Oracle used the JavaOne conference in San Francisco last September to explain that it was discontinuing the JavaFX Script language for graphics-rich multiplatform applications. But news on the JavaFX blog this week speaks of the fact that Oracle is now announcing that JavaFX 1.2 and JavaFX 1.3 will reach end of life (EOL) on December 20, 2012.
Even more specifically and with a degree of echoing emptiness, the Oracle server providing access to the JavaFX Runtime for these versions will no longer be available after that date.
Oracle has already explained that it would expose all the JavaFX functionality through a Java API, starting with the upcoming JavaFX 2.0 release. Consequently, the Windows version of JavaFX 2.0 and the developer preview for Mac OS X were released in October 2011; plus a developer preview for Linux was added in January of this year.
So where does this leave developers? It's a fairly no-win one-way ally to be honest; due to the size and shape of the deployment architecture used for the JavaFX 1.x product line, users of JavaFX 1.2 or 1.3 applications will no longer be able to download the JavaFX Runtime.
The JavaFX team advises, "Developers who have JavaFX 1.x applications in use today are strongly encouraged to migrate their applications to the JavaFX 2."
The team provides "extensive" documentation, tutorials, and samples available on the JavaFX Website. The community itself is also providing forums, blogs, and social media discussion channels to discuss the shift.
