Bluemoon Sanctuary

Lets first see what exactly is JavaFX. To put it simple, JavaFX is a software platform for creating and delivering rich Internet applications that can run across a wide variety of connected devices. The current release (JavaFX 1.2, June 2009) enables building applications for desktop, browser and mobile phones. TV set-top boxes, gaming consoles, Blu-ray players and other platforms are planned.


It can be said that JavaFX is target to programmers who already know Java programming and want to make rich-interactive applications. But here is where the problem is, I see that JavaFX on desktop supports Windows XP, Windows Vista and Mac OS operating systems but no Linuz (there is for Linux, but it is a Beta version only). For something which is targeted to programmers, I am wondering why they didnt focus on the Linux platform, there is nothing wrong support windows or even mac os, but most java programmers I know always use Linux + Eclipse/Netbeans to program, so this kinda sucks.

JavaFX is said to run on both the desktop and mobile, I have already mention it's weakness on the desktop, but for the mobile it has another weakness, there are hardly any phone manufactures support this technology. Nokia, one of the largest phone manufacturer has declined to answer whether or not they will support this technology, but from the looks of it (just do a simple google search "Nokia JavaFX"), things doesnt look good. There is however good news, Windows Mobile SUPPORTS JavaFX, but when you put a great technology on an OS which people are rejecting, it is kinda already doomed for failure.

There might be logical reasons why companies/OEMs are not putting JavaFX on their phones, one being that they way sun microsystems (the guys who own Java) make money is opposite of Adobe. Adobe for example gives away the technology to run Flash (flash player) for FREE but one will need to pay for the IDE, where as Sun Microsystems gives the IDE away for free but OEMs will have to pay the license for the runtime to run Java stuff.

There is still a nit of hope, since there was one time that JavaFX was showed to be able to run on Android-powered devices and with more and more companies picking up android as their OS, JavaFX might just pick up. But for now, in the mobile world, JavaFX is pratically DEAD, but still pretty decent on the desktop.