While last month was Microsoft and Tech Ed, this month is Sun and JavaOne. While last month Microsoft didn’t have much to say at TechEd, it seems that there is a little bit of developer news at JavaOne.
Of course, some of the key pieces of news at JavaOne were the release of JavaFX 1.2 and the first public preview of JavaFX TV. Also coming from Java in the future are a visual designer for creating JavaFX applications. This was previewed at JavaOne today. Also released was JavaSE 6 Update 14. The big new feature in SE seems to be the “G1” Garbage Collector. Of course support for Windows 7 and IE 8 are also added.
What is a keynote without a few statistics to toss around. Sun indicated that there are 6.5 million Java developers world-wide. The Java platform is on more than 800 million desktop computers. It is on over 7 billion internet-connected devices. It is on 90 percent of desktop and laptop computers. It is on 85% of mobile devices. It is in TVs. Java is out there.
One of the editors on my team is attending JavaOne in San Francisco. Glen Kunene was at the keynote and wrote some of his thoughts in his blog entry, Ellison Hints at Oracle’s Java Priorities: JavaFX-based OpenOffice Apps and Mobile Devices. Glen stated that in the keynote, Larry Ellison of Oracle challenged Sun’s OpenOffice and JavaFX groups to innovate. Ellison also wondered out loud why Sun/Oracle couldn’t produce mobile devices based on the JavaFX platform.