http://java.dzone.com/articles/oracle-discontinue-javafx
Sad that Sun wasted so much of Java’s resources on an idea that could have better been spent elsewhere but guess Oracle has made the right choice IMO.
Actually… JavaFX script is dead. JavaFX will live on within Java and Swing, as stated by the article.
Yay! Video playback in Swing! Yay!
ah guess JavaFX Script was main problem with it.
hmm
‘JavaFX 2.0 will come with an embeddable browser and will itself be embedable in a browser’
Browsers, browsers, browsers, all the way down.
I wouldn’t say dead: http://javafx.com/roadmap/
Seems they have changed scope.
Edit: yeah only JavaFX script is dead. Which is shame as I quite liked how easy it was.
But probably the best move just to use Java. It will get features out faster, not worrying about another programming language.
That’s cool with me.
Getting Rhino to be fast and easily integrated would be a nice halfway house.
Cas 
still its cool that we are finally getting some proper video playback support in pure java.
The whole JavaFX thing seems to have been an abortion from start to finish, from the laughably bad Java Store and the demos that didn’t work to this. I wonder who in their right mind would use it for a project given it’s past/current state.
Shame really.
Haven’t seen any mention of licensing yet, though. I hope the plan is to release under the same licence as Java / OpenJDK, otherwise it’s just going to create a 2-tier Java ecosystem. JavaFX has taken enough focus away from the core Java platform already!
I must say some of those features on the Roadmap do look pretty great for future java gaming, especially now that they’ve decided to remove the layer of bloat that was JavaFX Script.
In particular the following look pretty interesting:
[quote]JavaFX 2010-2011 Roadmap
…
Hardware Accelerated Graphics
All new fully hardware accelerated pipeline, project name “Prism”. It will target DirectX on Windows platforms (both 32 and 64 bit) and OpenGL on other systems. It will also support software rendering when the graphics hardware on a system is not sufficient to support hardware accelerated rendering. It will also use an all-new windowing implementation instead of AWT for interfacing with the operating system.
…
HD Media & Full Screen Video
JavaFX 2.0 will include an all-new media stack, rewritten from the ground up for stability and performance. It will support full HD media playback in all supported formats with minimal CPU overhead.
Low Latency Audio
The ability to play audio with very low latencies is crucial for using audio in response to UI events (such as button clicks), or in games. We will be adding support to our new media stack for low latency audio. We will also allow developers to bundle media files with their application jars to ease deployment specifically for such small audio files as would be used in low-latency scenarios.
…
Prism Capable Plugin
A plugin capable of running Prism without requiring first starting AWT will be created and shipped. This plugin is based on the current “plugin 2” code base but improves upon it in many ways for both stability and speed. It also factors out GUI responsibilities in such a way to allow an AWT-less “applet”, which is a requirement for supporting a Prism capable plugin.
[/quote]
The low latency sound thing, especially if done right could be a good alternative to OpenAL.
Also from the whats written about Prism, it looks like it might allow some pretty fast games.
[quote]I must say some of those features on the Roadmap do look pretty great for future java gaming, especially now that they’ve decided to remove the layer of bloat that was JavaFX Script.
[/quote]
Yeah quite good. I’m quite excited about JWebPane too. Finally that’s going to be released…
[quote]Also from the whats written about Prism, it looks like it might allow some pretty fast games.
[/quote]
Prism sounds perfect for speeding up Java games. DirectX/OpenGL with software fall back is nice.
Out of topic I know but while reading this JavaFX news, I read that decided plan for Java 7 is now B. What is shocking is that this means Modularization (Project Jigsaw) won’t be out until Java 8 which is planed for late 2012! I’m so disappointed.
Jigsaw is a really large undertaking and is likely going to have a massive impact on the future of java and the way it will be implemented and optimised. Its better that they take their time and do it right rather then try rush it out the door and then suffer in the long run.
Modularization becomes less and less important anyway, with ever increasing bandwidth.
People are downloading hundreds of MBs for a movie. Would 20MB for a JRE really scare them off? It’s all about the user experience these days. Even if Java was 1MB, most people will be too lazy to install it. The word “Java” in the link, would probably do the most damage.
[quote]People are downloading hundreds of MBs for a movie. Would 20MB for a JRE really scare them off? It’s all about the user experience these days. Even if Java was 1MB, most people will be too lazy to install it.
[/quote]
User experience is key but Sun never understood that or didn’t want to.
[quote]The word “Java” in the link, would probably do the most damage.
[/quote]
Agreed, unfortunately.
IMO size isn’t the main advantage that Jigsaw will provide to Java but it will be speed and less memory use and further give the JRE a chance to make optimisations which wouldn’t otherwise be possible.
e.g. Currently just to do a simple System.out.println() requires all sorts of packages, security checks and stuff before java can output anything, modularizing can allow faster startup time and allow the JRE to make much better optimisations both automatic ones and manual ones which jre engineers can code in.
Well, that’s the theory. I’ve yet to see it happen. How are they going to seperate packages that are currently tied together, without breaking compatibility? Code duplication?
Most of Java resides in the public APIs and are pretty much locked in place.
Startup time is pretty good, within a second, once the JRE has run once. This is more of a disk-seek bottleneck than anything else, I think.
It still seems to generally be a totally awful experience compared to Flash though. I just can’t fathom why applets are so crappy at startup compared to Flash. Flash is just… there. Instantly, the moment you hit a page. With Java there’s still this white square and then the stupid loading Java logo and then typically it just doesn’t seem to work properly through proxies, etc, etc.
Cas
well they’ve got a chance now to start from scratch with Prism, no AWT, no need to worry about backward compatibility and has pure direct rendering, if they mess this up, they’ll never get it right.