JavaFX: immature

If you're reading this now, you're one of two people:

• A Flash advocate, wondering what competition JavaFX might be bringing to the table
• A Java developer, looking to see how your existing skills might now make you capable of creating flash-like web RIA's.

Well, I am the latter.

In my web development with FreeLance Webs, my customers often desire "Flashy" and graphically intense websites, in order say to the potential customer, "We are amazing! We are serious! We know how to stun you graphically!" It's no secret that a customer won't take you serious if your website looks like a 1995 AOL Special.

This has led me to working with Adobe Flash much more than I'd ever have liked to. Ranging from full-flash sites, such as xpandinc.com, to little flash animations such as weberslandscaping.com and the animated limousine at motion-limo.com, my experiences have always been painful ones.

So when I heard about JavaFX, my interest was peeked. Can I now develop the same flashy interfaces for my customers, but with the ease of the Java environments I'm used to?

Well I don't have a conclusion yet. I intend to blog at a later date when JavaFX is a little more mature and some kinks are worked out. Here's some of the kinks I've hit so far:

• All JavaFX demos I've found so far (that work) are essentially a runnable Java download, which then runs in its own window, outside of the browser. This is not what web developers are looking for.
• JavaFX runs on your JRE plugin for your browser, and I'm hitting a lot of JavaFX demos which won't run for me. I'll get a message saying that I must download JRE 6.0, I'll then download and install the JRE, and then the JavaFX Demo will not run at all. I'll sit and watch some stupid "loading cycle" spin infinitely:

Hopefully I'll be reporting back with something a little more impressive from JavaFX. So far, it only seems to be a matter of distribution and deployment which thwarts them.