JavaFX Will be Here Soon

Sun's answer to Flex and Silverlight will arrive in the first week of December. JavaFX, formerly JavaFX Script, is set to hit version 1.0 shortly after Thanksgiving, said a spokesperson with the company. Things at Sun are a bit chaotic right now, and the release may be delayed by as much as a week if things don't come together properly. This, evidently, has less to do with the technology than it has to do with the major changes in management throughout the company. Either way, the release itself will take the form of a new installer for Java.

That new installer isn't too different from the old one: it's the basic JavaSE desktop runtime with the JavaFX libraries included. Users who already have Java installed should be able to automatically pull those packages down upon the reception of a JavaFX application embedded in either a desktop or Web app.

NetBeans is the editor of choice for dealing with JavaFX, and this morning's release of version 6.5 quietly included all of the JavaFX tooling. No patch needed.

The big selling point for Sun, right now, is that JavaFX can run browser applications and desktop applications on the same runtime. Adobe's current schizoid approach with AIR, Flex and Flash could turn out to be an Achilles heel, if you believe Sun's pitch.

The benefit to developers is less understood at the moment, because, as usual with Sun, this type of thing is entirely new. The application benefits will have to be discovered elsewhere. For now, Sun shows off an in-browser video player, and shows that it can be quickly moved out of the browser and onto the desktop.

Perhaps video is the neatest new addition to the platform, here. Java has never had an embedded video codec, and here, in JavaFX, is such a beast. It's not even proprietary: they're licensing a standard codec.

Mac users will have to wait a little bit, as the Java code there is Apple's. Sun expects Apple to add JavaFX promptly upon release, possibly even the same day.

JavaFX should be an interesting new avenue for Sun. Eventually, the company plans to offer this language on mobile platforms, and right now, the target date for that capability is next summer. The idea is to have one language to rule them all.

Wasn't that what Java was supposed to be?

Rich Green Moves to Greener Pastures

Rich Green shouldn't have much trouble getting another job. That's a good thing because Rich was recently let go from Sun, where he headed up the entire software division. Solaris. Java. NetBeans. Glassfish. Everything.

It's definitely hard to think of a more punishing, difficult job than making sense out of Sun's software portfolio. In a company where the guiding line, recently, is to open source everything, Sun still has a remarkable amount of closed source software that it supports and sells. That list has gotten shorter under Rich's reign, but it's by no means gotten any better.

Sun has always been known for writing very competent, technically advanced software that is years ahead of the curve. Unfortunately, it's also known for producing software that moves too slowly to keep up with the accepted curve of excellence. Such is the case with Solaris. Solaris users are ravenous, and can't understand how people get work done in other Unix environments. And yet, newcomers mostly stare at Solaris and ask "so, why is this better than Linux?"

It's like standing in a field of hedgerows, then picking the one quartered off field with the nicest grass, and an excellent caretaker, but only 10 feet square of space on each side.

In truth, the only way I see for Sun to move forward, away from the smoking heap of rubble that is its software portfolio, is to move closer to the consumer side. That means paying more attention to usability, simplicity, and penetration. Not exactly Sun's strong points. The Solaris faithful, of late, have had the throne of Murdock to worship at, and that's a good thing.

But is it too late for all this stuff? Maybe, maybe not. There are many other options than my consumer/power-user direction, though Sun's forthcoming release of JavaFX 1.0 could help there.

Another option is bringing the entire company together to confront the storage/database market. Sun's already offering solid-state drive arrays running ZFS, meaning RAID is no longer needed. A major advancement that's not offered anywhere else. If I were Mr. Schwartz, I'd be concentrating all firepower on that particular super Star Destroyer. Too bad EMC would be waiting at the door to kick Sun's shins and say "welcome!"

Anyway, here's hoping Rich Green finds a good company to work with. I think he'll do a great job somewhere that's a lot smaller and less troubled than Sun. It can't be easy to work at a company that seems to put all its effort into losing money.

Bill Joy as National CTO?

The Web is a-buzz with the rumour that Barack Obama put in a call to folks from the VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, asking for CTO recommendations. National CTO recommendations. It's about time we had a leader who recognized that this nation needs a singular technological vision for government infrastructure.

The scuttlebutt on the Obama call is that Bill Joy, among others, were offered for the job. Not necessarily offered the job, but we'd imagine Obama's list would be relatively short, and Joy is perfect for the job.

Joy, as you may recall, is one of the original co-founders of Sun Microsystems. Despite that company's recent woes, there's no denying its underlying understanding of technology. Perhaps Bill Joy as national CTO wouldn't necessarily mean Open Solaris for all, but it would no doubt be something of a breath of life for the ailing company.

No matter what technology company our national CTO is affiliated with,however, it certainly seems that the Obama team is already asking the right people about the right jobs. Rah!