Earlier this month, I put up a somewhat grouchy post about JavaFX, or at least about my experience with one JavaFX app — specifically, in the weird and wonky way in which I had to download and install it. I asked about others’ experiences with better-run apps, and got a couple of interesting anonymous responses in the comments section. The first, under the heading “Ha ha, silly post,” was as follows:While JavaFX competes with Flex and Silverlight in the sense that its definitely an RIA tool, it’s also a technology primarily for Java and to leverage all of the existing Java developers. At least, that’s my take on it and makes the most sense to me.For a technology that’s only a few years old, it’s already quite a useful and complete technology for Java houses. And as a developer, I’ve skimmed some JavaFX and it’s really a great-looking environment for developers. I’m planning on porting one of my apps to it soon and it’s looking like it’ll require less than 25% of the work i spent with other UIs for the app.This is an interesting response, because it seems to me to sort of miss what I was getting at in my criticism. What does it mean to be an “RIA tool”, exactly, competing with Flex and Silverlight, if it isn’t going to act like a Flex or Silverlight app and run in the browser? Or does Sun think that to compete with those technologies all they have to do is give developers the opportunity to create pretty (and non-standard) UI widgets easily?Another commentor left some links to some JavaFX projects. I downloaded them! They all looked interesting and were intriguingly cross-platform — once I got them onto my computer. I cannot emphasize enough the size of this hurdle for users who have no idea what JavaFX is. With the JNLP files they leave scattered everywhere and the ominous but confusing warnings that pop up as you install them, these apps do not look or act like the applications ordinary users are accustomed to. They behave neither like ordinary desktop apps nor like the in-browser Flash applications that we have all become used to. And unless there’s a way around this, I’m afraid they’ll be viewed with the same neither-fish-no-fowl suspicion that has kept Java from widespread consumer acceptance for years now. I hope you all have a happy holiday! I’ll be returning to blogging after the new year. Software Development