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Today the preview release of JavaFX was announced. It would be nice to say that many people/developers waited for this release, but the truth is nobody (really) cares. The sad thing is that they are right because the preview release is just a joke. I followed the JavaFX road since F3 times and I expected a lot from it. I did some tutorials and I saw real potential in the technology. However, the slow slow development, the bad marketing work, and the buggy presentations constantly disappointed me. I talked with some Sun engineers at the JavaDeus about these problems and they convinced that the preview release will be worth waiting, but I am more than disappointed with this release. After trying this release, I am pretty sure that JavaFX fails on the desktop (maybe the mobile release can change this). Here is why:

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These are two very interesting articles about applets, their history and predictions about their future.

• Are applets making a comeback? by Jeff Friesen.
  Jeff asked some Gurus (Roman Guy, Chet Haase, Jim Weaver and others) about their opinion. I found it very interesting how Roman and Chet, authors of Filthy Rich Clients, responded to the questions. For those who don’t know, Chet just left Sun a couple of weeks ago and now works for Adobe (AIR, Flex).
• The new applet experience by Jeff Friesen.
  In this article Jeff takes a tour into Applets, JavaFX, and Java 6 Update n. Very nice to read and he points out some rough edges of using Java for RIA’s.

In my previous posts I wrote that JavaOne 2008 will be all about JavaFX. It looks like I am right. In this interview one of the leading developers for JavaFX (in this case its about JavaFX tools) Josh Mariancci talks about Rich Internet Applications and what we can expect from JavaFX. He also indicates new and exciting news will be revealed. My guess is that JavaFX gets a GUI builder like Adobe’s Flex Builder Netbeans Matisse. However, I also heard rumors about integrating JavaFX in existing Adobe products. Eclipse UI builder for JavaFX, that’s blasphemy!

James Weaver’s list of JavaFX Sessions at JavaOne 2008