May 4th, 2007
Sun preparing answer to Flash, Silverlight?
The details are a closely guarded secret until JavaOne opens next Tuesday. But all indications point to some kind of response from Sun to Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight.
[Update: And here it is: JavaFX takes center stage at JavaOne --Ed]
I admit this is based on 2 parts information, 4 parts speculation, and 3 parts wishful thinking, but a few hints of what this response might look like are available for all to see if you know where to look. You can check back on how well I did at prognosticating next week.
One part of the answer could be Chris Oliver’s work with F3 (Form Follows Function). For demonstration purposes, Chris has converted a number of Flash and SVG examples into F3, which you can run live. The only problem is deployment - you have to have the big monolith called “Java SE JRE” installed on your desktop before you do anything else.
That’s where some work from Ethan Nicholas might come in. His group is making Java 7 more modular, so there could be a small core that downloads and installs quickly (they were calling it the Java Kernel last time I checked). Recently, F3 was ported to run on some mobile devices, indicating it doesn’t need the full Java runtime to do its thing. Could this be the basis of a “frictionless” Flash-like install experience?
Then there’s Project Flair, the brainchild of Sun’s Dan Ingalls, who wants to make the browser a more robust and predictable platform for web developers (don’t we all). And let’s not forget OpenJDK, the open source version of Java 7. This will finally be available soon, perhaps during the conference. Its GPL license will allow modifications and new distributions, opening the door for subsets and variants based on Sun’s starting code. Maybe it’s time to — dare I say it — shed the “Java” name for some of this new work.
Media is currently a weak spot in the Java technology stack. JMF, the Java Media Framework, has been dormant for years. One big problem is software patents on the codecs. The best codecs right now are H.264/AVC (used in Quicktime), VC-1 (used in Silverlight), and On2’s VP6/7 (VP6 is used in the Flash player). There’s an older codec called VP3 (aka Ogg Theora) which is not encumbered but is technically inferior to the others. So if Sun wants a true Flash-killer that includes video, something will have to give. Maybe On2 will grant patent rights to allow GPL implementations of VP6/7 viewers? Probably not, but stranger things have happened.
While there are little pieces of the picture being worked on inside and outside Sun, no grand scheme has emerged so far to really take on Flash/Flex/Apollo, Silverlight, and even the immensely popular and useful kludge we call Ajax head on. Will this finally be revealed at JavaOne next week? I certainly hope so. If Sun doesn’t do it, then someone else should. Is Apache, Eclipse, or some big ISV ready to step up to the plate? As one blogger noted this week, we’ve waited 10 years for Sun to do this, and that’s long enough.
[Update: See what really happened with the JavaFX announcement --Ed]
Ed Burnette is a professional developer and author of several articles and books about computing including Hello, Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform, 2nd Edition. For disclosure of Ed's industry affiliations, click here or to view his full profile click here.
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