JavaFX

[mkmurray]

Carl,

Your recent comments are perfectly in-line with the goals of this site. This is how the thread should have started in the first place. There is absolutely nothing wrong with talking about a new technology, even one that isn't released yet; it just needs to relate to the work of the Church, even if it's 5-10 years away. The charge of this forum is not like any other community out there, and the Church has demanded that we continue to differentiate ourselves and remain focused on the goal.

GarysTurn asked that the thread be a little more focused on Church application of the Technology. Had the very next comment been exactly what you have now posted, there would have been no controversy and no hard feelings. Instead, the Moderator was challenged for doing his responsibility; that's disrespectful to someone who is giving volunteer hours per day to help the Church keep this site and forum clean and focused.

Alright, enough about that. I'd actually like to talk about the technology now, since you've got my interest peaked.

I Believe that JavaFX holds potential to be used in projects relating to the Church however at this point it has not been released yet. Even if it is only a week away until it is formerly released work on making use of the technology in the church cannot begin in earnest. One key thing about JavaFX vs Flash which could open the scope of people using it is that Flash Studio is expensive. Major design houses and development studio's have deep pockets to afford it but many in the open source community especially if they are doing volunteer development projects could find JavaFX attractive because there isn't a cost barrier in using it. Even in the case of Silverlight Microsoft offers express versions of Visual Studio these days acknowledging that paying large up front costs to be able to use a technology can lock certain people out of using it.

If we don't discuss JavaFX then people here may well not be aware of what it is and what potential benefits it could have. One thing which could be of interest is that it will have flash like cross platform support for playing video. This could make it easier to stream things like General Conference and broadcasts to users of many different operating systems. In fairness Flash has allowed this too but with JavaFX there should not be a cost to developing it. Also JavaFX editing will be supported by the free Netbeans IDE and a pluggin for Eclipse is being developed by Sun. Many in the Adobe flash/flex community are more likely to be using Eclipse as their IDE of choice.

Increacing awareness I think is important because no-one is going to be using a technology which they have never heard of or for which they just are not aware of the capabilities.

So yes, Flash can be expensive to develop if you're going to get a good IDE. They open-sourced Flex or ActionScript or something a few months back, right? I haven't heard of any good free IDE's yet. That would certainly be a cost disadvantage to the Church as you mentioned.

As for Silverlight, I do the Church has a few .NET projects they work on, so they may already have licenses that could make Silverlight worthwhile. I have to admit though, Silverlight may not be as cross-platform as the Church might like (at least not yet). You can develop Silverlight for free using the Express Editions of Visual Studio and you won't be missing much by not having the full versions of the product. However, Microsoft has a product line called Expression that is pretty expensive and almost necessary for real design of Silverlight site and controls. That would be where the real costs seep in.

So JavaFX sounds interesting, especially the comment that Java developers would be able to jump right in. Do you know if it will use new or existing Java languages?

With Silverlight, you have to learn the new WPF syntax for the presentation UI and then you can use C#, VB, or any other .NET language (including IronRuby or IronPython) to do the back-end code. With Flash, it seems like it uses new languages that developers have to learn as well. It seems like there is quite a learning and training curve for developers to learn Flash or Silverlight.

Will JavaFX have the same problem?

[WelchTC]

One of the programmers who sits next to me showed me a JavaFX application he wrote and demonstrated at a recent developer meeting here at the Church. It was well received. With as many technical folks as we have at the Church, there are few new technologies that we are not exposed to. I agree with many of the sentiments around JavaFX vs Flash (especially from a cost perspective). This argument comes into play even more when you consider involving the community. The big negative from my perspective that JavaFX has (at least as far as the Church is concerned) is that JavaFX requires new training whereas we already have flash talent. Also, JavaFX requires a programmer where as Flash is created (to a large degree) by UI Designers.

Tom

[carljokl]

Unfortunately there is a new language to be learned for JavaFX. JavaFX Script. This language is somewhat similar to JavaScript except that JavaFX Script is staticly typed as with Java itself. Much as it is called JavaFX Script the language compiles down to Java byte code and is built upon the Java platform particularly Swing and Java2D. The reason for the new scripting language is that it has been felt that plain Java is to heavy and difficult to learn for the Designer community. I can accept that there is a new language to learn and that would be a barrier. As regards the design side Sun is not trying to replace existing design tools infact a lot of work has been done on something called "Project Nile" which allows easy export of design work done in the Adobe family of products like Photoshop and Illustrator into a JavaFX project. That way designers and developers can focus on what they do best. The thing is though with JavaFX is that you can also write components of a project in plain Java where it is more appropriate to do so. How everything is going to pan out is hard to say given that it is not yet fully launched.

[carljokl]

Lanuch date is now being advertised as the 4th of December but still now a week away.

[marianomarini]

We have many things in common. We are members, maybe leaders too, and we are technicians; so I think we can find solutions insteed of discussions.
Here is my contribute to solution.
Tech forum could be divided into sections.
For those who search helping in using church tech products (CTP).
For those who has suggestions to develop CTP.
For those who love explore new tech with church developpers and tech leaders.
Third section will be interesting thought that, as member, we don't look to the commercial market but to simplify and reduce costs for tech. This way it can be use it into other fields.
We know revelations came after deep reasoning (D&C 9:8)

[edavilag-p40]

Can the church encourage to learn english and java? (JSP, Struts, XSLT, XML, WEB Services, Hibernate, beans, swing, j2me)
Hello every one, my english is not good, But I´ll try to writte my concern,
Im from Mexico, currently we have a lot of java positions but we don´t have enough people with knowledge in java and english language. This could be a huge difference, a salary for java developer with english fluent could be $2,000 american dollars by month, without english and with knowledge in other language like vb.net or c# is like $1000 american dollars. Looking the forums I see the use of this technologie is growing, the opportunities are there but many members of the church dont have the skills and the money for study, and I was wondering if the church is able to encouraging with more force
to the LDS people to learn this technologie and learn english. I know President Thomas. S. Monson is very busy but may be a seventy presidency can help with this.
This topic could help to many members specially LDS Computer Science students to focus in the right way about what language learn. May be BYU could help creating special course for LDS.

I Apologize for my bad english.
P.D. Other technologie with many positions in Mexico is related with mainframe, we dont have people with this skills

Regards, Enrique

[russellhltn]

If I understand your question correctly, I think your best chance is to talk with the local LDS Employment office. They would be the ones most interested in helping members upgrade their employment skills.

While the church does have programs to teach languages to the members, I think it's to teach the local language, not a foreign language.

As for computer languages, I don't think the church would teach that except in Employment Centers or Vocational Schools.

[techgy]

The Perpetual Education Fund would seem to apply here as it's purpose was to help the locals gain an education and return to their society to help locally. This would have to be discussed with their local leadership as I don't have direct information on the fund itself other than I'm aware of its existence.

[marianomarini]

It's possible in a volonteer basis?
I mean, teach tech (Open Office, Pc maintenence, Programming languages, ecc.)?
I can teach a lot of them, as Missionaries teach english class here in Italy.

[carljokl]

Getting back to JavaFX there is a potential missmatch in terms of impact between use in projects done internally within the Church organisation and other projects created by Chuch members for Church use but not official Chuch products. JavaFX has an advantage of lower cost of entry for those who don't have a thousand dollars to spend on Flash studio. The Church however is a wealthy institution and as such the cost of this kind of software is not likely to be a barrier to use. For individual members though who want to create a project then cost could be a very definate prohibitive factor.

I live in a First world country with a relatively well paid job and still don't have the money to afford to buy flash studio meaning that even if I wanted to learn and use flash then (short of software piracy) learning to use flash is prohibited to me by the cost. If that is the case for me in a first world country then I can only imagine things being even more difficult in a poorer country.

I think that this difference in needs can be a definate issue in the future between products developed for use internally within the Church vs those intended to be used by the Church membership as a whole. I think the Churchs traditional development of software for internal use given that it controlls its own hardware purchases and has no problem affording Microsoft Windows and Office etc has resulted in lots of Windows Only supported applications. I believe in particular in the developing world but also affecting poorer members even in the weathier countries the capability to target applications intended to be used by individual Church members on their own computers the importance of cross platform support (particularly for Linux users) becomes more important.