Sun Microsystems Touts JavaFX Rich Client Technology

May 7, 2008

In his opening keynote at the 13th annual JavaOne developer conference, Rich Green, executive vice president of Software at Sun Microsystems highlighted the role Java technology plays in powering content and rich end-user experiences across all the "screens of your life". Green will provide a new look at the dynamic content, sophisticated services and application mashups made possible by JavaFX, a family of products for creating Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) with immersive media and content.

The Java platform is the global standard that powers billions of devices - from desktop browsers and computers (800,000) to mobile phones (more than two billion) and Blu-ray Disc players (13 million), TVs (nine million) and other connected consumer products. Green will provide attendees with a look into the future with the latest in Java technology design and development, as well as unveil a roadmap of enhancements to Java, the most widely adopted runtime in the world.

"Java technology has evolved to be the most powerful, scalable and secure development platform for a broad range of enterprise and mobile applications," said Green. "Consumer demand is where the action is and with 2.2 billion mobile devices and 91 percent of all desktops, Java technology has become a constant digital companion, playing an essential role in everyday life. Java technology is now ready for the new creative audiences that have emerged in response to consumer demand for rich content - scripters, social application creators, designers, content authors and consumers who will join the Java ecosystem of more than six million developers to take Java technology in exciting new directions."

JavaFX In Action

During the JavaOne conference, Sun will offer a first look at the newest creations powered by JavaFX Rich Client Technology. Demos, including Movie Cloud, Photo Flocker and Connected Life, will present a vision of creative possibilities to those on the bleeding-edge of design and development. Movie Cloud, a 3D sphere rendering dozens of high definition videos at once, brings style and sophistication to movie collections. The audience will see the future of rendering photos flash before their eyes with elegant photo tagging and display using Sun's Photo Flocker, which enables users to search for specific photos by tags and dynamically view a cascading montage of the resulting shots. The Connected Life demo illustrates how easy it is to create RIAs across multiple screens of your life by delivering an application across a Web browser, social network, desktop operating system and a mobile phone.

Future of JavaFX

Green will then discuss the future of JavaFX software which, for the first time, will empower developers with the option to generate revenue through advertising on mobile applications and will outline a roadmap for the JavaFX family of products that includes a high performance declarative scripting language, JavaFX Script. JavaFX Script is created for Web scripters, designers and developers to quickly build and deliver the next generation of RIAs for desktop, mobile, TV and other consumer devices. Sun will deliver the first version of JavaFX Desktop for the browser and desktop by fall of 2008. Sun is also currently working with most of the leading global handset manufacturers and carriers and plans to deliver the first versions of JavaFX Mobile and JavaFX TV in spring 2009.

For developers interested in the early access version of the JavaFX runtime for the browser and desktop, this summer Sun will launch a new JavaFX preview program and a Web site focused on the needs of scripters and Web developers, as well as a forum to get feedback on the JavaFX preview release. Visit http://www.javafx.com for more information on the JavaFX family of products, the preview program and to view demos of the JavaFX Rich Client Technology in action.

Partners and Rock Legend Take the Stage

Neil Young will also join Green and Jonathan Schwartz, Sun president and CEO, onstage during the JavaOne keynote to announce that he is working on a career retrospective archive project on multiple Java powered Blu-ray Disc packages that will be released by Reprise/Warner Bros. Records. Young will share details on this exciting project and provide a demo of the interactive features that will be available in the new collection.

Sun also hosted CommunityOne on May 5, a dynamic and diverse gathering that includes thousands of developers and members from the Apache Software Foundation, Eclipse, GlassFish, Grails, MySQL, NetBeans, ODF Alliance, OpenSUSE, OpenID, OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris, Python, Ruby, Ubuntu and many other communities.

At CommunityOne, Sun announced the availability of the OpenSolaris Operating System (OS) on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). Additionally, Sun is adding premium technical support for its MySQL database running on Linux and Amazon EC2 to its global support and services offerings. With these new offerings, customers will have access to Sun's innovative open source software running on the Amazon Web Services Platform. Sun and the OpenSolaris community also launched a new version of the OpenSolaris OS, delivering an unrivaled development and deployment environment offering the right mix of rapid innovation, platform stability and support to meet business and development needs. Sun also announced NetBeans Integrated Development Environment (IDE) 6.1 Early Access for PHP scripting language, bringing the power of NetBeans to Web 2.0-style developers.