It's time for this weblog to broach the JavaFX Mobile subject, and this is the perfect opportunity, because it was part of the JavaPolis 2007 keynote sessions on Wednesday and Thursday. James Gosling addressed JavaFX Mobile in his keynote entitled The State of the Java Universe, and Tim Cramer (Sun's Executive Director of Consumer Solutions) gave a keynote address entitled Java in the Client, in which he spent some of the time talking about JavaFX Mobile. Here are some of the JavaFX Mobile-related points that they discussed, with the help of Sun Java "Evangelist" Angela Caicedo.
JavaFX Mobile (when available) will support Java Micro Edition (ME) applications. To illustrate this, I'd like to refer to The Big Picture slide from the Sun Developer Network JavaFX site:
The bottom layer (white wedge) of these stacks are the underlying Java capabilities on the device. In the case of more powerful mobile devices, as shown above in the column labeled JavaFX Mobile, CDC (Connected Device Configuration) is a Java ME term that specifies the underlying Java framework and capability. On top of that in the orange JavaFX Framework layer is a set of APIs that provide various services, in this case the AGUI (Advanced Graphics and User Interface) platform, also known as JSR-209.
An API that James Gosling and Tim Cramer both mentioned was the MSA (Mobile Services Architecture) platform, also known as JSR-248. This runs on the CLDC (Connected Limited Device Configuration) and is meant for less capable phones than ones that have the CDC framework.
The top layer represents the interactive content of an application, written in JavaFX Script, running on the device, and using the services offered by the underlying frameworks. An unknown at this point is when JavaFX Script (compiled) will be ready to run on each of these configurations (CLDC and CDC).
My company (LAT) is involved in a mobile phone application development project, and will be targeting the CDC. Our strategy will be to use the UI tools and technologies available today to develop prototypes on the phones, and to simultaneously develop compiled JavaFX Script prototypes on desktop machines. When JavaFX Script is available for the CDC, then we'll replace the UI code with the JavaFX Script code that we'll have developed by that time. This brings me to the next point: Java ME development tools available today.
Cool Java ME Development Tools are Available Now
The newly-released NetBeans 6.0 Mobility version available as an option on the NetBeans IDE 6.0 Download page has some very nice mobile application development tools, including the Visual Mobile Designer and the Mobile Game Builder. Angela demonstrated both of them, but spent more time on the Mobile Game Builder because the Java Evangelist job requires playing with the coolest stuff and having fun.
So, the subject has been broached. I'll bring you more on JavaFX Mobile as it becomes available.
Regards,
Jim Weaver
JavaFX Script: Dynamic Java Scripting for Rich Internet/Client-side Applications
eBook (PDF) download immediately available at the book's Apress site
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