Submitted by There is a new scripting language in development called F3 from Sun, specifically designed for GUI programming. It allows designing Flash-like GUIs with ease and can call Java libraries directly. You can launch demos and get more information from the related blog.
A better stronger typed more functional javascript?
initially i thought it is GUI specific. Actually, it seems to be a general purpose declarative scripting language but Sun will push it for GUI usage i think.
Edited 2006-11-15 21:15
I have been waiting for this! Sun should’ve done this years ago! Back when Java was the language of choice for dynamic banners and ads, etc before the flash invasion.
Better late than never i guess!
Now we need Sun to push forward on the Java Media Framework (JMF) so we can have some great cross platform media players, to usurp these horrible flash players popping up everywhere.
Well said.
With easier Java distribution (now with the license change), there can be better browser support, and Java will be installed by default.
Although I doubt that actual Flash creators will migrate to this, anyway. They’re using easier GUI interfaces for composing their GUIs, how does ActionScript compare to F3 and Java?
I hope this also encourages Adobe to open up Flash a little more.
Hi,
is it similar to Microsofts Avalon (Windows Presentation Foundation)? Because with Avalon you can create flash like GUIs too.
Greetings
Mike
XAML is not a bad technology (it is not really directly Dependant to .net or windows i assume, like Xul), would be a good thing to implement a Java version of that too. However, since MS is behind, i may expect them to tie it to .Net, windows or IE somehow.
F3 Java
String java.lang.String
Boolean java.lang.Boolean
Number java.lang.Number
Integer byte,short,int,long,BigInteger
Wow, you’ve got to have respect for a language that actually has a sensible integer type.
Looks really really impressive.
To me, it’s a much more attractive alternative to Flash, because of the following:
1. Flash is fully proprietary, Java is now GPL
2. Flash is a huge CPU hog.
3. Flash IDE/tools are very expensive, Netbeans (which I’m sure will have an F3 feature) is completely free
4. F3, running on a standard JRE, will have full access to the awesome Java APIs – Flash’s APIs pale by comparisson.
BTW – with Java 6, Swing performance, LnF, and fonts are all greatly improved. Sun is starting to get serious about Java on the desktop.
Thought adobe gave flash to the mozilla foundation last week.
Only the actionScript i think, not the Flash core.
Only the ECMAScript VM.
Thought that was venkman and they already had one.
Although i agree it has advantages over flash, i think for this language to succeed Java2D needs more low level speed and resource usage improvements (like using simd instructions, direct access to opengl-directx pipeline) to keep up with Flash. Thats said, still i think this is a very good way of making appealing rich client applications (not browser) since it is integrated well with Java libraries.
I have always wondered why SUN had so sacrificed the desktop… If there was a market for Flash, there was a market for that with a pro IDE and a free introductory one…
Anyway, the ‘too late = failure’ adage of the software industry will apply in this case as in many I am afraid.
While Sun is pitching this as a competitor to Flash, I am not sure if this is really the case. Even with F3, I doubt Java will be more capable than Flash when it comes to animation. Due to the neglect of JMF, it will also be weaker than Flash when it comes to multimedia integration (Fortuantely, Java Sound is still okay).
This being said, Java with F3 could be a legitimate competitor to Flex, which is being pitched by Adobe as an Web Application platform. At least the scripting language is quite simple. However, I’d like to see some kind of visual editor which generates XUL and SMIL for UI and animation.
Finally, it appears F3 have something to do with the elusive MVM as it enables multiple F3 applications to run on the same virtual machine.
Edited 2006-11-16 07:44
Finally JAVA cloned REBOL View’s VID dialect 🙂 Well, just in principle – something looking easy to use. I think it could become popular …
Petr
Finally JAVA cloned REBOL View’s VID dialect 🙂
Actually they cloned the result of what REBOL can do with the VID dialect, not the dialecting system itself. F3 looks nice on the surface until you find out that it still takes up 20 times as much code and runs a third as fast as a typical VID program. Not very elegant at all. Good try though.
Good point, rebol is an amazing language and platform that receives far too little attention. I’ve dabbled with it and was amazed at how easy it is to “get-it-done”
Hopefully, interest will pick-up with the 3.0 release coming soon.
http://www.rebol.com
Now there´s a interpreter with the JRE and there are developers. They could enforce a stricter subset or use one EcmaScript 4 with type declarationt, etc.
hmm.. from my impression,
it seems like F3 program has to be fully downloaded before it can start,
compare to Flash one, which I believe it can be partially downloaded first, and can download needed parts as it goes.
Or technically this is not a limitation ?
just only how the programmer write it ?
(i.e. F3 and Flash programs both can download program portions dynamically, if the programmer smart enough)
Edited 2006-11-16 04:08
Can’t you do this with Classloader in Java?
Not sure how flash does it, but I think the answer to your question is “yes”. Also, can’t Web Start be configured to work like that?
Wow… wow! I’m really impressed! Now that I’ve dropped JAVA developmnt a few years ago, now Sun comes up with what I needed in the past. Good morning!
I hope JAVA will be available crossplattform as a standard at some time, and this may lead F3 to abolish “Flash”, just to mention because of the many advantages F3 would have, as JeffS stated in the post 2006-11-15 22:24:53 UTC.
If they implement proper 2way code-wysiwyg editor the thing could revolutionize GUI developement in general and pour some life back to swing developement.
It looks like a prototype creator dream come true.
Webstart/applet applications have a great problem: there is no abstraction on the data layer. There is no framework on the market to ease the development of a data/persistence layer in a similar way F3 abstracts the UI layer. There is Hibernate, which has great limitations (there is no way to use Hibernate objects from a rich client like a webstart application unless the objects are converted to session beans, which is a great work), and there is the Java persistence layer (EJB 3.0) which is even more work…and neither framework handles SQL natively.
If only F3 contained such an abstraction, it would finally unlock the problem of distributed applications…what I want is a dialect for expressing the database declaratively, as well as SQL part of the language, and of course data types created from queries…
I’ve lost faith in Flash. Part of this has to do with Adobe owenership; the rest with growing complexity to do simple things.
Flash is increasingly repeating the same mistakes that Sun made with Java in terms of complexity.
To both Adobe and Sun: KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID!