8 issues JavaFX needs to overcome to be truly successful

Question

JavaFX is excellent technology but I feel it will never be broadly successful until the following issues are addressed. Note, I am referring to JavaFX running inside a browser as an applet in all these remarks.
1. Startup Times
They are just way too slow. On the JavaFX.com home page, the strip of demo thumbnails at the bottom of the page takes over 30 seconds to start on both my Windows machines. I don't think too many people have the time to wait for them to load and will probably navigate to another page wondering what that blank blue strip at the bottom of the page is used for. The Flash versions on the full demos page load almost instantly.
2. Performance
It's just way too slow. All the JavaFX.com demos are designed as tiny little applet windows for a reason: as the size of the applet window increases the performance degrades significantly. As a result, JavaFX cannot be seriously considered for a "real" web application which would occupy the entire space available in the browser as it would be simply too sluggish.
3. JRE
Obviously JavaFX requires a JRE which has its own inherent problems.
* Only a subset of desktop PCs have a JRE installed.
* The JRE is large and takes a long time to download and install.
* Installing the JRE requires the user to close the browser and then reopen it. If the user has 10 tabs open at the time, this is very inconvenient. Installing Flash does not require this.
* I believe JavaFX requires Java 6 Update 10 or greater but a large number of people are very reluctant to keep upgrading their JREs and some are stuck on Java 5 or even 1.4.
4. Progress Indicators
Are there any? The JavaFX strip I referred to in (1) just appears as blank blue right up until the applet has fully loaded. It clearly needs some kind of progress indicator so that the user knows that something is actually happening. The same applies when a video is being downloaded like in the MediaBox demo. There is just a static screen while this is happening and the user has no way of knowing if the applet is even alive.
5. Video
I have tried the JavaFX.com demo MediaBox on 3 machines, a Windows Vista machine, a Windows XP machine and a Ubuntu machine. On the Vista machine running this demo actually crashes the JVM with a "The Java Runtime has stopped working" message and no video is displayed. On the XP machine it thinks for a couple of minutes and then displays a message "The video could not be played at this time". On the Ubuntu machine the demo crashes with a MediaNotSupported exception. That's 3 out of 3 machines that get no video. Does this ever work?
On an XP machine where I managed to get video to work locally, there appears to be no proper buffering of the video before it's played. It appears to try to download the entire clip before it starts to play it. Clealy this is not going to be satisfactory over the internet.
6. Dynamic Scipting
To accomplish true dynamic scripting it appears the applet needs to download the full JavaFX Script compiler (yet another large JAR) and even then it appears to encounter security exceptions that prevent it from running in an applet context.
7. Fonts
They are not rendered clearly. Despite what many people claim, JavaFX fonts are not rendered with subpixel antialiasing on any platform I have tried and as a result look blurred and poor. Fonts in JavaFX are just not up to standard for a professional quality application.
8. Quirks
One such quirk is that every time I go to run a JavaFX demo it asks me to confirm installation of the JavaFX runtime. Surely once is enough. Another quirk is that when I want to view video I have to OK a security warning. A security warning just to play a video? Not exactly user friendly.
Would anyone like to comment on these issues? I am very keen to commit to JavaFX as it has some truly excellent features but I need to know that these problems are going to be addressed in the near future.
Jarrick Chagma

Answer 1

Hi PhiLho,
PhiLho wrote:
Comparing JavaFX to Flash on the pervasiveness ground is a bit unfair. Adobe did a great marketing job in persuading browser makers to distribute it with them. Although if you make a Flash applet needing Flash 9 (for example), and only have Flash 6 installed, you might fall on the inconvenience you describe in 3.True, but the point about Java's pervasiveness was probably the least important of the 8 issues.
Somehow, it would be fairer to compare JavaFX to Silverlight... :-)Agreed.
Installing JavaFX runtime (and perhaps Java JRE) might be an issue for small, casual applets, less for "serious" applications where users are motivated to use them. And well, it is mostly true for lot of plugins.Yes but having to close the current browser window is not desirable and hopefully will be addressed.
1) I agree and JavaFX team agree, looks like Sun is working hard to improve that (on the latest JRE versions) and it might even more improve with Java 7 (with the modularity feature).This really does need to be addressed. Java 6 Update N (10) did wonders for Java startup times in general but there still seems to be an issue here with JavaFX applets. I don't expect that they will ever be fully comparable to Flash and as you point out they don't really need to be but for many of the intended uses of JavaFX startup times need to improve significantly.
2) Not very fair here. Full screen Flash applets are even more sluggish! Some benchmarks tend to show that JavaFX is much faster than Flash and Silverlight. It was true with 1.0, it is even more with 1.2 and it looks that the JavaFX team works hard to improve even further.I have seen some awesome full-screen Flash applets with no obvious performance issues, I am just not confident the same can be achieved with JavaFX and this is where it needs to excel IMHO. I have not worked with Silverlight so I cannot really comment on its relative performance. Do you have a link to an article detailing those benchmarks? I am not doubting your claim, I'd just like to see them.
Beside, I don't think a "real" Web application need to do full screen animations, it is more about forms and simple graphical effects.Yes but, as I said, performance of all effects and even simple animations degrades significantly as the applet gets bigger. This is of course to be expected but still needs to improve as I don't see JavaFX being used very often for banners or tiny little applets.
Of course, we all want better performance in any case.So true!
3) According to Adobe itself, Java is installed on 81% of computers, which isn't too bad (but much less than the advertised 99% for Flash, but see my first paragraph...). Now, the JRE has to be not too antique, of course. At least Sun has an auto-update ensuring users (that follow it) are not left behind. Note that JavaFX requirement is to run with Java 1.5 (with degraded functionality: no drag to desktop, transparent window, etc.).Yes, it really needs 1.6u10 to perform properly. Java is very ubiquitous but, as I said, many people are still on 1.4, 5 or earlier versions of 6. I guess they have updating turned off or ignore the prompts. Many people are of the impression that their applet or application will only work with earlier versions of Java and not the most recent releases which is quite wrong of course. We need to somehow bust that myth!
4) I have seen a loading screen in JavaFX, although it was more about progress of data loading than progress of applet loading...Well it's the applet loading that needs to be visualised especially given how long they take to start up. As I said, just clear your JAR cache and load the JavaFX.com homepage and you'll see what I mean.
5) Not tried much video, can't comment on it.Video is critical in my usage of JavaFX.
6) Not sure what you mean by dynamic scripting.Being able to create components, objects and effects and animations directly from source at run time. This can be done but doesn't work in applets and requires the full JavaFX Script compiler which is another large JAR to download.
7) I have seen hacks to make that.Any references? I am extremely fussy about font rendering.
8) I don't have your problem, it uses the installed runtime without asking. And early demos were heavy on the signing side, requesting unnecessary confirmations for simple animations. Good JNLP tuning avoids that.I get a notification for each applet I run. Clicking on OK or Accept doesn't seem to actually do anything.
Cheers,
Jarrick Chagma