JavaFX, You've Come A Long Way

When you think about it, JavaFX has always been treated as the odd-one-out of the Java technology stack. Everyone else seems happy with Flash and SilverLight, and thinks that Java doesn't belong in the RIA field. But it seems as some people still have faith in JavaFX. It's time for a little bit of reflection...

The site for the Vancouver Winter Olympics utilizes JavaFX for their medal view application. It's about time that JavaFX was used in major sites like this, and I think it's a great showcase of JavaFX. 

The app looks really neat with a nicely rendered view, and seems fairly responsive. The installation time was no big deal for me - all I had to do was click ok and it showed up a few seconds later. Some people have been more critical of both JavaFX and this app in particular.  I think JavaFX has to start somewhere in gaining credibility as a technology. The Winter Olympics is as good a place as any for those new beginnings. 

So, if anyone from Sun/Oracle is reading this, I have a few requests to help JavaFX on it's way: 

• Please give us a better stack of demos than what's up on the JavaFX site right now. I want to see everything that it can do (and more) as written by the experts.
• In the next few months, or by JavaOne at the latest, give us a real killer feature that will bring JavaFX up to the major league.  
• Along with the demos I mentioned above, we need more examples. Lots more.
• Start convincing sites to adopt JavaFX. A good start to this would be to find out the reasoning why JavaFX was chosen over Flash/Silverlight for the Winter Olympics site.
• This is a huge ask, maybe even impossible... But if I could cross compile my JavaFX source to iPhone source I promise to use JavaFX more.

I've often asked you what you think of JavaFX. What I want to hear from you now is not the problems, but the things that can be done to really push JavaFX to the next level and make it a real contender.