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With a back-to-the-future technology called JavaFX to be launched Thursday, Sun Microsystems hopes to attract a new class of developer while building a much-needed new revenue source.

JavaFX 1.0 returns to the sales pitch that Sun used during Java's launch more than 13 years ago: a foundation for software on a wide variety of computing "clients" such as desktop computers or mobile phones. JavaFX builds on current Java technology but adds two major pieces.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

First is a new software foundation designed to run so-called rich Internet applications--network-enabled programs with lush user interfaces. Second is a new programming language called JavaFX Script that's intended to be easier to use than traditional Java.

But JavaFX faces some steep challenges. Chief among them: while Sun spent much of its energy adapting Java for servers, a host of other software options for building rich Internet applications sprang up. Java paved the way in 1995, but now it's got to take on Adobe Systems' Flash and AIR, Microsoft's newer arrival, Silverlight, and JavaScript and its more sophisticated cousin Ajax.

"This is the essence of the Hail Mary," said Illuminata analyst Jonathan Eunice. "I would like to think there's a role for Java on the client, but it's very late."

But Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz, despite Sun's dropping revenue, low stock price, and large new layoff, believes that JavaFX will overcome its obstacles.

"Don't confuse relevance for stock price," he said, pointing to Java's widespread adoption among developers and students, and to Sun's expansion into newer open-source areas such as the MySQL database software. "We're more relevant today than any other software developer on the face of the Earth."

And while JavaFX may not be widely discussed today as a rich Internet application foundation, "I promise you that will change in the next 60 to 90 days," Schwartz said.

Java's stronghold
With help from allies such as IBM, Sun built Java into a powerful technology for server software tasks such as running stock-trading applications. And it gained a stronghold on millions of mobile phones.

But it missed out on desktop computers, where it was notoriously slow to load, and lost out chiefly to JavaScript built into the browser and to Adobe's Flash plug-in. On mobile phones, Java has suffered from a sprawling set of optional features that undermine its "write once, run anywhere" promise to developers. Different phones essentially have different varieties of Java.

JavaFX is designed to address both of those issues. First, a more unified "runtime" foundation spans PCs and mobile phones, though the latter version isn't expected until the first half of 2009. And this time, Sun supplies it in an unmodified form so phone manufacturers won't splinter it into incompatible versions.

Sun is promoting JavaFX as a good way to write rich Internet applications. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Sun Microsystems)

"We're making our binaries available" to mobile-phone makers "so we can unify the Java platform implementations," said Schwartz, who expects rapid adoption. "We're starting with a couple billion handsets in the marketplace and swimming downstream."

The business case
Sun also will charge those handset makers a per-unit royalty for JavaFX, and right now, Sun needs all the revenue it can get. Although Java has been good for Sun's brand, it hasn't been a cash cow, but here again, Schwartz has high expectations.

"Java has become the single most profitable software product at Sun, growing more rapidly than any other," he said, pointing to billings (PDF) that Sun charged customers in the company's most recent quarter.

In raw revenue, though, its 18 percent growth to $34 million lagged that of MySQL, for which billings grew 50 percent annually to $37 million. And Sun's hardware revenue still is an order of magnitude larger than its software revenue.

Schwartz also believes that JavaFX has more appeal to content providers because it comes from a neutral technology supplier, not a potential rival.

"The problem with browsers, when viewed as the default mechanism for delivering content for the Web, is that browsers have become hostile territory," Schwartz argued. "Internet Explorer is owned by Microsoft. Firefox is owned by Google, at this point. Chrome is owned by Google. Beyond that, with maybe (the exception) of Safari, which is owned by Apple, there is no safe route to distribute your content into the marketplace."

Perhaps JavaFX's open-source nature reduces the threat that Sun could hold a business partner hostage. But when it comes to safety, there also are risks to betting on new technology.

Distributing JavaFX is another challenge. The auto-update feature in desktop Java will take care of PCs, starting next year--though people will be able to actively download it sooner in coming days--but for mobile phones, Sun relies on handset makers and electronics companies such as TV makers to build it in.

EZ coding
JavaFX is designed to be easier to use too. The JavaFX Script origins lie in a project originally called F3, short for the "form follows function" slogan from the Bauhaus school of architectural thought.

"You can use Java to solve difficult problems," but doing so often requires sophisticated programming, said Eric Klein, Sun's vice president of Java marketing. And regular Java isn't well-adapted to creating basic, media-rich applications that run in browsers. Building a simple media player application in Java takes 100 lines of code, but JavaFX Script can do it in 20 or 30 lines, he said.

"The goal was to make (the) power of Java accessible to an entirely new class of developers," Klein said. "For existing developers, it would accelerate how fast they could get things done."

JavaFX also comes with a slick feature, the ability to move running applications out of the browser and onto the desktop--and back, if desired. Essentially, they can change their nature and abilities according to where they're housed. And the same application also can run on JavaFX Mobile, holding the promise for programmers that they won't have to endlessly rewrite the same applications for different media.

"You can build a media player, run it in a browser, then you can simply drag it out of your browser onto your desktop, and it becomes a desktop application automatically. It's the same code, the same application," said Jeet Kaul, Sun's senior vice president of Java engineering.

Moving to the desktop, the application could take advantage of new screen real estate that affords a better user interface and new permissions for tasks such as writing files to a hard drive, Kaul said.

Again, though, incumbent players have an edge. JavaScript has matured as an interface language, Flash has many loyal developer fans, and Silverlight is powerful, Eunice 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," Eunice said. And unlike with earlier chapters of the Java saga, "Sun has to do all this heavy lifting on its own."

AOL has upgraded its AIM Express software, an online Flash-based application that replicates many of the features of the regular downloadable software (add your own review here).

Among the new AIM Express 7.0 features are tabbed conversations, status messages, text-message support to communicate with buddies' mobile phones, and compatibility with Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Mozilla's Firefox 2 and 3, and Apple's Safari 2 and 3.

The software is an example of the growing utility and sophistication of Web-based applications. Instant messaging, though, is somewhat more amenable to the task: it doesn't require the heavy processing burden of a spreadsheet, and not being able to work while offline isn't a big deal given that the whole point of IM is to chat with contacts on the network. Moving applications online poses some compatibility issues with various browsers or with software foundations such as Flash, but it can sidestep myriad other compatibility issues such as operating-system compatibility.

AOL also announced a new version of AIM for phones using the Windows Mobile operating system, including the Motorola Q, Samsung BlackJack, and some Palm Treo models. CNET Download.com editor Jessica Dolcourt reviewed the AIM for Windows Mobile phones beta in June.

The days when Web pages were static collections of text and graphics are long past. But as the Web matures, there's a fierce competition over which technology will propel it into a medium for rich, interactive applications.

On one side of the battle lines is the original Web page description technology called HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language. Over the years, its abilities were augmented first with JavaScript, a basic programming language, and later a JavaScript-on-steroids technology called Ajax.

On the other side is Adobe Systems' Flash, which got its start as a method for graphic animations. It's grown into a much more powerful programming foundation over the years and has been joined more recently by a competitor: Microsoft's Silverlight.

All these technologies are advancing rapidly as Internet start-ups and giants such as Google race to transform personal computer software into services available on the Internet. These so-called rich Internet applications rarely match the performance and features of PC-based applications, at least today, but online applications can benefit from sharing, reliability, and access from multiple devices.

Kevin Hoyt, an Adobe Systems technology evangelist, believes Flash, HTML, JavaScript will coexist--but change rapidly.

(Credit: Adobe)

Consumers typically need not worry much about the programming plumbing beneath their online applications. But suppose you're the person on the hook for your company's online expense reporting tool or a start-up planning to build an online music mixer for anyone on the Internet. You'll have to place a bet on which technology is best and which programmers to hire or train.

Few expect the competition to have a winner any time soon.

"You'll continue to see a high degree of flux for probably the next several years," said Kevin Hoyt, an Adobe Systems technology evangelist for rich Internet applications.

People in the computer industry love to talk about competition, which indeed often does keep companies from growing complacent. But it's also awfully convenient when some foundational technology--Windows, JPEG, and USB spring to mind--dominates to the point where most engineers need not worry much about the messy chaos of multiple choices.

The HTML camp
The HTML side of the battle has its roots in industry standards and in the task of displaying information. That's good and bad.

Industry standards can attract broad adoption, but they're typically slow to arrive. And though both JavaScript and HTML are standards, differences in how they're implemented in different browsers--and even different versions of the same browser--force programmers to accommodate all the possibilities.

Unlike during the browser wars of the 1990s, though, there's more convergence than divergence these days. Even the upcoming version 8 of the dominant browser, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, will ship in a standards-compliant mode by default.

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Update 12:23 p.m. PDT: The official Firefox 3 download site is live; the record-setting attempt began at 11:16 a.m. PDT. Update 10:53 a.m PDT: See this separate blog post on the Mozilla download site troubles. Update 10:02 a.m. PDT: Mozilla is having some technical issues with the site but expects the download to be available shortly. Update 6:43 a.m. PDT: I added the scheduled launch time, 10 a.m. PDT.

Mozilla plans to release Firefox 3 on Tuesday, and the open-source project is opening a new front in the browser wars.

As the Web transforms from a static repository of content into a foundation for applications such as word processors and graphics editors, browsers are growing up from mere gateways into the tool that makes those applications possible. In this new era, it's Firefox--the heir to the Netscape legacy--that's going up against the victor of the last era, Internet Explorer.

"It gives you the horsepower you need to experience rich Internet apps as they should be from a performance standpoint," said Damon Sicore, Mozilla's director of platform engineering, mentioning Gmail and Google Maps specifically as applications where users don't want to wait. "As these apps get bigger and more complicated, faster browsers are going to become more critical."

The Firefox 3 'awesome bar' can give faster access to Web addresses.

Specifically, it takes 60 milliseconds to change Gmail from showing one message to another with Firefox 3, Sicore said, compared with 413 milliseconds for IE 7 and 227 for Firefox 2.

Microsoft is toiling away on IE8, though, with a first beta released and a second scheduled to emerge in August. The program has been reworked to improve performance, said Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft's general manager in charge of IE. With no prompting, he mentioned Gmail as one area where the company has received favorable feedback, and he clearly welcomes the competition.

"IE is the browser of choice for more people on the Web than anything else," Hachamovitch said. "There's an all-around quality, whether in ease of use, reliability, the security we stand by, that makes it a better choice."

Vying for share
Mozilla is a force to be reckoned with, with 18 percent market share to 74 for IE, according to Net Applications statistics. That's enough to ensure that major Web sites have to support Firefox.

Apple's Safari--now available for Windows, too, is in third place with 6 percent share. The next contender, Opera, has less than 1 percent, but it's scrappy: "The browser is the single most important piece of software made today, so innovation is incredibly important if you want to extend the reach of the Web," the company said in a statement.

Firefox is the second-ranked browser in market share for May 2008.

(Credit: Net Applications)

Microsoft knows the stakes are high, with a richer Web coming into being. "It is a particularly fertile period. A bunch of pieces started lining up magically in the last couple years to get some innovation going here," Hachamovitch said

Firefox isn't shying away from competition either. To try to heighten its profile, Mozilla hopes to set a 24-hour download record with Firefox 3, which has been code-named Gran Paradiso. The download period is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. PDT.

Perhaps a more fruitful alternative to whipping fans into a lather through, though, would be to court business users.

"Mozilla needs to show corporations some love," said Forrester analyst Thomas Mendel in a recent report. "Large-scale, companywide deployments are not yet typical. Mozilla continues to expend little energy on wooing IT managers to formally adopt Firefox," for example by offering paid support services, he said.

Firefox 3 features
Faster performance is one Firefox 3 improvement Sicore points to. Two others are better memory handling and what's known as the "awesome bar."

To test memory use, Firefox programmers load 500 pages from top sites on the Web then closes and opens them thousands of times. Through that process, Mozilla stamped out many memory "leaks" under which Firefox 2 wouldn't relinquish memory once it was no longer needed, Sicore said. The company also reduced the amount of memory the browser requires overall.

But memory is hidden under the covers. Front and center is awesome bar, officially called the Smart Location Bar, which lets users type real words rather than sometimes abstruse URL addresses to call up Web sites.

For example, typing "maps" into the bar on my computer retrieves a list of some recent stories I've written involving maps as well as recent maps I've requested off the Internet. That's handy for retrieving recently visited Web sites quickly. Another example of how the feature worked well: I was trying to relocate a Web site I used to monitor Amazon.com's Web site performance, and typing "Amazon" into the bar showed the site--GrabPerf--as one of the options.

Mozilla uses its own formula to determine what results pop up in the list, weighting by factors such as how recently and how frequently you visited various sites. Typing "n" gets me to News.com in no time flat, but your own results will vary according to your browsing habits.

Firefox 3 has been steadily climbing in usage through its testing period.

(Credit: Net Applications)

The awesome bar has its detractors who'd like the feature to be optional. (Tweakers can disable the awesome bar by editing their Firefox configuration.)

Among other features in Firefox 3:

• A prominent warning when a user tries to open a page that has been shown to host malware such as viruses or spyware or that's involved in phishing--the attempt to fool people into entering personal information into a counterfeit Web site.

•  Offline data access, a feature that can make Web applications usable even when the network is unavailable. That's a potential boon for Web apps, but future versions of IE 8 and Safari also support the technology.

Web-based protocol handlers, which lets the browser launch a Web application rather than a PC program for certain actions such as a Web site "mailto" link that otherwise would create an e-mail in software such as Outlook.

• The Cairo graphics engine that lays the foundation for better direct integration with a computer's video hardware. "Video inside the browser is coming," Sicore said.

• animated PNG (Portable Network Graphics), another nail in the coffin of the GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) image type.

• A better full-page zoom feature that devotes maximum screen real estate to the browser. Moving the mouse pointer over a thin strip across the top of the screen temporarily pulls down the browser controls.

• A star button to quickly add bookmarks; double-clicking opens a dialog box that lets users describe bookmarks with tags.

• Support for Windows Vista's parental controls.

• And better support for Mac OS X. For example, it has a Mac-native appearance and has been re-plumbed internally to use Apple's Cocoa technology, a necessary step on the road toward 64-bit support.

Plug-in problems
One of Firefox's claims to fame is the wide collection of add-ons that are available. It's been a bumpy ride coaxing coders to support the new browser, though.

Some major add-ons now have arrived, including Yahoo's Delicious and the Firebug tool for Web site developers.

However, not everybody made the leap. One is Google Browser Sync, which synchronizes bookmarks, passwords, and other settings across multiple installations of Firefox 2. "Phasing out Google Browser Sync was a tough call, but we have decided to focus our efforts on other products, like Toolbar and Gears, that also extend the capability of multiple browsers," Google said of the Labs project in a statement. Happily, there are other alternatives--I like Foxmarks.

Of the top add-ons, "the majority have upgraded 3.0," Sicore said. The laggards will have a grace period "on the order of months" before Firefox 2.0 versions will automatically suggest installing the upgrade.

Attendees at Adobe's Max developer conference check out Thermo, the code name for a design tool that enables designers to construct Web applications without writing code.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET News.com)

CHICAGO--Adobe Systems, one of the largest providers of packaged software, is aggressively expanding into online services as it seeks to garner more revenue from the Web.

At its Max developer conference here on Tuesday, company executives detailed collaboration and document workflow Web services scheduled for release in the next year.

The company also showed off Thermo, the code name for a new tool aimed at letting designers, rather than programmers, build rich Internet applications.

Adobe's strategy is to introduce services as complements to its existing desktop and server applications. It is still experimenting with different business models to charge for services, which could include shared revenue from advertising or subscriptions, executives said.

"We're looking at how monetization of software in the services world changes and Adobe needs to change with that," said Chief Software Architect Kevin Lynch on Monday.

During a keynote on Tuesday, Lynch said that Adobe is still "in the early days" of offering services but the company intends to offer more.