Sun Microsystems released its competitor to Adobe System’s popular Flash and Microsoft’s Silverlight on Thursday, trying to edge its way into already heavily contested market.
Sun stresses JavaFX's ability to run on multiple screens
The computer maker began shipping JavaFX, a software technology began talking about 18 months ago and which came out in a preview version in July.
JavaFX runs on top of Java and is intended to let developers build applications using multimedia and graphical content in Java. This new functionality would have required Flash or another software in the past.
With the commercial release, Java users will have to upgrade their runtime with a download.
Sun says a version for mobile devices will ship in 2009 – probably earlier in the year than later. Future development will bring JavaFX to the television.
JavaFX will come up against some powerful competitors in Adobe’s ubiquitous Flash, Microsoft’s budding Silverlight and the Web technologies in Google’s new Chrome browser.
Sun says JavaFX and the Java environment has a leg up over Flash. First, they can more readily be used to link an application to the business applications, or “business logic,” and data sources running behind a corporate Web site. They also are more tailored to run with mobile screens, televisions, routers and desktop application independent of a browser.
Flash has begun an ambitious initiative to better run on mobile phones.
“We’ve solved the hard problem first,” says Jeet Kaul, senior vice president of Java engineering at Sun, referring to the ability to run on screens and devices beyond the PC. “We have solved the embedded story really well.”
