Ajax Killed, twice in one week!
When your favourite programming toolset is announced dead twice in a week, you know it must be in good shape!
First up, Microsoft announced Silverlight, a .NET ‘n’ XAML based presentation system that runs across browsers, and even on Macs. And Miguel’s already announced a port for Linux. The second Ajax killer of the week is Sun’s JavaFX, a Java runtime-based scripting language with a declarative (a la XAML) and procedural flavour. Both very nice, and you can see the advantage of having a huge existing ecosystem of code to plug into.
After a cursory glance at the demos (and we all know how much a cursory glance is worth), I couldn’t help feeling that familiar sickening lurch that Sun has shot itself in the foot again over presentation (or maybe my toothache was just playing up). The silverlight demos look kind of modern and with it, all hyper-shiny vector graphics and rounded rectangles. The JavaFX tutorial presents a set of examples that look like, erm, Swing apps (without wishing to be too rude about them). Admittedly, a few other demos, such as the moto website clone, do a better job of jazzing things up, but Silverlight’s grabbed first place in the shiny baubles stake, I reckon.
Now, Java2D can go head to head with the other presentation technologies of the day, no problem. Way back in 2004, Oyoaha had an experimental Java2D look and feel for Swing that could hold it’s own against the latest crop of Silverlight shiny goodness (see the small screenshot on the JavaLobby page, if your eyesight is good), although all that remains of the demo now is a cheeky 404 page. Look’s like oyoaha’s moved on from the lucrative world of Swing L&F’s. Oh well.
So, please, please, pretty please, OpenJFX team, consider shipping JavaFX with a fancy 2D L&F. It’s superficial and crass, I know, but so are we developers.
May the best Ajax Killer win! In the meantime, I’ll keep giving you cursory glances, and keep honing my JavaScript!