JVM on the client, which means that business logic has to be duplicated in another lang. for offline features. Second, SocketListen. BitTorrent or peer-to-peer anyone? JavaFX is part of the Java platform – so these will not be issues for JavaFX.
Reason two, there are finally some interesting applications being built using JavaFX. Last week, I got to see an alpha version of a pretty amazing JavaFX application. It isn’t surprising that there haven’t been a lot of great examples of JavaFX applications yet, as it is still in alpha itself. I am not typically a bleeding edge adopter. So, seeing real applications built using the platform is a milestone to me.
All that being said, I am not completely sold on JavaFX - more than anything I would say I am hopeful. A successful JavaFX platform could really help to propel the RIA movement and the industry as a whole. I don’t think there are any guarantees of success with Sun’s track record in this area. There are a lot of things that go into making a successful UI platform… here are few the keys in my mind:
Deployment. Deployment. Deployment.
Tooling. Tooling. Tooling. I am strong JEE developer, but not the world’s number one UI developer. If JavaFX requires me to become a world class JavaFX developer to build something that works well and looks elegant, then it has failed.
A Strong component model that works well out of the box (even includes some sexy effects/etc), but allows for extension and customization when needed.
I hope they get it right – this may be their last chance.
I attended the Java Posse Roundup in Crested Butte last week. It was interesting to hear discussions on so many different topics. My favorites were ‘Why are Open Source People Such Weirdos?’ and ‘Overview of JEE.’
There were good conversations on RIA too, but generally a lot of agreement. Agreement is good, but doesn’t always make for interesting conversations. Although, it was interesting to hear a general excitement for what is now possible with the RIA platforms (Flex/AIR, JavaFX, Silverlight, and GWT), most everyone seems to have a wait and see attitude towards JavaFX.
You can read my InfoQ.com write-up on the conference and OpenSpace format at: http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/03/javaposse-roundup-2008.
For loving Flex so much, I have actually been skeptical about Adobe AIR. Over the last year, I have had a hard time understanding why moving applications from the Web to the Desktop mattered (it just didn’t seem that interesting). Then I had the chance to attend the Adobe Engage event two weeks ago, where they launched Adobe AIR with its 1.0 release. With the launch, they demonstrated a number of applications built using the AIR platform.
For me personally, it was one of those exciting, yet horrifying moments in life. It was horrifying because I started to understand how limited my personal development experience has been by only knowing a world where the browser/Internet exists. I have been in the software industry for 10 years – so for me it has always been about web based applications. There have only been two times in my career that have I been asked to build a non-web / desktop application, compared to dozens of requests for web UI’s.
So, even though it was a bit frightening to realize how limited my view of user interface development has been, it was exciting to begin to understand what is now possible as the web and the desktop blend with platforms like Adobe AIR. There were a number of cool applications / features demonstrated. One of the coolest applications was Sprout, for assembling content from anywhere.
Most all of the applications demonstrated were amazing, but much of my optimism and excitement comes from many of the subtle features in these applications enabled by the AIR platform. Seeing a Flex application in the browser communicating with an AIR application on the desktop is just cool, and will help us (developers) to implement features that improve user experience.