JavaFX: the return of the applet.

Last week at JavaPolis I finally understood (at least I think so) what JavaFX is about: It is all about running fancy java apps in a browser or outside of a browser, using Swing en the powerful Java2D api (and all other api's of course) under the hood, with a scripting language sitting on top of it to make life easier. A java app in a browser? Sounds like applets to me. In the past applets where very, very slow (I won't bore you with all the other disadvantages), but it is to be expected that Sun comes with something that is way, way better than the old applet. And when you have a java app in an applet in a browser, it will be easy to port that app to the desktop, as the desktop will already have a JRE installed for running applets. This all sounds very similar to Flex: instead of actionScript, you'll have javaFX script. Instead of the Flashplayer plugin, you'll have a JRE installed. My guess is that the JRE required for running JavaFX apps will be lean and mean (in fact, to get a fair share of the market it will have to be). Good thing about JavaFx will be that it is all about java, bad thing is that it is not finished yet. And that is a big plus for Flex. At JavaPolis, Flex came out as a winner and therefore Sun tried to shift focus to javaFX as the new mobile platform standard. But next year I'm sure we will hear more on real javaFX apps.