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JavaOne 2011 Impressions

The first news is that JavaFX 2.0 has been released as general availability [Alternative download here]. Oracle have delivered on their promised, or may be it was Sun Microsystems vision, to reinvigorate the user interface on the desktop. I think this is a fantastic result, and the entire Oracle JavaFX SDK team has to be congratulated for staying the course. It would have been so easy to give up the goal and not persevere with this project.

JavaFX 2.0 Released!

Let us remember that JavaFX was originally an alternative JVM language called JavaFX Script, that Chris Oliver created and imagineered at See Beyond way back in 2006. Oliver was the person who fundamentally thought about marrying Java the runtime, the platform and the language with a scene graph engine. It took real engineering talent to write an SDK, which was both performant and designed correctly, which interfaced the ordinary Java developer with deep tendrils into the hardware accelerated native platform. The JavaFX SDK team had to get this architecture right, just once and for all. It took two goes. Albeit these tendrils in to a rendering runtime went first into Windows DirectX 10 platform, Oracle are blowing the competition away, by investing in a Apple OS X port and a Linux version of the JavaFX SDK. [As a Java Champion, with Kirk Pepperdine, we did mention to Oracle management that they should also consider a JavaFX Solaris port]

The announcements are coming thick and through:

JavaFX 2.0 Windows XP / Vista / 7 and 32 / 64 versions

NetBeans 7.1 Beta

JavaFX 2.0 Mac OS X Developer Preview Release

JDK 7 Mac OS X Developer Preview Release

Progressive JavaFX

Of course, I had my own presentation Progressive JavaFX 2.0 which was well attended. The audience were receptive to JavaFX 2.0 demonstration, admittedly I wrote them against the last Beta release 45. I will make sure that the demos and the code is readable against the JavaFX 2.0 GA before I announce it.

In terms of my own talk, Progressive JavaFX 2.0, I had a brain wave as slept from sudden exhaustion on Monday night, after the Oracle Tech Network reception, to split my talk in the longer term in two tranches the technical side and the user experience / design. I will aim to do this for 2012.

So yesterday at keynote, Richard Bair and Jasper Potts demonstrated the amazing JavaFX Labs. The majority of this demo was written against JavaFX 2.0 final code, there was a part of the demo that leverage JavaFX 3D internal parts. The exciting part was watching Jasper Potts muck around with XBox Connect and manipulate a 3D Duke, created by designer in Maya. Seeing is believing as they say, you need watch it in order to understand. Maybe I will capture a video on Vimeo here on this blog.

JavaEE 7 and Cloud Focus

On to the Java EE side, Oracle is definitely changing tracks with the Cloud. There is a serious effort now to get Java EE the standard mechanism to standardise Platform As A Service, Elasticity, Caching, Orchestration and Web Service Definitions, JAX-RS, Context Dependency and Injection extension and include a new JSON API library.

“Oraclers”

Overall, JavaOne 2011 is still the Mecca for Java developers, despite the downtown in the economy, the reduced number of Java engineers, and the loss of the Moscone Centre central hub. It is still just worth getting out over the pond to touch base with the “Oraclers” [ This term was borrowed from the Black Eye Peas’s Will.i.am, at the 2010 Oracle Open World appreciation event / Treasury Island ]. The “Oraclers” recognise that Java Champions and the community do matter. We thank them for this support.