We reduced everything to a bare minimum and it's now much better than before. We added missing information like usage with Maven, Nightly builds, repositories for our demo application. The demo application is now up-to-date. We replaced our showcase application with our new ERP demo application.
We have a new JVx' video that shows all JVx features and projects like Online Help.
We know that VisionX 1.2 will be #awesome because it has endless power under the hood. It'll combine productivity features with state-of-the-art technologies. The release is still planned for 2013. But we won't let you wait
The brand new preview version of VisionX 1.2 is available as trial and as cloud service. The preview version is not feature complete but contains a lot of new features and of course, many improvements.
A short intro
New html5 client based on VaadinUI
It's awesome to design an application and see all changes live in your web application. One mouse click is enough to be amazed.
Mobile client support is on board
VisionX has support for native iOS and Android apps. This is a killer feature, because you design your application and your native app is ready without additional steps. We're still working on our native apps because they aren't available in app stores. This needs some additional time. But our open source clients work without problems!
Super fast Oracle support
The last VisionX versions had performance problems with (very) large databases. You had to wait about 10 minutes or more, to select a table. This was so frustrating. The performance is now better than ok. It works without delays!
New actions
We have new actions for tabset and component handling, for environment access (web, desktop, mobile) and much more.
New events
We have new events for work-screens and tabsets.
Extended reporting syntax
Our old solution was loop oriented. Loops were used for iterating all records. You had no chance to get the value of a specific record. This is now possible. We now support following: [LOOP@storage#3][YEAR]/[MONTH][LOOP@storage#3]. This placeholder prints the value of YEAR and MONTH from the third record. The short syntax, for one single column is [storage#3!YEAR].
Self-joined trees
It's now possible to create trees with self-joined tables.
Environment control
It's now possible to hide specific screens on specific environments, e.g. You won't see the user-management screen with html5 mode, but it'll be available in your desktop application. Don't create new roles or new users for that, simply change environment flags via menu management.
New LIVE preview wizard
The wizard allows html5, mobile or desktop preview and shows additional information for manually previewing applications.
VisionX shows scannable QR Code for mobile preview mode.
New online help based on Vaadin
Our new online help system supports full-text search and has a modern style.
Above list is not complete because we have about 250 changes in this version (most are new features).
Simply try the preview and send us your feedback. Every comment is welcome!
Copy the new directory to your application server, e.g. /webapps/
Open http://yourserver:port/jvxhelp-1.0/help/
The help content is saved under /structure. The system reads all available files and directories from the structure directory and creates a table of contents.
The binaries are available on SourceForge or via Maven central. We also updated our Archetype to version 1.2.0 and it should be available in Maven central in the next days.
We told you that the release contains about 90 tickets. The real number of changes is 123.
Check the changelog for a complete list.
Next version will be 2.0
We did decide that version 1.2 is the last release before 2.0. It's not because of new killer features or big API changes.
The higher version number should represent the maturity of JVx.
JVx was started in 2008 and the low version numbers were fine for our own goals, but our users asked for bigger steps. If we compare our 1.2 with other frameworks, we could use 5.0 without problems.
The version 2.0 will be a smaller feature release that changes MetaData handling on server-side. We'll introduce a new caching mechanism that allows manual change of storage metadata.
We plan the release for the end of this year - without guarantee.
We also plan maintenance releases starting with 2.0
Currently, we don't fix bugs in old JVx releases. We only fix bugs in our development version. We offer nightly builds and maven snapshots and we thought that's enough, but some users want to keep old releases. No worries, we'll do our best to make you happy!
Are there enough web and UI frameworks for us developers? Absolutely! There are really cool web UI frameworks like GXT or Vaadin. There are swing and JavaFX for desktop apps and many others. Don’t forget all web frameworks! Which UI framework is the best for your next project and works with browsers and OS‘ in 5 or 10 years? Which investment is future save? The only solution is a technology and UI independent framework. Such a solution is JVx (Apache 2.0). It is a full-stack app framework, designed as library. Develop UI independent and decide which UI technology is best for you. If you prefer Swing, start your app as Swing Application. If it’s Vaadin, use Vaadin. Don’t rewrite your application, just choose the preferred UI technology!
We completely replaced our good old Java OnlineHelp (GXT version) with a new Vaadin implementation. It's based on Vaadin 7 and has some amazing new features, like full-text search. No worries, the new version supports the same file structure as our old version. The upgrade procedure is simple: Keep your structure directory and delete all other files. The binaries will be available in the next days.
We also removed all other GXT based projects because we switched the web technology. We think vaadin is the better choice and replaced our previous webUI with vaadinUI. Of course, it's not a 1:1 replacement but the first release is awesome. We'll release the binaries next week.
Our old webUI project is still alive because it contains our headlessUI. This project is still important and the base of our project JVx.mobile and some other projects that don't need a UI. This project makes it possible to start a JVx application on server-side. If you create REST or SOAP services, our headlessUI might be the right choice?
The current version of JVx is 1.1 and it was released in January. It's still one of the best releases, but it's time for an update
We had about 90 tickets and a lot of smaller changes on the roadmap for 1.2. ALL functional tickets were implemented. There are still 5 open tickets but they are nice to have and doesn't change APIs or core code. Our internal tests with VisionX and other applications work without problems. The official release day will be Friday, 4th October.
You can look forward to the next great JVx. It's the base of our upcoming Vaadin UI and our new "native" mobile applications.
We'll demonstrate the power of JVx in 3 minutes. One Application Framework, for all platforms.
You have never seen this before:
JVx Application Stack
Some details:
Simple deployment, because everything is contained in 1 war file
Developed with VisionX
Application runs as Java Desktop or Browser Application, as Web Application (HTML, CSS), on iOS or Android
Tested with iPhone, iPad, Android phone and tablet - as Web Application and native application
Do you know any other framework with comparable features. I think JVx is the only full stack application framework world-wide with single sourcing support for all platforms and devices - and it's open source.
For those, who don't know why the world needs single sourcing and only one framework for backend/frontend/mobile, we have a new use-case!
It's a new application that has different user groups. The first group sits in the backoffice and configures/crunches data. This user group needs a powerful backend application that supports fast (mass) data manipulation. The second user group are end users. This group needs a fancy web based application because an application must be cool and browser based (nowadays).
If you'll develop such an application with different UI frameworks and different technologies (Java, HTML, Javascript), different ORM tools, and for different browsers, clients, OS', you'll need time and a lot know how and maybe many developers.
Wouldn't it be great to use one framework that is powerful enough? The framework shouldn't be restrictive because we (software developers) want to be flexible and include our preferred libraries. No worries, JVx is flexible, small and is not restrictive.
If you develop your application with JVx, you have no problem with different platforms and devices. A JVx application runs as desktop application, in your browser as html application, on your mobile devices as html application and on your mobile devices as native application.
But enough advertising, lets look at the application. First, the backend application:
Video Backend
And the frontend, as video (video speed it's a little bit slow because it was recorded via Wi-Fi):
JVx frontend application
(The video shows our new maximize option, because mobile devices have limited space)
Above applications are not two separate applications. It's only one application with different users and roles. It looks different as desktop application than as web application. The only framework you need to know is JVx. It's not needed to be a html/javascript developer.
The framework is still simple and don't code multiple applications for different devices/platforms. Save time and be happy!