Comments on: With JavaFX, Sun seeks new coders, new revenue

Sun will launch JavaFX 1.0 on Thursday, trying to reclaim Java's strength as a foundation for rich Internet applications. But it's no longer the incumbent.

[magicmaster]

As an average user, I would like to see Java loading faster, not causing my computer to freeze for a while. Basically, it should load so fast that the user barely noticed such things taking place.

[Pointedly]

I didn't think too much of Java's latest update. I run Firefox 3.0.4 on a 64-bit Vista Home Premium system. Within an hour of installing the latest update (which included the JavaFX plugin), my computer crashed twice while watching a Hulu movie. I had to uninstall Java, manually remove a plugin dll, clean the registry of a leftover reference to the dll, and defragment my computer's hard drive. On the positive side: The end of the movie was great.

[Pointedly]

There is no option to decline installation of JavaFX when installing the new Java update via automatic updating. Since I had no choice but to accept installation of JavaFX, there is no way for me to know if the JavaFX portion of the update caused the multiple crashes to my computer or if it was the non-JavaFX portion of the update that caused to creahes. Since the crashes occurred while viewing a Hulu movie, and since I have viewed Hulu movies in the past without incident, the crashes most likely occurred due to the Java update. Although I did defrag my computer's hard drive before watching the end of the movie, the hard drive had been defragmented previously and within the past week. I did the defragmentation only because I had removed Java. I don't think the crashes occurred due to a fragmentation problem.

[Pointedly]

I W A S W R O N G. Sun's update of its Java and JavaFX technology is fine. The problems I had experienced with Hulu crashing, although temporally related to the installation of the Java update, were not caused by the Java update. After I had uninstalled Java and had run defrag, the freezing of Hulu movies continued. T H E J A V A U P D A T E H A D N O B E A R I N G O N T H E P R O B L E M.

[inachu]

As I see it. Java is getting slower and slower and slower and they have now added apon the slowness of running of all things the fanfare Java logo. but ever since they added the loading screen showing off the orange logo everything seem so much slower. Really now! Did they hire people from Redmond to do this?

[Renegade Knight]

They are all getting bloated and slow. If Sun could make Java the exception then they would be on to something.

[hutchike]

The Java 6u10 (and latest 6u11) is designed to load the bits you need only when you need them. It's *meant* to be faster?

[dalef]

"Internet Explorer is owned by Microsoft. Firefox is owned by Google, at this point." - Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

Since when is Mozilla Firefox owned by Google?

[M A]

Follow the money.

Google throws a lot of $$ over to Mozilla..last I read about 88% of Mozilla's revenue comes from Google.

[jlongino]

Mozilla Foundation receives anywhere from 85-88% (varies by source) of their funding from Google in exchange for search referrals and being its default browser search engine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation

"ownership" is in the eye of the beholder.

[Shankland]

For 2007, Mozilla's search deal with Google provided 88 percent of Mozilla's $75 million in revenue: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10102297-92.html

Mozilla includes a default Google start page and defaults to Google in the search box. Mozilla gets a cut of any Google search advertising revenue from resulting searches.

[FutureGuy]

Applets 2.0 RUN!!!

[bruw]

The author mentioned about Java being used to write trading applications. does anyone know if there's any speed difference between Java based and C++ based server applications, assuming all else are equal?

[MSSlayer]

Not really the JIT compilers speed things up considerably.

Most complaints about the "slowness" of Java are either old arguments or based on using a java app written by an amateur or crappy "professional" developer.

I use Java(and Python and Ruby) for real time tasks or near RT that used to be only reasonable to do in C.

[rakker91]

Depends on what type of speed you're looking at. From a development stand-point, Java and C# are much faster to code and have a much lower learning curve than c++. From a performance stand-point, many will argue that c++ is faster, and I think it's faster than Java, but speed is all relevant. How fast does it REALLY need to be? Games are written in C# and Java both, which are about as demanding as you'll see. Few business server applications are written in c++ because C# and Java are much faster and easier to code and much safer due to garbage collection and living in a runtime. Personally, because of the high cost of implementation, I rarely see the need to implement anything in c++. I'm sure there are cases, but they're the exception, not the norm.

[FredTester]

Test post.

[Jennie1218]

Businesswise, Flash will be royalty free from Flash Player version 10 and AIR 2.0, and if JAVA FX charges royalty per units, then device manufacturers have no motivation to adapt JAVA FX, which is new and risky.

[JavaFX_TL_TL]

JavaFX is too little, too late. It just adds more complexity to web development. Flash is a much better choice.
JavaFX = POS.

[AppleSuxLeo]

He looks like a New-Age pony-tailed DWEEB. Eeeew !

[sanjayb]

Things will be a little rough for JavaFX at the start. But later in 2009, Sun will include the "Framework Utilization Component Kernel" which should make JavaFX lightning fast. I don't know the specific details but you can find more info if you google the acronymn.

[kswartz26]

Sorry, but Schwartz's comment about Firefox being owned by Google is a retarded thing to say. Firefox is a hell of a lot MORE open-source than Java ever was. Anybody who has followed JCP meetings would know this: Sun has hijacked the entire language for years, and still wields veto power over any enhancement or addition to the platform. Mozilla runs a democracy; Sun, an aristocracy. I seriously doubt JavaFX will be any different -- in fact, given that they are delivering binaries to mobile providers, I would say it's the opposite.

This is too little, too late. Give it up, guys. Sell Java to IBM or Oracle and stick to hardware.

[Hunnter2k3]

I'm not sure what is going to happen with this.
I would like to see it succeed somewhere, but i have a feeling it is just too late for Java, specifically on browsers.

Browsers are no longer slow at executing JavaScript (some need to catch up), which is one of the initial reasons people went to Java and then Flash.
HTML and CSS will soon allow some fantastic elements for use in multimedia. (although, you can still do it using JavaScript just now on the few browsers with speedier JavaScript.)
All we need to do is hope browser vendors will work towards that soon.

Flash... well i just plain don't like Flash, unnecessary resource hog.
Nobody likes a Flash site. N-O-B-O-D-Y. Go away if you do, build a FlashNet browser and leave the WWW alone with your fancy plugins.
And Silverlight is still in the minority just now. (but i still prefer this over Flash anyway, Microsoft actually did do pretty well this time)

[igal_alkon]

well, I'm sure gonna test run this one.
sun's stock maybe a bit low for now, and it's far away from it's value in 2000, but it was very stable since then.

and let's not forget sun's servers are very good and used to backbone lots of the internet.
they always gave the developers great solutions, tools and alternatives for free. with MySQL it's a perfect match... it's just my way to say thanks i guess.

[jemiller0]

I agree with Eunice when he said "I'm invariably skeptical that a language you don't know yet is going to be easier than all the languages you do know." I don't understand why Sun hasn't been improving the Java language itself like Microsoft has been doing with .NET. I would have preferred that they make the Java language itself easier to use rather than coming up with an new language. For example, .NET has a lot of nice features that Java is missing such as events, properties, partial classes, lambdas and other things that solve problems and make everyday programming easier and more succinct. Another thing that found the other day is that if you want to call a web service from an applet on the same server, it still requires you to sign the applet since the XML parser attempts to read a system property which isn't allowed for non-signed applets. This means that users have to approved allowing an applet to run to do something as simple as call functions via a web service on the same server. The fact that a rough edge for something basic like this exists tells me that Sun is behind Flash and Silverlight.

[pierre_normal]

That's right, Eunice, no more innovation, the world's had enough. Personally, I just downloaded the SDK, and I'm having a blast. Javascript is a pig of an environment for anything rich, and I'd love to bypass MS and Google with a permamently installed app - with a runtime someone else maintains. Cool beans...