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James Gosling on Adobe Flash / Flex / AIR

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Kathleen Richards of Redmond Developer News published an interview with Sun Microsystems’ James Gosling, in which they discussed JavaFX and its competition in the RIA space. Gosling shared some pointed thoughts on how he believes JavaFX compares to the Flash / Flex platform.
Question: How will JavaFX be positioned with regard to Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe AIR?

Answer: It certainly competes with both of those. I think we have a much broader and more capable API set. We've got a much stronger security story and cross-platform story and a really strong performance story. And I think our deliverable will be really nice.
Gosling specifically on the Flash / Flex platform:
Question: As organizations think about building rich Internet applications or rich client applications, when should developers look at JavaFX over competing technologies?

Answer: If you look at something like Flash, when you get to the much more advanced stuff -- richer interfaces, more complex network protocols, more complex APIs -- it really falls short. We've had a platform for years that can build rich Internet applications that are extremely sophisticated.

Our issue hasn't really been, can you build interesting rich Internet applications? But that it's difficult. And most of our efforts really are around making a lot of it easier.
John Dowdell of Adobe Systems responded to Gosling. He first welcomed those needing additional network protocols to use the feature request form:
If there's a particular network protocol you need, then please let the Player team know.
He followed on by noting in his own way that JavaFX is not shipping, while Flex is due for a 3.0 release in early 2008:
If you think you can do something better, then please ship it.
Dowdell also touches on the deployment innovations that Adobe is attempting to bring by briefly clarifying a major difference between JavaFX, Silverlight, and Adobe AIR technologies:
A follow-up question, "How will JavaFX be positioned with regard to Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe AIR?", fails to distinguish between in-the-browser and beyond-the-browser runtimes.
Gosling comments will undoubtedly get a reaction from Adobe Flex / Air enthusiasts. It should be interesting to see how the platforms compare once JavaFX reaches a production status.

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