JavaFX JavaOne buzz - helping or hurting?

There was undeniably a big buzz around JavaFX (book sales, Ellison's speech) during and following JavaOne.
We (a bunch of JEE developers that don't really "do" desktop apps) even spent a few minutes looking at it and trying to figure out how/why we'd want to use JavaFX.

Just wondering if that buzz is still going strong, or if it's faded and given way to Flex/AIR, Silverlight, etc. In other words, was it just Ellison giving JavaFX lip service or is there really a lot of momentum behind this technology?

Hi Andrew-

I mentioned in another post that I don't think that JavaFX is going to go away. There are several reasons for this.

** It has the full backing of Sun/Oracle in both engineering support and collatoral support: tutorials/samples/books/blogs
** JavaFX is built for graphics and UI
** But JavaFX has the full Java API under it
** Users don't need anything special to run JavaFX, they get the JavaFX support with the JVM
** JavaFX is being improved all of the time. Many of the UI engineers come from Swing. They want to give JavaFX the functionality of Swing without the headaches of Swing. They know they're not there yet, but keep checking back.
** JavaFX releases will be often. They're avoiding 3-year development/release cycles and releasing new versions it seems in the 3-6 month period.
** Anything that eases development that targets hand-held devices will grow in value.
** Engineering is putting an emphasis on performance--which should continue to improve.
** JavaFX is fun.
** JavaFX is a serious programming language that lets you create well-engineered applications.

If you are J2EE developers, what do you use for your front end? JSF?

So, in my opinion, the buzz is still strong and will continue as long as Sun/Oracle continue to put the resources into furthering JavaFX.

I hope you continue to pursue JavaFX . . . it could be fun, you know!

Thanks Gail!

I guess that was my question - which you mentioned - whether Sun/Oracle will continue to push/support JavaFX, or if it was just something they threw out there because they couldn't talk about the merger/larger issues (will the JVM stay free? etc). But hopefully they keep it around, the more choices (for developers) the better IMO.

We do a few different things. We have some legacy end user apps, most are Java Web Start-able.

We also use JavaScript (ExtJS), AJAX, JSP/Servlets, etc. Obviously those are for the lesser weight apps.

I think JavaFX would be worth looking at in a couple areas, so hopefully it is something we have time to explore.

I encourage you to try JavaFX--it's fun.