David Herron's Blog

JavaFX and slimming the JRE

JavaFX is cool, right? Did you raise your hand when you said you wanted an JavaFX Mobile phone? I sure did.

Looking over blog entries since JavaONE I'm seeing a lot of angst... JavaFX adds to the bloat so how can this ever fly? Why doesn't Sun pay attention to the real problem and fix the bloat? etc etc etc ...

Announcing the Consumer JRE (again!) covers something which we've been working on for awhile, and which we actually announced at JavaONE. The ConsumerJRE is a big step towards fixing the "bloat" problem (er.. in todays world of multigigabyte memory and hundred+ gigabyte disk on laptops, is "bloat" that big a problem anyway?) by making a smaller JRE, which caches some of the JRE in memory for fast startup, etc.

Comments

• Flash has such a big adoption rate because of two things:
  1) A autoupdate that is painless, with no click truu.
  2) A product (youtube), firefox that is popular enough that when a new version appears most people that use it upgrade...
  Java is more diverse, so if you can't find a way to encourage people to upgrade, they wont.

  Posted by: i30817 on May 17, 2007 at 02:23 PM

• And yet java has a relatively slow upgrade cycle. If you can make an obtrusive "java 1.6 has been released click to autoupdate" on windows loading instead of that godawfull "java loading" popup every single time you get an applet (a technology that needs to be replaced by webstart), you would have more success i think.

  Posted by: i30817 on May 17, 2007 at 02:26 PM

• The size is not the problem nowadays, customers expect to click and run instantly... just like Flash does. They don't care the underlying platform is Java, it just has to work without hassle, that is the most important.

  Posted by: kozmoz2 on May 17, 2007 at 02:48 PM

• i30817, Web Start doesn't replace Applets. Both are needed. (And I do agree that both need to avoid any terrible mention of "Java loading". Apps should just start up instantle. "Without hassle" in the language of kozmoz2. Then I can - if absolutely needed - make my own branded loading progress screen. For instance, this is common in Flash when people feel the need.)

  Posted by: tompalmer on May 18, 2007 at 11:08 AM

• if javafx want to gain the internet, it must reolve the jvm first. many users dont need a jre. it is too bother.

  javafx 想占领互联网的话， 必须解决发布的问题。像flash那样，点击就可以使用，而不需要让用户预先安装丑陋的JRE.

  DING BIG

  Posted by: ding_big on May 20, 2007 at 08:55 AM

• Flash is successful because there are competent tools out there for creative types to build content in Flash - a situation that Sun misses a LOT as it introduces technologies that are really targetted at the "creative" audience yet simply provides "develoer" level tools in order to accomplish the job. Until I see some competent tools for authoring JavaFX content, I am convinced that this whole idea will fail.

  Posted by: gregorypierce on May 25, 2007 at 04:37 PM

• The JRE is damn too big. Java apps do not work in unison on their host systems especially "Wackdows". If java can be made to be as fast as other applications written in VB or .NET...wud be happier. Consumers dont care about programming languages, they just want solution...which should not later become a problem with speed and other stuffs....I love Java

  Jaji

  Posted by: lukman_jaji on July 06, 2007 at 05:30 AM

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