We'll be live on stage at W-JAX '13 in Munich.
Our session is scheduled for Tuesday, 5th November - 10:15 to 11:30.

We'll talk about UI independent application development in practice

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!

Come and talk with us

This is an update of Project news.

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?

Our vaadinUI and headlessUI are sub projects of JVx!

That's all for today!

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.

The full list of changes is available here.

Some highlights:

• Simple environment (web, mobile, headless, ...) detection because launcher knows the environment
• Work-screens now have notifyActivate. This will be used if an already opened screen will be activated(shown) again
• Improved Javascript bridge
• UI controls are now per factory. This allows different UI technologies (mobile, vaadin, headless) in one war file
• Tab activated/deactivated events
• Server-side SessionContext allows access to Master and Sub Session
• Support for virtual application folders
• Databooks are now very smart (improved datasource isolation level, save and restore with different data pages, ...)

We'll demonstrate the power of JVx in 3 minutes. One Application Framework, for all platforms.

You have never seen this before:

• 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):

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!

Our QT UI is 3 years old and was created as proof of concept for our generic UI. It's still 0.7 beta an we never had ideas for a real 1.0. Now we know that JVx' technology independent UIs work because we have different solutions with GXT and vaadin, mobile and our headless UI implementation.

We don't belive in QT Jambi as GUI toolkit and think the future of Java GUI toolkits is reserved for JavaFX or a completely new toolkit. Because of this fact, we discontinue our QT UI implementation and we'll clean our repository.

We now provide our JVx nightly via Maven Snapshots. Our nightly build job automatically uploads new JVx snapshots. If you want to use the last JVx snapshot in your project, simply add:

to your pom.xml and set JVx' version to: 1.2_beta-SNAPSHOT.

If you use our new JVx archetype 1.1.9, simple change the version in the master project:

All SNAPSHOT versions contain debugging information. The release versions don't.

The preview version of VisionX 1.2 is available as Trial version for your desktop. It offers all available features and shouldn't have any problems. The problems on MacOS are solved and it works without problems on Mac OS X 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8.

Simply download the preview version and try it on your own device!

If you already own VisionX, check your download area!

VisionX 1.2 is planned for Q4/2013, but we'll show you some really cool features of the upcoming version. The current dev version is stable and we have a list of amazing productivity features.

• An awesome feature is Undo/Redo for UI operations.

  This is a must for great UI design tools.

• Xls Reporting is another key feature

  Simply create real XLS reports in seconds.

• Xml Reporting is relevant for M2M communication and is included in VisionX
• New Form validation support

  Create Forms and validate results with few mouse clicks.

• Offline data gathering

  Create a XLS or XML report, add records to the created report and import the changed report into your application. This feature is amazing!

• Liferay Portlet deployment

  Don't waste your time for portlet creation. Use VisionX and create a complete liferay portlet web application archive in seconds. Everything is pre-configured and ready-to-use. Let yourself be surprised.

• You want More?

  Something like Mobile support and our new Vaadin UI... maybe in the next preview

Some impressions

Form validation

XLS reporting

Import report

JVx was started in 2008 as simple library for application development. The focus was on technology independce. It shouldn't matter which technology will be used in the future. In 2008, Swing was first choice for Java applications. In 2014, it will be JavaFX. JVx was designed to solve technology problems. It's not only a library, it's a full-stack-framework - an all in one solution for application development. But it's still a simple libray. There are no dependencies between the different application layers. Only use the persistence or an UI control or some utility classes. JVx is the right choice.
The big advantage of JVx is that it's API is simple and doesn't hide underlying technologies. Be technology independent or not - it's your decision!
The architecture is clean and easy to understand. The codebase is small and the source code meets the highest quality requirements. JVx is not only open source software, it's professional open source software.

What happened in the last few years with JVx?

We had some plans for JVx. The first was a core library for super-fast application development. This library is known as JVx. The other plans were about mobile applications, and different UI implementations like QT, GXT and a headless UI technique for automated tests. Of course, during recent years we played around with many libraries and frameworks like Pivot, GWT, vert.x, POI, ewsAPI, JasperReports, Birt, RAP, Jspresso, xdev, etc.

The result of our hard work is a framework that allows application development for desktop applications, web applications and mobile applications. BUT, the big difference to ALL other "hybrid" frameworks is that we write the application once and the same application runs without changes on ALL platforms.
JVx is a single-sourcing framework as well! Oh, and JVx is the only Java framework that allows a seamless integration in Oracle Forms.

We don't know a framework on this planet which is like JVx. It's small, it's simple, it's powerful, it's Open Source, it's professional, it's amazing.

Sounds unbelievable?

Maybe, but convince us that the opposite is true.

We know that JVx is not the solution for all problems because it was designed for database application development and not for other things. It's not a good idea to create a web-shop or a role-playing game with JVx. There are better tools for that. But if you develop backend applications that needs (or not) a modern web frontend and access with mobile devices, than JVx is your friend!

During the last few years, we had as much fun as possible. We put all our know how and time in JVx and we know that our vision will be reality! We show you two images that explains a little bit better what JVx covers

JVx' and independent projects

Above image shows projects built on-top of JVx. Following image shows what JVx - as library - supports. The list is not too detailed, but you should get an idea.

JVx' features

Our next steps?

The framework itself is great, but we need more documentation. We can't write as much howtos, intros as you need but we do our best. With JVx, we solve many problems but you don't know which ones without documentation. This is the biggest howto for 2013.

Another challenge is our JavaFX UI. We are working on it!

The next important milestone is the 1.0 Release of our vaadin UI. It's already code complete but we are still reviewing... be patient if you won't build on your own.