I think in the case of Adobe that they don't have so much to loose as it might seem. It all rather depends on how well (or not) HTML 5 ends up working. Adobe makes their money on the tools and not the runtime. As long as Adobe design tools are relevant then it makes little difference whether their plugin technology is dropped. Even for JavaFX it is expected that designers will still have and use Adobe Creative Suite for all the artistic stuff. Adobe therefore stays relevant with JavaFX. The only one trying to fight against Adobe across the board is Microsoft by having the Expression Blend Studio. I doubt hardcore designer types would want to drop Creative Suite in favour of Expression Blend. I think though it is a move that makes sense somewhat for Microsoft as they are pushing primarily into the market of Microsoft web development companies who will undoubtedly have Visual Studio if not some kind of MSDN agreement allowing them access to a full range of Microsoft Products (likely including Expression Blend). Such companies may well not have Adobe Creative Suite if the company is not heavily design focused.
HTML 5 keeps being banded around but as I understand it, HTML 5 is supposed to be several years from being a finalised standard. I wonder if an interesting business move would be to redefine what HTML 5 is. If Apple says that applications which are HTML 5 can run on iOS given an un-finalised standard it might be a loophole into getting some technology onto the iPhone through the back doors. I mentioned something under the question about what I would do if I were CEO or Oracle. I would like to try and push for the JavaScript / ECMA Script engine of browsers to be built around a VM technology using bytecode. This might seem a bold move at first but it has some advantages. As long as the browser can compile JavaScript to bytecode backwards compatibility is still there. For developers in the Java / Microsoft / Adobe camps the developer tools can be designed to target the bytecode such that the 'JavaScript' can be sent over the web in binary form. This allows for languages other than JavaScript to be used as long as the bytecode and core 'Browser' APIs are targeted. What would be needed is an agreement on the bytecode (possibly using Java bytecode or some neutral barcode that can be easily targeted by all languages / tools. This alleviates the headaches of using JavaScript in the web, possibly allowing the same language to be used for both Server and Client Web development. On mobile things may get even more interesting. Most mobile devices are based on some version of an ARM chip. These chips have bytecode accelerators. The accelerators were designed to make JavaME to run fast. In this case the same technology could potentially be used to make HTML 5 run really fast. The new JavaScript engines are fast, I appreciate this, but using bytecode you get both the speed and language independence. This is a lot to pull off but if successful it could make 'HTML5' a much more powerful proposition and make web development a lot less painful. JavaScript is often called 'Bytecode for the browser' but why not go all the way and make it literally so? If it were JVM related technology, ironically after years of saying JavaScript is nothing to do with Java it actually would be. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
