The Coupling of JavaFX's History with JavaOne

With this year's big announcements surrounding JavaFX at JavaOne 2011, I cannot help but think that JavaFX's announcements seem inexorably coupled to JavaOne conferences. This post contains a simple outline of JavaFX announcements and coverage at annual editions of JavaOne since 2007 JavaOne Conference.

JavaOne Edition	Month	Description and Commentary
2007	May	JavaFX announced, based on Form Follows Function (F3) with emphasis on new JavaFX Script language. JavaFX was mostly F3 + slideware at this point. Juixe's Java One 2007 Conference Notes asked the question many of us asked at the time (emphasis added), "The big announcement at JavaOne made by Sun have has JavaFX Script, formerly known as Form Follows Function (F3). I think of JavaFX Script as a scripting Domain Specific Language for Rich Internet Applications which begs the question, why a new language? Why not accomplish the same functionality using Groovy, JRuby, or a unified and simplified API?"
2008	May	JavaFX progress highlighted and JavaFX 1.0 Preview SDK released. The general release of JavaFX 1.0 would be later that year (December).
Oracle announces its intention to purchase Sun in April 2009.
2009	June	Oracle acquisition of Sun in progress. Java FX 1.2 released with beta support for Solaris and Linux.. Oracle announces intentions to use JavaFX to compete once finished acquiring Sun. JavaFX authoring/design tool (JavaFX Designer) previewed.
Oracle completes its acquisition of Sun on 27 January 2010.
My post O JavaFX, What Art Thou? asks questions about JavaFX such as why does it use its own language (answered in JavaOne 2010), why is it not standardized (answered in JavaOne 2011), and why is it not open source (answered in JavaOne 2011)?
2010	September	Oracle's first JavaOne. Oracle announces deprecation of JavaFX Script, effective immediately, in favor of support for standard Java API. New JavaFX Roadmap laid out. JavaFX 2.0 announced.
My May 2011 post JavaFX 2 Beta: Time to Reevaluate JavaFX? publicly wondered if it was time to give JavaFX a chance again given the JavaOne 2010 announcement about standard Java API support replacing proprietary JavaFX Script. I stated nagging concerns I still had related to JavaFX such as questions about the nature of its license or open source and about its lack of standardization.
2011	October	Oracle announces general availability of Java FX 2.0 for Windows and JavaFX 2.0 for Mac OS X Preview. Oracle announces that JavaFX will be open sourced and submitted to JCP for potential standardization as part of Java SE. Demonstrations of JavaFX Scene Builder provided.

Contrary to what the table above might indicate, I'm not pretending that my blog posts led to the respective announcements at JavaOne 2010 and JavaOne 2011 about deprecation of JavaFX Script and standardization and open sourcing of JavaFX. However, I do believe my posts are reflective of the greater community's sentiment and concerns at the time and it seems clear that Oracle has listened to those concerns and responded effectively. The initial Sun aversion to having an XML-based layout mechanism like Flex's MXML or OpenLaszlo's LZX even seems to have been finally overcome with the advent of FXML. At this point, I am ready to start seriously considering JavaFX again.