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Sun Enters RIA Arena with JavaFX, Versus Flash, Silverlight

Time: 14:58 EST/19:58 GMT | News Source: BetaNews | Posted By: Jonathan Tigner

At this morning's session of the JavaOne conference in San Francisco, executives of Sun Microsystems are expected to announce the near-term availability of a version of Java exclusively geared to rich Internet application (RIA) developers. Commandeering Microsoft's leftover, unused brand name (".NET FX"), Sun is said to have dubbed this new system "JavaFX."

Its target market, based on information Sun gave exclusively to the trade press and which was leaked early, will be the developers of Web-enabled applications outside the browser. Although that was Java's target market to begin with, Sun appears to be concentrating on the portable graphics developer, in an attempt to fill in the gaps between Java and Flash. In recent years, Adobe's Flash has become the platform of choice due to its ability to scale graphics onto multiple devices, which is now beginning to include cell phones and handsets.

As part of the suite, Sun is expected to announce a new and perhaps initially bewildering embedded language called JavaFX Script - not JavaScript, not ECMAScript (one standardized form of JavaScript), not AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript). This may be the culmination of what had been called "Project Flair," which could perhaps be described as JavaScript if Java's creators had created it.