You could describe F3 as being kind of like Flash meets Java. I ran across a link to Chris Oliver’s Blog, from a post on OS News, where he talks about an upcoming project from Sun called F3. The latest demos Chris has up are quite impressive. There is also mention to a server component too, which makes me think that F3 could be in the same vein as Adobe FLEX or OpenLaszlo. The big difference with F3 is that this is all pure Java, and you’ll still have access to the entire JDK on the client machine.

Chris also has new demo up which demonstrates F3’s SVG support. While still not as robust as Apache’s Batik, F3 is a bit slower rendering the initial SVG. However, pan and zoom is significantly faster with F3 than with Batik. Apparently, F3 will be open sourced soon on Java.net, but no time frame has been given. Right now, I am EXTREMELY curious to see what else comes out of F3. Finally, a compelling reason for an end-user to download the JRE!