Software Reality

JavaFX on The Register (Part 1)

Over at The Register I wrote about my recent experiences playing with (whoops, evaluating) JavaFX. (Note this is part 1 of 2 articles). Judging by the comments, and also comments from the folks in the JavaLobby community, the article's being read as "This guy's saying that JavaFX is doomed already."

Yes in a sense, if the project remains on its current course. A pretty major problem is that Flex, already at version 3, is leaps and bounds ahead. But Flex also happens to be more well thought out.

One example that I don't mention in the article is with stylesheets. Whilst trying out JavaFX, I found myself thinking: "It would make so much more sense if these components could be styled using a separate CSS file."

JavaFX Text Rendering Issues

Sun lost the first round of the Rich Internet Application (RIA) battle to Macromedia (now part of Adobe), when Flash outshone Java applets. At the time, applets were ugly and slow to start up.

Now, Sun has a second chance with its promising new hybrid offering, JavaFX. This time, though, the competition is fiercer, and the prize arguably much greater: ownership of the mobile web – rich, collaborative computing on the move. (JavaFX Mobile will of course help rather a lot here). To even participate, let alone win the race, JavaFX applications need to look good with a minimum of effort.

So it worries me immensely when I see this sort of thing:

Book Review: Subject to Change

Subject to Change: Creating great products and services for an uncertain world

by Adaptive Path (aka Peter Merholz, Brandon Schauer, David Verba and Todd Wilkens)

I thought my own book took the prize for the longest title, but this one trumps it by an extra yard or two. The title evokes a sense of rapid development in “Internet time”, with requirements changing at a fundamental and product-warping level right up to the release date. A book of that sort would read more like an agile manifesto; a celebration of chaos. However, I’m happy to report that this isn’t that book.

Instead, Subject to Change provides level-headed advice on how to develop new products and services in a world that’s subject to change without notice. The key to the book’s approach is to put user experience at the heart of it all. True, there is a chapter on agile development, but it isn’t quite the gibbering chaos-monger that I’d feared.