Nothing at all on this list affected me in any way, even though I work almost entirely in Java. Modularised downloads? Who cares? JavaFx? Maybe in a bit. Closures? Nice, but hardly life altering. All of these things were ok, but they didn't extend java as a platform. They don't let you do something you couldn't do before in Java. My Big Feature would be media support. That would have been nice. Proper, actual video and audio support. MP4, H264, AAC, hooking into third party native if necessary, but something. Seriously, media support has been poor since the very start. I'm not suggesting it's easy, but I cannot understand the complete lack of enthusiasm for it. Because of it, we have a Java application which has to drop out to C++ to show a video - yuck! Please - for 2009, extend Java to stuff it couldn't do before. Everything else we can work around.

This is the list of the "most important Java news of 2008"? Scary - obviously not much did happen in the Java universe last year?! Chris

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Even though I think that the Blu-Ray win will ultimately be more important to Java's future, I think the changes in update 10 are pivotal in keeping Java going until that future can be realized.

Even though I think that the Blu-Ray win will ultimately be more important to Java's future, I think the changes in update 10 are pivotal in keeping Java going until that future can be realized.

this is absolutely the most critical aspect of java browser-based development. new technologies are nice, but until java get's a seamless browser experience like Flash, all RIA efforts will be hampered. I read somewhere that the Java plugin team will continue working towards having an invisible plugin experience; much more like Flash. I say give that team carte blanche to do what they need to do. Java is already on tons of comps out there, it just needs the usability upgrade to catapult it into the lead RIA platform.