Happy birthday JVx is 2.1

It's another great release today and ~ 6 month after 2.0. We have soo many cool features for you and of course some bugfixes.
The complete changelog is available on our sourceforge project site.

I want to highlight some features for you

• Configuration via JNDI or Classpath

  It's now possible to have custom configuration files without our recommended directory structure. We still recommend our structure for multi-application deployments, but it's not important for single deployments or complex enterprise deployments. Find more details about loading strategy in the corresponding ticket #1126.

• Server-side plugin support

  We introduced IServerPlugin. It allows adding plugins and changing server handling on demand. It's easy to write custom protocol recorder or configure session management via plugin.

• ServerContext and HttpContext

  We introduced HttpContext and ServerContext. The HttpContext allows live access to servlet request and response (if an application server is in use). It makes no difference if you use REST or standard communication. We set the right instances into the context and your application will work without specific technology checks. We also use HttpContext for JVx.mobile.

  The ServerContext is comparable with SessionContext, but it's earlier in the execution process, because it offers access to sessions directly after creation or detection. It's useful for e.g. plugins.

• Tab/Focus Index

  We introduced set/getTabIndex in IComponent. This API change allows user-defined component navigation via tabulator or Enter key.

• CommunicationException details

  It's now possible to find out the connection which throwed a CommunicationException.

• Alignment for IEditor (API change)

  It's now possible to set the alignment on IEditors instead of the cell editors. Small but very useful API change.

• Autolink with storages

  It's now possible to create automatic link references with other storage. We had this feature already in 2.0 but only for simple storages without conditions - only from clause was used. Now it's possible to configure custom storages with user-defined sort in the same LCO and set this storages as automatic link reference to other storages in the same LCO.

• Server side bean processing boost

  We change and improved server side bean handling of our AbstractStorage. Here are some numbers for you:

  ....................... Before | After

  Insert Object[] ... Beans: 200 |   0
  Update Bean ....... Beans: 900 | 200
  Update T .......... Beans: 900 | 400
  Fetch Bean ........ Beans: 600 | 200
  Fetch Object[] .... Beans: 300 |   0
  Update Object[] ... Beans: 500 |   0
  Insert Bean ....... Beans: 400 | 100
  Delete Object[] ... Beans: 300 |   0
  Delete Bean ....... Beans: 600 | 200
  Delete T .......... Beans: 600 | 300
  Insert T .......... Beans: 400 | 200

  Created Beans after processing 100 records.
  The current solution is a performance boost and using Object[] is always faster than everything else.

• Lazy blob loading

  We don't load Blobs immediate. We load it on request. This doesn't need any actions on client side but be aware of server-side handling because the value of a blob column will be RemoteFileHandle instead of byte[]. You should run your unit tests for your business logic. It's possible to disable lazy fetching, per storage with

  setLazyFetchEnabled(boolean);

  It's also possible to define the threshold for loading immediate or loading lazy. Check

  setLargeObjectLimit
  setDefaultLargeObjectLimit

  of DBAccess.

  This is an awesome new feature because is speeds up data transfer.

• Custom UI properties

  UIResource got:

  public Object getObject(String pObjectName)
  public Object putObject(String pObjectName, Object pObject)

  It's possible to add custom objects per UI instance, e.g. save custom states.

• REST services refactored

  We refactored our REST services. The implementation now works without problems and is easier to use becasue we don't need full qualified java names in the URL. We try to find the class via accesscontroller. The accesscontroller got a new method for this.

• Unique component names

  For all lovers of automated UI tests. We have unique names for all our components. It's easy to create GUI tests with tools like Selenium (web tests) or FEST (swing tests) or whatever you use

We have about 107 tickets in this release and it's not possible to explain every change in this blog posting, but be sure - it's great!

The Maven archetype should be available in the next few days, because sonatype archetype listings are not live.

Our VaadinUI 1.2 is available!
It's a feature release with some bugfixes.

The biggest change was the update to vaadin 7.1.15 and we've already 7.3.3 in our development branch (welcome Valo theme).

What's new?

• Download extension

  Download dynamic content on-demand or whenever you want via WebSockets. More information and an example project for this extension.

• Configuration of preserveOnUIRefresh

  Simply use preserveOnRefresh as init-param (true | false) in your web.xml or as URL parameter to preserve the application on browser refresh.

• Use external CSS

  Use an external CSS file to configure your application style. There's no need to change genereated styles.css for simple tasks. Simply configure the init-param externalCss, e.g.

  <init-param>
    <param-name>externalCss</param-name>
    <param-value>../demoapp.css</param-value>
  </init-param>

  Place the demoapp.css in the root directory of your application (not application server ROOT).

  The css will be placed at the end of the stylesheet links in the generated index.html page.

• Mobile check

  We check if the UI is running on mobile browsers and set parameters for your application: Web.mobile (= VaadinUI.PROP_MOBILE) and Web.mobile.tablet(only for iPad at the moment) (= VaadinUI.PROP_TABLET). Simply check the parameter in your application.

• Cache for dynamic images

  If you use images from your classpath, vaadin generates internal URLs for you. This URLs are different per image and the browser cache doesn't work. This handling produces unnecessary requests. We solved the problem with an image cache on server side and custom Image resources. With this changes, the browser cache works as expected.

• IDs for menu items

  We have an experimental solution for setting IDs on menu items. It's experimental because it's possible that vaadin implements support for that. In that case we won't need our solution anymore. But till then, it works. More information...

• Responsive support

  It's now possible to register a resize event on the application launcher. Use this event to change your application on-demand. We have some impressions for you.

• Self-contained packages for Portlets

  We have built-in support for self-contained portlets. It's possible to toggle between global and self-contained mode. Simply set the init-param vaadin.shared (true | false) in your web.xml to use vaadin shared from your application server or the self-contained vaadin.

  General information about self-contained packages.

• invokeLater and WebSockets

  We've completely changed our invokeLater mechanism because it didn't work in previous versions.

Please check the changelog for a complete list.

What a great day for our Android dev team. Our new test devices arrived today.

Nexus 5 with KitKat

Nexus 9 with Lollipop

We're not sure if the dev team is making progress today

The Android Client will be available in Google Play as soon as possible. Currently only the iOS client is available in the App store. The Android client will be available as Preview version and as Pro version, same as the iOS client. The preview client could be used for tests together with VisionX. It will be limited to one screen.

The last official JVx release was in May and last VisionX version was released in July. We think it's time to update both and planned the release of JVx 2.1 and VisionX 2.1 for the end of November. Currently, we are in time and shouldn't have any delays.

There are some open tickets for JVx and VisionX, but the planned features are done. The open tickets are nice to have and favoured from the 2.2' release.

Especially VisionX 2.1 will be an awesome new release because it contains soo many new features. The new solution store, the styling of mobile and web applications, the new GUI designer, PDF reporting, IDE integration, subscription based licensing and many more. The release will be the first with full Oracle Forms migration support. It has all known features of Oracle Forms like Repeating Frames, Focus order, Popup Menu configuration.

The release will contain solutions for over 200 tickets.

And what's in JVx 2.1?

We've some cool changes, e.g. great support for automatic tests (unique component names), reduced metadata caching, JNDI support for configuration files, Replacement and StrictIsolation annotations, REST refactoring and many more.

Stay tuned

The upcoming release of VisionX will support PDF report creation. We didn't re-invent the wheel and used our existing reporting engine with our templating mechanism. You'll simply create a word or excel template as usual and the result will be a PDF file.

The new PDF options

PDF reports

Our solution is based on toPDF and we recommend the commercial SDK, but it's also possible to integrate an OpenSource alternative or your own product. We'll help you if you need support!

We think that an end-user should create reports with word and excel instead of custom reporting tools. Of course, a developer will love it
Don't waste time anymore!.

The big advantage of our solution is that the reports will look exactly as designed and you won't use new tools to create pixel perfect reports.

Some time ago, I wrote about toPDF. It's a simple web application that allows office format to PDF conversion using PDFCreator. It's open source and allows synchronuous conversion via http post requests or REST calls.

We made some changes in toPDF that makes it possible to use different converter tools/SDKs. It's now possible to use PDFCreator or easyPDF SDK. The first solution is OpenSource and the last is commercial. I prefer the commercial SDK because it has a lot of useful features, offers a Java bridge and works super fast in server environments. The OpenSource solution also works, but needs some tinkering.

Anyway, the toPDF application supports both and it's easy to integrate other converter. Simply implement the interface

Set the context parameter: operatorClass in your web.xml, e.g.

The default operator is com.sibvisions.topdf.operator.bcl.EasyPdfOperator.

Hurray, we have a new buzzword: Responsive.

It's not brand new, but nowadays it's important because we use applications on different devices and the same application should work on different screen sizes/resolutions.

What does responsive mean?

Wikipedia:

Responsive web design (RWD) is a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from mobile phones to desktop computer monitors).

My opinion:

Don't waste space for unnecessary information.

If you have big menus and toolbars in your application, you should reduce the used space dependent of the available space.

We did some experiments with our vaadin UI and have some impressions for you:

App full space

App with limited space

The application on the right has a small menu without additional text and with small padding. All gaps are smaller than in the orginal application on the left.

We used custom css and source code to change the UI because not everything was possible with CSS e.g. set tooltips instead of button text. A set of instructions was posted from Matti Tahvonen.

We made some smaller changes in our Vaadin UI to support technology independent handling of resize changes.

It will be possible to do following:

We have a nice looking Reporting application in our solution store. It's a standard JVx application with a styled table.

But it's not a table demo! It demonstrates report creation for offline data manipulation. Simply create Excel sheets for your contacts, change the contact offline and update the online record with a simple upload. The Excel file has choice fields and allows same features as the online form.

Here it is

Reporting demo

of course, it's free

Simply open the solution store and install the application

Impressions

The first image shows the legacy mode of our standard application style (check last image). It turns a SDI application to MDI - without coding or re-deployment. Simply awesome

The second image doesn't use a toolbar and the third one is without a menubar. Not all applications need multiple navigation elements, known from desktop applications.

The fourth image shows, what we prefer.

Legacy mode (MDI)		Legacy mode (no toolbar)
Legacy mode (no menubar)		Modern mode (SDI with popups)

One more

Modern style (menu right)

[Update]

The same application with Swing UI

Swing UI