SavaJe lives on in JavaFX Mobile

SavaJe lives on in JavaFX Mobile
Sun is still making headlines with its announcement last week of JavaFX, a new family of Java-based products aimed at content creators complete with a slick, iPhone-like demo. Sun is pushing the new technology as an alternative to cross-platform scripting languages like Flash, Apollo, Silverlight and, to some degree, AJAX.

The initial launch is comprised of two products: The JavaFX Script, which is the core language for JavaFX, and JavaFX Mobile, the mobile runtime environment.

JavaFX Script has actually been discussed in public for several months now under the codename F3. Sun's Chris Oliver has F3 examples of 2D graphics and "Flash-like" effects as well as further technical details on his blog.

JavaFX Mobile is more than just a scripting language--thanks to technology acquired form SavaJe it is essentially an entire Java- and Linux-based open-source operating system. The CDC Java runtime targets high-end phones, though Sun plans to eventually release a version of JavaFX for CLDC phones as well. JavaFX Mobile runs J2ME apps and adds many standard Java APIs as well.

GUI development tools are still under construction, but JavaFX's simple, declarative language structure should make it pretty easy. The JavaFX scripting language also has some other nice features for developers, like the ability to directly embed HTML in a string and the dynamic execution of code (see Getting Started for more).

Learn More:

• OpenJFX - the JavaFX scripting language
• JavaFX FAQ
• Commentary: JavaFX in perspective, JavaFX: the missed opportunity, Is JavaFX the end of AJAX?, The JavaFX disaster,

- Eli