Growing admiration and success of Apple’s application store sparked concerns among Apple’s rivals that they are falling short of edge. Inevitably this fuels up their research and craves for something similar or better. In this endeavour Sun Microsystems came up with a mobile platform that enables developers to create iPhone-like apps for a wide variety of handsets. The JavaFX Mobile platform which launched yesterday (Thursday, 13th February 2009) will allow developers to create rich applications across the broadest possible range of mobile devices, from consumer handsets to smart phones. Without any doubt this was something a lot of developer’s were longing for.
Well before we carried away with joy let’s see what this JavaFX is (or what it intends to accomplish). JavaFX Mobile is a platform, which will allow mobile developers to create apps that have high-definition audio and video, animation, vector graphics, rich text, and off course access to Web services. The platform runs on top of the Java Platform Micro Edition (Java ME), which is available on most of the mobile phones, including low-end phones and high-end smart phones.
JavaFX Mobile, which makes its formal debut next week during GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, won’t be replacing the existing Java ME. On the contrary it will expands on Java ME, calling Java ME APIs and preserving existing Java ME apps while also providing a library for new JavaFX applications. The JavaFX SDK has been upgraded to support Mobile development, so developers use the same toolkit for building both desktop and mobile apps.
Sun has created a partners program for spreading this platform, and it includes heavyweight like Sony Ericsson, LG Electronics, Orange, Sprint, Cynergy and MobiTV. OEMs and mobile phone network operators have the choice of either delivering the JavaFX Mobile runtime as an embedded application on the device or delivering it over the air.
So let the war begin J Microsoft silverlight vs. Adobe AIR vs. JavaFX, this would be an interesting showdown.