JDK 6u21, JavaFX 1.3.1 and Deployment

Now that JDK 6u21, JavaFX 1.3.1 and NetBeans 6.9.1 are all finally released, I'm back to checking the latest news and improvements in JavaFX. The official Release Notes points to the deployment improvements as the single new end-user feature, so I've checked the latest improvements in this area. The really major feature of this release is for developers: debugging and profiling will now, well, work as expected. With my excuses to the javafxc team that worked a lot to make this happen, it's just not exciting, headline-worthy material... still I have some comments about the compiler update in the end. It's the Deployment, Stupid! JavaFX's feature set is decent at least since 1.3, although more is needed / is coming (TableView, etc.). But even by 1.2, deployment was already perceived as the biggest problem - for any Client Java, including Swing and runners-ups like Apache Pivot. A recent blog from Max Katz summarizes this well, section The Ugly stuff. Java's deployment has been ugly for so long that it takes some faith to believe it can be fixed. Faith has been rewarded, though, even if not with miraculous speed. The JDK team continues the "6uN" project, delivering incremental client-side improvements in a roughly half-yearly pace. The latest such release is 6u21, which brings these significant enhancements: Java HotSpot v17: Not client-specific, but extra VM performance never hurts! More fresh good...

Date: August, 21 2010
Url: http://www.java.net/blog/opinali/archive/2010/08/21/jdk-6u21-javafx-131-and-deployment

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