The battle of RIA platforms goes on and SUN finally released (4th Dec 2008) the first version 1.0 after announcing and previewing it first time at JavaONE in May 2007. FX is the JAVA way of doing thing you are used to see in Adobe Flash/Flex and Microsoft Silverlight targeting integration of video, images, sound and 2D graphics (3D supposed to be in the roadmap). One of the main difference to competitors: Key elements of JavaFX are open source.
I find this an exciting step and it dont force me walk to far away from my JAVA platform environment to create more exciting frontends than standard Swing look-and-feel. It is integrated into Netbeans !
The programming language is JavaFX Script, some mixture of Javascript and Java (spiced with some python look-alike features).
It is not supporting all OS yet (only Windows and MAC OS X) and there is no need to install another plugin (unlike Silverlight), Java JRE just needs to be updated to unleash its power in and outside the browser !
The JavaFX website (link)
SUN one page summary (link)
OpenJFX on dev.java.net (link)
JavaFX Blog (link)
JavaFX Script Tutorial (link)