Oracle to Discontinue JavaFX Script; Will Use Java API

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After a short three-year run, the scripting language behind JavaFX was declared dead today at JavaOne. Starting with JavaFX 2.0, which is due out in 2011 (in 7-10 months), the unique RIA framework will use the Java API in place of the doomed JavaFX Script. Of course, this also means that other JVM languages like Groovy and Scala could be used to write applications with JavaFX, but we'll have to see how this new system works.

JavaFX 2.0 will also come with an embeddable browser and will itself be embeddable into… wait for it… Swing. On the surface, it looks like they're essentially turning JavaFX into another set of libraries for RIA. One tweeter called it "swing++." This will also make JavaFX resemble Apache Pivot in a few more ways.

Other News From JavaOne
JDK overseer Mark Reinhold explained the updates to the OpenJDK roadmap, but there's been no ironclad confirmation that they have settled on Plan B, which includes a split in features between JDK 7 and JDK 8. While some sites are nearly reporting this as a confirmed decision, the roadmap updates are still being called a draft. At JavaOne, Reinhold said it will definitely not take five years to go from Java 8 in 2012 to Java 9.

UPDATE: Plan B has been confirmed. Although the decision was made a little bit fast, it seems like most of the community was behind it.

You should also know that Groovy has won the Script Bowl for the second year in a row. Congratulations Groovy gurus!

It's interesting that none of today's revealing announcements came in the much-anticipated keynote from Larry Ellison, which turned out to be dreadfully boring. Oracle has still said nothing about the Google lawsuit. I'm still waiting for them to deliver on their promise of transparency and clarity.

Finally, you have to see this cool guy at JavaOne and the cool shirt he's wearing.

If you have more news from JavaOne to add, post a comment and let us know what's up!

Comments

William Siqueira replied on Mon, 2010/09/20 - 4:03pm

Is sad JavaFX script is dead, but what's about the JavaFX Authoring Tool? http://sellmic.com/blog/2009/06/05/javafx-authoring-tool-demo-at-javaone-2009-with-video/ :S

Jeff Martin replied on Mon, 2010/09/20 - 4:59pm

Hooray! They should have done this from the very beginning (as I often said). The big thing that JavaFX did was to bring together graphics and application components. Tying that to a new language only fragmented Java.

Jacek Furmankiewicz replied on Mon, 2010/09/20 - 5:48pm

A pragmatic approach...Oracle scores some positive points with the Java dev after the Google lawsuit fiasco. I am very pleased to see this, it puts focus where it should be: Java.

Kudos to Oracle for making a tough decision.

Marko Milicevic replied on Mon, 2010/09/20 - 6:05pm

I think this is the best possible outcome for this story, and the best chance for the future of desktop/RIA Java. The JavaFX language was a nice DSL for building RIA's. But it was a big mistake to couple the JavaFX platform with a single language. It's a much better approach to expose an API that multi-languages can integrate with, and make it easy for great frameworks to participate in growing/supporting the ecosystem (like Pivot and the awesome Griffon framework). I believe that developers will be much more excited by JavaFX now.

Another fantastic decision is Swing integration. There is too much invested in Swing to abandon it. I assume their approach will be a clean new JavaFX API layer on top of Prism, then refactor Swing to be implemented on top of the new API (similar to how Swing was implemented on top of AWT). Now out of the gate their will be hundreds of great Swing components that can be use to build JavaFX applications. I can actually think about building real JavaFX business apps.

It also sounds like strong confirmation that jwebpane is still alive...
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/alex2d/archive/2009/06/jwebpane_bof_sc.html
http://kenai.com/projects/webpane/members

This is absolutely essential for almost any modern application, and could lead to JavaFX being a serious RIA contender.

This could also be the missing link for JavaFX to integrate a development/designer workflow. Instead of relying on some proprietary markup or language to express the UI design, why not integrate JavaFX with the web via jwebpane? Swing/JavaFx components could integrate directly into the HTML DOM (rendering directly in the browser) and allow designers to visually design JavaFX apps as they build RIA today, using XHTML, CSS and javascript.

One thing that is missing that may need to be considered is a rebranding. Can "JavaFX" survive the brand it's become?

My only wish now is that Oracle successfully execute on the new roadmap.

JavaFX is dead, long live JavaFX!

Dennis Lee replied on Mon, 2010/09/20 - 6:58pm

JavaFX is failed from the day one. It ignored all swing developer and force us to do what they want. I lost my faith in Sun and Java because of JavaFx (and JSF).

Otengi Miloskov replied on Mon, 2010/09/20 - 8:51pm

Awesome!!!, Finally good bye JavaFX. Welcome back Swing++ and Java. Nice from Oracle.

Raw ThinkTank replied on Mon, 2010/09/20 - 9:42pm in response to: Otengi Miloskov

Otengi Miloskov

If they had not done this then Google could have used JavaFX in court against the fragmentation claims

Otengi Miloskov replied on Mon, 2010/09/20 - 10:06pm in response to: Raw ThinkTank

@RawThinkTank ROFL, what have to do JavaFX script that is a DSL or scripting language as Groovy that run over the JVM with Android?. It seems you dont understand the Oracle/Google lawsuit fiasco, It is about patents to the JVM level not the java language or scripting languages. Maybe there is a copyright infringe but that could be at the Libraries or Api's level(Harmony). Geez man, wtf is going on with you?!.

Mike P(Okidoky) replied on Mon, 2010/09/20 - 11:03pm

This is confusing to some. Is JavaFX dead or not? Its built in scripting language is. But expressing hierarchies, layouts, and defining properties, remain. That's good! There are things to be learned from SwixML where you also express non code where it belongs, and where code stays where it belongs, in Java classes, not embedded script goo.

About that lawsuit. It's key that things are handled in a non-hostile manner. Both sides have a responsibility here. They both rely on the audience that is sensitive to this issue!

Arn Naud replied on Tue, 2010/09/21 - 2:52am

Good news.

"embeddable browser" for swing, at least!

More important than reinventing a new scripting language...

(And if the other direction, java-in-browser, can also be improved, it would be nice too. It seems that today it's easier to put C# in the browser than Java, with Sliverlight)

Alan O'Leary replied on Tue, 2010/09/21 - 3:51am

This is indeed great news - pity it took so long for them to turn this around - the community have asked for this from the inception of JavaFX .

Lesson for Sun/Oracle - Ask the Community !

I just hope this doesn't turn into a JWebPane type announcement - i.e. vapour ware...

Being able to introduce JavaFX into existing Swing Apps is the BEST way to transition the large number of existing Swing apps & devs to this new tech.

One thing I would like clarification on though is confirmation that a Prism based JavaFX element really will be embeddable into Swing/AWT ???

Or will embedding into Swing mean a tonne of limitations.

If this is confirmed this is a massive leap forward for us.

Richard Osbaldeston replied on Tue, 2010/09/21 - 4:45am

Ack! the retreat from mobile JavaFX is a mistake, the majority of RIA focus & innovation is on mobile at the moment. If JavaFX has a value proposition anywhere it should be there as an answer to mobile platforms fragmentation. Always wondered how they'd attract designers away from html/css/flash a separate modern DSL may well have been more attractive to that crowd, but Java will be a distinct turn off.

Worried by all the talk about JavaFX being the replacement UI framework and how its the new Swing, AWT? (didnt get that reference either). Are they intending to just concrete over Swing now? Twitter is a rubbish way to get at any true intentions. Certainly theres been little to no offical word on Swing for some time. The two frameworks will now be targeting the same desktop market and JavaFX 2.0 backfilling with lots of desktop (alt. Swing) like components.. If Swing failed why should JavaFX 2.0 fair any better?

Philippe Lhoste replied on Tue, 2010/09/21 - 4:48am

Argh! So the many hours spent in learning the JavaFX language is lost, down in the dump? Too bad, it was a nice, expressive language (although a bit verbose). Unlike most commenters above, I didn't mind learning a new language, and actually it was much faster to learn than what I wrote at the beginning of the sentence...

Now, I am happy they insist on usability with alternative languages. I am still not sure that describing a JavaFX scene with pure Java will be a nice thing. But I suppose the Groovy and Scala (and other expressive JVM languages) will soon find nice DSLs to do that.

BTW, I wonder what all the tools that generated JavaFX script code will become. I just hope they won't give us some XML syntax to describe scenes for Java... And I hope we won't have to write wrapper classes where we could just assign a function to an action variable. Unless they are precisely waiting for Java 7 (the version with closures) to do JavaFX 2? Then I won't hold my breath in the waiting...

Alan O'Leary replied on Tue, 2010/09/21 - 5:59am in response to: Richard Osbaldeston

I think it was a good move to remove the mobile - I mean - what mobile would it ever have ended up on ?

Android/iOS/HTML5 are the tech of the future for Mobile (Flash not so much)

HTML5 is clearly the UI tech of the future (But we are some way from full widget libraries etc yet)

There is still a massive Enterprise UI space out there - Swing had sucess in this area - and JavaFX gives this domain a much needed tech bump.

Chankey Pathak replied on Tue, 2010/09/21 - 6:55am

Plan B is perfect. They must go for it. No one's gonna wait till 2012.

Ivan Lazarte replied on Tue, 2010/09/21 - 7:14am

I have to agree this is the right move for Oracle and the future of Java. A bunch of developers like myself weren't interested in learning yet another language to code for the JVM - The Java language is flexible enough. Plus, they'll be able to re-focus resources on areas that really need work - seamless/instant start up, more rich functionality, and future versions of the Java language itself. Bravo Oracle!

Sergey Surikov replied on Tue, 2010/09/21 - 9:13am

Congratulation to Oracle. This is smart decision. JavaFX team members aren't professionals. Sun deceived all of JavaFX programmers like me.

Rogerio Liesenfeld replied on Tue, 2010/09/21 - 9:20am

Actually, the JavaFX Script language is *not* being discontinued! Check your facts. There is no mention of abandoning JavaFX Script in http://javafx.com/roadmap. What they will do is *port* the JavaFX APIs to Java, while also allowing other languages (Groovy, Scala, JRuby, etc.) to use them.

William Siqueira replied on Tue, 2010/09/21 - 10:36am in response to: Philippe Lhoste

Your opinion is like mine

Chad Salamon replied on Tue, 2010/09/21 - 11:02am

Ok wait a second. Oracle releases information and a roadmap that says they will heavily invest in JavaFX technologies, and work to integrate JavaFX APIs so that non JavaFX programmers can use the capiblities. No where in the information from Oracle do I see it saying that they will discontinue the JavaFX language itself. Yet here they report that JavaFX is dead. Can someone show me something from Oracle that says that they will discontinue the language, or is this website just jumping to conclusions?

Chankey Pathak replied on Tue, 2010/09/21 - 11:44am

That's a false news. JavaFX is alive (though not exactly `kicking`). Here's their newly published roadmap: http://javafx.com/roadmap/ Have a look.

Otengi Miloskov replied on Tue, 2010/09/21 - 1:02pm in response to: Chankey Pathak

Face it, that JavaFX with the JavaFX script is dead dead since day 1.

With JavaFX 2(Swing++) Oracle will port back the API's to Java and maybe then JavaFX script will use the API's as groovy or Jython does but not anymore the other way around.

Face it, JavaFX have been a big loose for Sun, Oracle and the community. Oracle does not want to invest on it anymore, Oracle will just invest in Java, That is why they are releasing the JavaFX controls to open source so the community can do anything they like with JavaFX because Oracle is not interested anymore on JavaFX script.

For me all this means JavaFX is complete dead and have been dead as I said since day 1.

2c.

Chad Salamon replied on Tue, 2010/09/21 - 1:59pm in response to: Otengi Miloskov

According to Stephen Chin's blog http://steveonjava.com/javafx-2-0/, they are discontinuing support for the language, while integrating the functionality into Java. The open source community may be able to pick up support for the JavaFX language.

Andrew McVeigh replied on Wed, 2010/09/22 - 5:22am in response to: Rogerio Liesenfeld

Actually, the JavaFX Script language is *not* being discontinued! Check your facts.

Well, it doesn't look good for fxscript. From Richard Bair's blog (from the JavaFX team). So, in essence it's being thrown over the wall to the community and no further official Oracle resources will be used for it.

http://fxexperience.com/2010/09/javafx-2-0/

In general, JavaFX 2.0 is a continuation of JavaFX 1.0. There is, however, one big change and that is with the language. JavaFX Script won’t be updated by Oracle for JavaFX 2.0 to run on that platform. Some folks in the community have expressed interest in taking on this task themselves — and I wholeheartedly encourage this. The JavaFX Script compiler is already open source. We haven’t worked out the details but I would imagine we’d rather add community members as owners of the project than have it fork.

Otengi Miloskov replied on Thu, 2010/09/23 - 5:30pm in response to: Chad Salamon

Chad Salamon thats right, Maybe JavaFX could have a future as groovy in the open source arena but not anymore in the JDK level.

Otengi Miloskov replied on Thu, 2010/09/23 - 5:32pm

It's clear in the blog of Amy Fowler that JavaFXscript is dead("And to those of you who are upset that we are killing JavaFX script, I say that I feel this pain also.") and the focus goes back to Java ("And now that we’re converting JavaFX to a proper Java library, you don’t have to learn a new language to use it"). This is awesome news for Java developers. It was 3 years of JavaFX, A waste of time and efforts that Sun could do it better for Java, Swing/Java2D, J2ME etc. We have to recognize that Sun did a bad move on that one. Now it will take 1 or 2 years more on Oracle ownership to get Java GUI and client side on track.

Hans Unknown replied on Mon, 2010/10/04 - 6:16am

Unfortunately, I was not able to join the JavaOne. And, I am joining the team of disappointed people, since I heard that FX as a language will not be continued by Oracle. I still keep a hope, that some open community might take on the work though. But, hope alone makes a week basis for making technology-decisions, I am afraid. And, it is difficult to achieve 100% certainty about Oracle's new strategy by reading about the outcome of the conference. Since almost a year I have been experimenting with FX and have to say, for it's purpose, it is really a very efficient language. The documentation has been very poor, and there are still some problems related to the binding. But, in total, I really like it, and I found the vision behind it very correct. Our team is very happy with our POC results, which contains a need browser-integration with pretty searchresults from different multimedia web-services. I have a problem to understand the argument "why should we need a new language". I can understand many arguments, but this one I really absolutely cannot understand at all. It reminds me about very old times, when people still tried to argue that assembly is the right language and we dont need any abstraction beyon that. Fact is, JavaFX is extremely easy to learn. Anybody who can develop in Java would take on FX in a couple of days. And, the classical languages, including Java, simply are not optimal when it comes to UI-development. And, a second and even more serious argument seems to be, "why not just continue with Swing?". Is this innovation? Of course, I understand that there are many Swing-based apps out there into which large investments have been made. Those need further support, of course. But, I do not understand those who are about to create new apps, how they can be convinced that Swing is the right choise. How can we still be satisfied with Swing? Swing is old, and even worse, it looks old too. Maybe it can be tweeked to look good, and the fact that I have never seen a goodlooking Swing-app must not mean does it is non-existant. But, I am sure, to make Swing look good is much harder than learning FX. Our team is in the situation to start developing what we hope would be a killer-app for the next - let's say 5-7 years. Personally, I dont believe in the classsical UIs. I believe those have evolved pretty badly through the Microsoft dominance over many years, and there is a huge room for improvements. I dont believe that we will live forever with a file-menu in the upper left corner and an alt+F4 to close a window etc. I am totally convinced, time is ready for a big change. RIA is for me the answer. But, which platform to select? Until a couple of weeks ago, my answer was FX. Now, I really dont know. I saw Amy's advice, "if the app needs to get shipped during the next 12 months, I would select Swing ...", which made me reaaally worried. But, maybe some very bright architect with more inside information than I have could tell people like me what would be the best road to follow, when (a)we are Java-affin for the backend, (b)we need to ship in about 12 months and (b)we believe in the future concept of Java/FX? Would be very thankful for some clarifying words.

virendra nagabhirava replied on Mon, 2010/11/01 - 12:37am

There are couple of things which java missed right from the days of applets which makes the applets bulky

Traditionally java applets are coded in java which are interepreted by the jre on the users machine

would like to put some comments on weaverfx.com

WeaverFx [http://weaverfx.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13&Itemid=6] takes this a step forward by adding a wrapper around the base java applet class and lets developer write there UI declaratively by simple html style XML. Thus making java applets extremely light the size of the applications on the demo site are in Kb's mostly 30 to 80Kb in size.

coming to the UI looks, java had the concept of look and feel but again the look and feel were huge as they were again written in java code. The themes of java were not as popular.

WeaverFx introduces the concept of simple color schemes and uses gradients extensively for a better look.

WeaverFx has binder's supports http,rssfeed and other services all via declaration

Building complex tables were always tough with traditional applets, weaverfx has made them declrative

Having custom components inside a table was always trouble some however with weaverfx this becomes extremely easy.

Write once and reuse it anywhere or a template based development of weaverfx concept makes it easy to reuse the components/simple screens again and again.

In fact in weaverfx accordions and tabbed panes or split panes one needs to just point to the other components.

though weaverfx is not meant for rich part of the RIA, it is meant for the Application part of the RIA

Rajmahendra Hegde replied on Thu, 2010/11/18 - 12:20pm

I love the style of JavaFXScript. RIA! i like to code it differently than my normal Java coding. i seen Java coding as high level programming, when i come down to RIA development i like freedom to do it. JavaFXScript gave me that freedom to think. But! as the owner of the tool and guarding we all need to accept ... In india i seen not many have tried JavaFX! why ? i hear that "O god!!! new learning curve!! Nooooo better i stick with this." this is what JavaFX2.0 answering! No more new things use same thing what you learn with java! why you again learn new things. But this is all for Java developers. i see why many have tasted the JavaFX Script and why its removed!!!!! :( But its decided they wont change... i am satisfied with other existing point!!! Project like Visage,Groovy,Scala! hides those view of not touching java coding!!! i love Scala and Groovy.. yet to try Visage. I love to try JavaFX on JVM Scripting language... but i am also on of those people who miss JavaFX Script! I miss you :(

Rajmahendra Hegde replied on Thu, 2010/11/18 - 12:42pm

@virendra I do agree that Applet is not that much success than any other technology. But note... the time of Applet is not RIA time! Its not designed for supporting RIA! JavaFX is not applet! as i see, when i code JFX i never need to bother what i see in Applets. I feel so comfortable than Applet! tomorrow its scripting world! Visage,Groovy, Scala,Clojure,JRuby etc... one technology write in any scripting language! html style XML: I am fedup with XMLs pls no more xml.... i need atleast scripting language like JavaScript or Groovy etc... no :( see Gant, Gradle, easyb no more descriptors :( UI looks: JavaFX uses same old CSS into its programming i love this using existing one! more to come! color schemes and uses gradients: JFX do supports this if i am not wrong! binder's: unfortunately they are removing script :( but i hope may be another way! you need to see some cool projects like memefx and jfxtras projects .. You may need to see this! vancouver2010