Personally, I think JavaFX/F3 is a compelling DSL (dynamic scripting languagle) project, but ironically the spirit of "Form follows function" (F3) has been distorted and totally misses the mark for RIA. Forget about the lack of tools. Based on the direction JavaFX is going it's not targeting the appropriate audience, the Interaction Designer (wiki entry is a bit poor in that it doesn't connect IxD with Graphic Design which as an industry encompassess IxD, but I digress)

The Interaction Designer is going to think to think that Big O is a Sunrise anime series rather than a method of determining the complexity of an algorithm for efficiency which is the converse of the Java developer.

JavaFX makes sense to developers. That's not great since that likely means it doesn't make sense to designers. And in this case the form and function is for a developer and not a designer. All the hype I'm seeing are coming from developers and not from designers. I'd like to see an article or blog entry from a designer about JavaFX period.

With Flex and even Silverlight you see opinions from the designers. One thing not evident with Sun's offering is IxD community involvement. Sure they have portals and the like to support one, but I only seem to hear about Java game development (graphics stuff) from Sun employees. Everyone else, seems to be talking about support for DirectX 10 when it comes to stuff like this.

Historically, Sun has been weak in this area, so announcing an platform that appears to be half baked isn't what I see as a compelling story.

Adobe rushed out Apollo to the public ahead of Mix07 because of Silverlight. It's not like WPF/E was a secret, so it still looks like Sun had an oh sh*t moment and launched JavaFX before it was ready. launching it at JavaOne 2008 would have been way too late.