No JavaFX for iOS, Android or WP - why not?

[John C. Turnbull]

Richard has stated that porting JavaFX to iOS or Android is not currently on the roadmap.  So think what that means.  The current roadmap extends out to 2015/16 or so with the release of JavaFX 8 & 9 so we are talking about some time after that.  Realistically, if JavaFX ever actually does run on iOS or Android then it's going to be 2016/7 at the earliest.  That's another 4 or 5 years from now and surely by then JavaFX will be so far behind other mobile platforms that it really will have missed the boat.

As much as I hate to say it, by then I could have gained expert skills in Objective C and have released any number of iOS apps.

I was pinning my hopes on an official announcement from Oracle at this year's JavaOne that a Beta release of the iOS JavaFX deployment pack was imminent especially after teasing us for so long with demos.  I am sure I am not the only one who is bitterly disappointed to learn that such technology is not even on the roadmap.

In 4-5 years JavaFX will be completely irrelevant if it only runs on what many are already calling "legacy" desktops.

-jct

-----Original Message-----
From: openjfx-dev-bounces at openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-bounces at openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of Daniel Zwolenski
Sent: Wednesday, 10 October 2012 08:44
To: Mark Fortner
Cc: openjfx-dev at openjdk.java.net
Subject: Re: No JavaFX for iOS, Android or WP - why not?

Richard and crew, is Oracle using JavaFX in commercial situations? If so are you able to tell us how/where (ie what space) and to what extent? Maybe knowing this will help us understand the reasons behind all this and the direction Oracle sees this all going (and allow us to decide if we want to help row that boat or jump out now).

Just as (possibility more) disappointing as the mobile stuff is this vibe that Oracle does not see JFX having much of a role in the 'web' space. It looks like a straight bow-out to HTML5. 

I highly doubt any of this stuff is your, or your team's preference and sentiment, but as great as that is, it doesn't help us. Oracle holds the purse strings and that's what will control, and direct the platform. 

Serious, non-rhetorical question: if you were a front-line developer right now what sort of job would you say to your customer "the best platform your needs here is JavaFX"?

The notion that once its all open source the community can do all the extra work to bridge the short commings is a bit of a fantasy. 

Firstly, it's going to take way too long to get there, established platforms are snowballing ahead as JavaFX struggles to catch up. We'll have HTML6 by the time JFX gets open sourced AND then the community gets round to adding features that needed to be in there 6 months ago to be competitive. 

Secondly, where's the incentive for the community to do this? Why not invest our time in making something with a more complete base better instead of plugging gaping holes in a niche, orphaned technology that "has interesting potential". There's no critical mass to the community yet, and another year or two of not being relevant in the major spaces of web and mobile will only see this worsen. I've had to go to HTML5 over the last few months because JFX just isn't ready. Another couple of months and I'll be so heavily invested in HTML5 based solutions that I won't be able to justify coming back.  

Finally, if we didn't need a large corporation backing/financing the main components of this thing then JFX would have been built by the community years ago. If Oracle is only looking at this platform as some sort of glorified 3D charting gimmick, then the community won't get the under-swell of momentum it needs to get past the tipping point where it just grows by itself. 

The attitude needs to be "if you build it, they will come". Currently it looks like "when they come they can then build it". Can anyone actually see that working?

Without web and/or mobile you're fishing for a community without having any bait. No community means no one to build the tools needed to then grow it, no one pushing IDEs to support it, no one making frameworks others can leverage. Which of course is a cyclic spiral into obscurity. 

As I said I dont doubt your commitment to this platform but I do now doubt Oracle's. I want to be wrong - tell us how and when JavaFX is going to be relevant to any significant space or sector. 




On 10/10/2012, at 6:04 AM, Mark Fortner <phidias51 at gmail.com> wrote:

> My preference would be to get the following tasks taken care of before 
> Oracle starts throwing resources at supporting tablets, mobile and 
> JavaFX
> 3D:
> 
>   - *Deployment using Maven.*  Although you can build with Maven, there
>   are a lot of hoops that you still have to jump through, and we still don't
>   have the artifacts in an accessible repo.  I think Zonski, and others have
>   blogged about this, and kvetched on mailing lists so I won't repeat their
>   comments here.
>   - *Webstart deployment *- this is still problematic.  Currently when you
>   push new artifacts to your web server, it's not replacing the existing JARs
>   in the user's cache -- despite what the documentation says.  The "special"
>   javafx tags aren't documented well enough and presume that you're using the
>   Ant tools to generate the JNLP.  And getting shaded jars is next to
>   impossible.
>   - *Charts* - support for zooming and panning within the charts.  Support
>   for drawing on top of charts.
>   - *Support for Swing components within JavaFX. * If the goal is to
>   replace Swing, then this is one of those essential capabilities that needs
>   to be in place. The current examples only demonstrate how to put JavaFX
>   components within Swing applications.  Unfortunately, if you want to reuse
>   any existing components (like JFreeCharts for example) within your project,
>   you're SOL at the moment.
>   - *Support for an EventBus.*  Currently, there's a lot of point2point
>   event code that you have to write to fire and listen to events.  It would
>   make for a much more useable codebase if you could simply publish and
>   subscribe to events at the application level.
>   - *Release the source.*  It's a royal pain to have to download the
>   source through mercurial rather than simply read it as you do with the
>   Swing code or download it as you do with any Maven package.
> 
> There's also some work that needs to be done to make it easier for 
> people to participate.  I have 3 accounts at the moment: one for this 
> mailing list, one for the forums, and one for JIRA.  Can we just boil 
> that down to one, and let me login with Facebook or Google credentials?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Mark
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 11:14 AM, Filipe Portes <omeuefilipe at gmail.com>wrote:
> 
>> well,
>> 
>> what I really will like to see, more than JavaFx running over mobile 
>> plataforms, Is java embedded and JavaFX becoming themselves a pure 
>> Java mobile plataform.
>> 
>> On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 2:53 PM, <goddard at seznam.cz> wrote:
>> 
>>> Thanks for stepping in Richard.
>>> 
>>> Jiri
>>> 
>>> ------------ Původní zpráva ------------
>>> Od: Werner Lehmann <lehmann at media-interactive.de>
>>> Předmět: Re: No JavaFX for iOS, Android or WP - why not?
>>> Datum: 09.10.2012 19:36:15
>>> ------------------------------**----------
>>> 
>>> FWIW, the community support on this mailing list is outstanding in 
>>> my opinion. Usually it does not take more than a day to even get 
>>> replies directly from Oracle staff. And suggestions are discussed 
>>> with an open mind. Compare that to the cost and response time of a support contract.
>>> 
>>> Rgds
>>> Werner
>>> 
>>> On 09.10.2012 19:20, Richard Bair wrote:
>>> 
>>>> In the Java group, we are very concerned about community involvement.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Filipe Portes - @filipeportes
>> Java Architect - Senior Java EE/Web
>> JUGLeader Gojava <http://www.gojava.org/> - @gojava
>>