Rich Internet Applications (RIA)

Title: Java SE and JavaFX RoadMap
Speaker: Danny Coward, Chief Architect, Client Software

Danny begins be showing the JavaFX roadmap…

Towards the end of the timeline: “JavaFX.next”
What on Earth could that mean?
In any case: JDK 7 release due early 2010.

Top 5 JDK SE 7 features

1: Modularity
Long overdue, the current JRE is around 14MB and contains a wide range of APIs. The average app only requires a small proportion of these. It also increases startup time.
Danny points out a number of weaknesses in the CLASSPATH concept. This will apparently be addressed by a low-level modularilty system entitled Jigsaw.
http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jigsaw/jcp.prg/en/jsr/detail?id=294
The concept externalizes the package depenencies to a module file… which reminds me of Eiffel’s solution to this issue which is donkeys years old.

2: Broadening the JVM to accelerate runtimes
DaVinci Project should result in a new bytecode model, which enables dynamic invocation, lightweight method handles and a variety of other optimizations.
http://openjdk.java.net/projects/mlvm

3: Java Language Additions
Project coin will result in a few small language enhancements:
http://openjdk.java.net/projects/coin
The switch statement will work with Strings.
Multiple Exception handling
catch (final IOException | ServletException e)

Improved type interence will remove the need to double-declare generics so:
List l = new ArrayList()
Becomes:
List l = new ArrayList ()

Elvis operator eliminates a significant cause of Java’s verbosity:
String s = mayBeNull?.toString() ?: “nothing”;

Integer ival = …
int i = ival ?: -1; // will be set if currently null

Must confess, this is not what I understand by the Elvis operator, but it looks useful nevertheless.

4: Four new I/O APIs
These include: New filesystem API, File notifications, Directory operations, Asynchronous I/O. The latter permits an IO task to be defined using a Future, the Future delivering the result at a later point in time.

5: New GC
New garbage collector “Garbage First” should result in predictably low pauses, few full GCs and good throughput. Can be accessed in Java SE6 update 14 using:
-XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions –XX:+UseG1GC

This will be switched on by default in JDK 7.

Danny notes at this point that numerous other (small) features are also part of JDK 7.

JavaFX 1.2 Top 5
Danny begins by stating that Sun is trying to make up for lost time with JavaFX (as I have blogged in the past).

More platforms
JavaFX 1.2 runs on more platforms i.e. Linux and Solaris in addition to Windows and Mac. LG TV (purchasable in South Korea) incorporates JavaFX1.2. Finally, the HTC developer phone is also mentioned. Danny states that he hopes that phones will be available to consumers on the coming months. Don’t we all!?

New features
New widgets, charts, plus a new look and feel. L&F is possible via CSS, which is obviously a whole load easier than creating an L&F for Swing.
Improved layout management
Layout management: There are three new layout managers, but I know from experience these don’t yet cut it for non-trivial B2B apps.
There follow a series of nice looking demos, which highlight that JavaFx is scenegraph based.

Improved perforamance
Performance up: Realtime streaming for media is now supported, which improves media startup significantly. Various optimizations in generated code and scenegraph. Bytecode footprint is down 30%.

Improved data handling
More and better ways to use data. RSS and Atom feed support. A simple asynchronous framework is also included, plus a simple data storage API.

One final demo is really impressive: Using the bubblemark demo, Danny demos that JavaFX 1.2 performance is significantly better than Silverlight. Now that I would not have expected!

Scott Davis interviewed Dierk König, Canoo Fellow and Grails/Groovy-Evangelist for Thirsty Head at blip.tv. In the interview, Dierk gives an inside-view about new Grails improvements, about his JavaOne talk, JavaFX and the impact of Canoo Webtest. Enjoy this interesting chat about “beauty and code”!

First note that the speakers Ben Galbraith and Don Almaer are co-founders of ajaxian.com, which is clearly an AJAX-shop. They claim that Web technologies and Java went stagnent in the UI space. Ajax and JavaFX have the characteristics of a renaissance. They structure the talk in the form of a “discussion” or a series of arguments, where one supposedly pits the advantages of said technology against the other.

•    Argument #1: Java performs way faster than JavaScript; on the other hand JavaScript is getting faster all the time (V8 team at Google); plus apps like Google wave demonstrate that performance is good enough.
•    Argument #2: Responsiveness improved by worker-threads in a Java GUI. Yet using “web workers” we can overcome the limitation of JavaScript to a single thread. Demo of Pictastic proves the point. Having said that, web workers are still 10 times slower than Java; plus the API is extremely limited. In “web worker”, worker threads don’t share state, which is way safer than the totally flexible Java approach.
•    Argument #3: GC way more advanced in Java. On the other hand, incremental GC in Mozilla is improving all the time. A lousy fact of the JVN is having to determine how much memory the app requires (or how much is available) wherever the app is deployed.
•    Argument #4: Graphical capabilities of Java surpass what web apps can do. But performance of Bubblemark benchmark app shows that Google chrome achieves 100 frames per second. By comparison JavaFX achieves 24 FPS. With vector graphics Chrome is back down to 30 FPS. What the speakers don’t consider is that JavaFX is a very new and to-date under-optimised technology.
•    Argument #5: An Ajax 3D demo “metatunnel” is pretty impressive. Most browsers, apparently, are offering 3D extensions. It’s still at the experimental stage, however. JavaFX, on the other hand, has nothing to show in 3D.
•    Argument #6: Java is weak on fonts. The speakers claim that can’t use native fonts in Java (is this true? I seem to remember supplying Java with some additional fonts some years back.) Control over fonts in the Ajax world is even more limited, however.
•    Argument #7: JavaFX provides “amazing” video support. Counter argument: Flash plugin us ubiquitous and surpasses JavaFX in terms of maturity. Open Web Video offers sophisticated video functions.
•    Argument #8: Binding in JavaFX is compact and elegant. Web toolkits are very clumsy by comparison. The speakers quickly mention Mixins, Animation and Effects. All of this is way easier in JavaFX…
•    Argument #9: Legitimate critisisms are raised about JavaFX syntax. Speakers suggest that JavaScript is actually easier and closer to Java than JavaFX Script. And, of course, JavaFX totally lacks widgets like table/tree. Web toolkits even provide some very cool layout management and tools for constructing GUIs.
•    Argument #10: Tooling superior in the Java world.
•    Argument #11: Deployment. Web wins here, obviously, except for significant browser incompatibilities. Applets, Mac etc. are lousy too, however.

Conclusion: A pretty damning result for JavaFX, which is for the most part justified (at least today.) What the speakers fail to do, however, is talk more fairly about the significant problems faced by AJAX developers on a daily basis.

Yesterday night’s so-called “Partner VIP event” gave us a preview as to what Sun will be emphasising at JavaOne this year. Receiving as much fanfare as ever before: JavaFX, version 1.2 of which is being officially released today (June 2nd) – for Desktop as well as for mobile. 

Secondly, the Java Store and Java Warehouse story was briefly revealed, with more details expected at tomorrow’s opening Keynote. Sun is not proposing to host an app store itself, but to provide the infrastructure to whoever wants to. The Java Warehouse is supposed to act as a central repository for apps, which Java Store hosters can tap into, whilst retaining their own front-end and billing schemes. 

Almost as noticeable as the above was the lack of any mentioning what-so-ever of technologies such as Android, Groovy/Grails. Is it forbidden for Sun employees present anything on these (for many) tactically highly important technologies?

Finally, Canoo’s fame really does appear to be growing. Not only we we appear in the official presentations (see pic) but it’s really impressive how many folks are coming up to us and saying how they’ve heard about this Swiss company.