RIA

Gizmox announces the release of version 6.2.3 of its SDK. This is a further stabilization and enhancement of the revolutionary 6.2 SDK which introduced the Visual WebGui Developer Experience with full Visual Studio integrationin, consolidate installation, incorporation of both the DHTML and the Silverlight in one package, and the ASP.NET wrapper wizard.

The new 6.2.3 SDK solves some issues that contribute to a smoother development experience. These are some of the issues solved in this version:

Issue Summary
VWG-3493 - Theme registration and selection was changed. The developer can select one theme or none. An error provider was added to indicate theme rows with errors. These rows will be saved and can be selected as the current theme.
VWG-3484 - Silverlight theme registration bug fixed.
VWG-3483 - TextBox Max length property bug fixed. Now you can edit part of the text by selecting it after it reached the max length size.
VWG-3402 - RibbonBar - DropDownBox showing a js alert popup with the menu item name fixed.
VWG-3385 - Control drag image was added to all the themes.
VWG-3383 - WGLables.GetLocalizedMonthString null value protection on CurrentUICulture added.
VWG-3389 - ASP.NET Control Wrapper menu item missing problem fixed.
VWG-3481 - DataGridViewComboBoxColumn populates items when it is data binded problem fix.
VWG-3464 - Accessing the scalable service was separated to a different method.
VWG-3359 - DataGridView population problem on form load fixed.
VWG-3460 - DataGridView vertical scrollbar where shown even if not required.
VWG-3463 - Web_OnClick.objSource was not cleaned after click is being raised.
VWG-3378 - Form Box result was null even when value added.
VWG-3367 - FormBox Form property was not saved in Viewstate.
VWG-3348 - SearchTextBox Text property was not shown when set by code.
VWG-3366 - FormBox Form property can now handel string.empty.
VWG-3327 - Crystal report after wrapping had no properties in design time.
VWG-3466 - Double click and click events on datagridview fixed.

The new SDK is available for Download.

Sun has released an early version of an Eclipse plug-in for JavaFX. It's still a bit buggy, but it's an opportunity for developers to kick the tires. The functionality is roughly equivalent to that of the Netbeans plugin.

Instructions on how to use the plug-in are here. You should use the download page here, though, to get the actual plug-in itself.

Hot on the heels of the JavaFX release, Google has released a beta version (of course, what else?) of its own browser plug-in for--get this--running native x86 code inside your browser. It's called, appropriately enough, Native Client. If your security alarm bells are going off, take some comfort: the code is sandboxed in order to prevent untrusted code from freely accessing your computer. How effective the "static analysis" that the sandbox performs is an open question, but Google for its part seems to have thought through the problem: code is disassembled and run through a rigorous analysis to detect unwanted interactions, e.g. file I/O. Nevertheless, it is unlikely to ever be as secure as running code inside a VM.

While Java aficionados may scoff at the idea of running non-portable code inside the browser, one has to admit that x86 clients are nearly universal, at least on the desktop. In the mobile arena that's anything but the case so Native Client has a very specific target audience: desktops that need absolute performance. If this fits the requirements of your browser-based application, Native Client may just be the ticket.

Sun has just released the JavaFX platform, consisting of 3 major pieces: the JavaFX SDK, the Netbeans 6.5 IDE with JavaFX, and the JavaFX Production Suite (formerly Project Nile), a set of tools to allow designers the ability to import digital assets from design tools such as Photoshop and Illustrator.

All are available for download on the JavaFX site, which was redesigned (thankfully) for the launch.

As noted in the Sun blogs, JavaFX Mobile is currently in beta and expected to be released in February.

The 6.2.2 release provides compatibility to MS Silverlight RC0/RTW, and now supports development & deployment of web applications with the latest Silverlight technology. As stated before, Microsoft has released Silverlight 2 with weak backwards compatibility to previous Silverlight versions, which resulted in some presentation issues with the Silverlight layer that are now solved.

The new release also includes the Visual WebGui WinForms-like designer allowing simple and cost-effective Web development, and the new ASP.NET Control wrapper wizard introduced earlier this month.

Version 6.2.2 provides further stabilization to 6.2 which brought new standards in developer experience. for more information please read the official announcement.

The new Visual WebGui SDK is now available for download.

Hi,

As announced before on Visual WebGui.com, the 6.2.2 release which is expected to be released later this week will provide compatibility to MS Silverlight RC0/RTW.

As you probably know, Microsoft recently released a new version of Silverlight which provides almost no compatibility backwards to older Silverlight versions. This means that all the released VWG Silverlight applications will not work with this new MS Silverlight version.

Furthermore, Microsoft triggered an automatic update mechanism inside Internet Explorer to have the Silverlight ActiveX update without asking. As a result, all computers with MS Silverlight client installed on it have the new version, unless the user manually removed it.

Since Microsoft released this incompatible version, our Silverlight development team has been working very hard on modifying Visual WebGui to get in line with those changes and support the new MS version once again. We were also promised by Microsoft director in Silverlight group that this was the last back compatibility breaking.

Learn more about developing Silverlight Applications with Visual WebGui

On Nov 24 at 9am PT, Visual WebGui will be presenting another Webcast as part of the MSDN Webcast series:
Integrating Visual WebGui into Visual Studio Simplifies Development and Saves Time and Money

In this webcast, we will demonstrate the new integration, usability & compatibility features introduced with version 6.2.

Attend this webcast to learn how the Visual WebGui platform increases productivity when developing AJAX DHTML and Microsoft Silverlight applications, saving time and money. And learn about Visual WebGui's complete integration into the Microsoft Visual Studio development system, a consolidated installation process, and the opportunity to use Microsoft Visual Studio Express Editions for software evaluation and trials.

Register online

Visual WebGui is about to release an ASP.NET Control Wrapper which will be included in the upcoming SDK release.

The ASP.NET Control Wrapper enables the adaptation of any ASP.NET component to a VWG control, whether bought from a third party such as Infragistics, Telerik, DevExpress, etc, or created independently. This will surely increase the richness of your control library by utilizing any available ASP.NET control.

The new wrapping feature is not only useful but also simple to use. In a few quick steps the desired control is "wrapped" and ready to use in a VWG project by dragging & dropping it.

The VWG development team is working extremely hard these days in order to make it into the next Visual WebGui release which is expected in the next few days.
Stay tuned for more detailes as it is released on www.VisualWebGui.com.

Title: ZK Developer's Guide
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Authors: Markus Stauble and Hans-Jurgen Schumacher
Publish Date: March, 2008

Some Background

The ZK framework, created by Tom Yeh, started out life as a project on Sourceforge, where it quickly became a popular open-source project (nominated for the 2006 Sourceforge.net Community Choice Award). It has since moved to its own site (but continues to distribute files through Sourceforge), where it vies for share with other AJAX frameworks in the RIA market. The project is officially sponsored by the Potix Corporation, which provides consulting services for ZK. It is distributed under both GNU and commercial licenses.

ZK is a thin-client Java- and XML-based component framework which uses JavaScript underneath the covers to communicate between the (browser-based) client and server.

• ZK uses its own extension of Mozilla's XUL library, ZUML, to describe the page components, which are then rendered into the appropriate HTML and JavaScript by the ZK engine. ZK can also use XHTML-based components.
• Scripting is handled using Java and EL expressions.
• Communication between the client and server is based on an event model: user interaction is propagated (via AJAX) back to the server, which may modify the client DOM in response to the event, passing back those modifications (via AJAX) to the framework's client-side JavaScript, which handles them. The server keeps its own hierarchy of ZK components which correspond to the browser's DOM.

There is a resemblance here to other "JavaScript-less" AJAX frameworks, notably GWT and the JSF-based ICEFaces.

The Book

Like many of Packt's books, the format is focused on being lightweight and easy to read. There are 7 chapters and 159 pages, but the pages are small and have plenty of whitespace (presumably for adding notes). Add to that an abundance of illustrations and screenshots, and you get the idea: it can easily be consumed in a day or two.

The emphasis of the book is on learning the framwork, not really serving as a reference (the authors refer you to the online documentation for that), so the book generally assumes the form of a "walk-through" of the framework with an emphasis on the "Online Media Library" example application (chapters 2-4). A general breakdown of the book is as follows:

• Chapter 1, Getting Started With ZK, is an introduction to the framework with a definition of terms, description of underlying technologies, the obligatory "Hello World" in ZK, as well as an in-depth treatment of how the framework functions (events, phases, component creation).
• Chapter 2, Online Media Library, is a quick overview of the example application, how to set up the project in Eclipse (as a Maven project), and develop the basic application pages using ZUML. It does not discuss ZK-Bench (the subject of Ch. 7) presumably to focus on the technology itself, rather than the tools.
• Chapter 3, Extending the Online Media Library, goes more into the full capability of the framework, turning the example application into a full MVC (Model-View-Controller)-based application and introducing "Live Data" (AJAX) in order to make the application more desktop-like.
• Chapter 4, Is It on the Desktop or the Web?, continues where Ch. 3 left off, adding Drag-and-Drop capability to the application, embedding the rich text editor FCKEditor into ZK, and covering internationalization.
• Chapter 5, Integration with Other Frameworks, covers integrating the ZK framework with other popular frameworks and technologies, including Spring, Hibernate, Jasper Reports, mobile phones (ZK mobile), and even JSF (ZK's JSF components).
• Chapter 6, Creating Custom Components, shows you how to create custom ZK components for your application.
• Chapter 7, Development Tools for the ZK Framework, covers how to install and use the Eclipse-based ZK-Bench development environment.

The Good

ZK Developer's Guide strikes a good balance between approachability and depth, and as such is a good introduction to the framework for developers not wishing to be overwhelmed by details. It is a simple and quick read with an emphasis on practical development that will be especially useful to developers without any previous RIA or AJAX development experience. The provided Online Media Library example is simple enough for illustrative purposes with enough functionality to demonstrate the framework's functionality.

The Bad

On the downside, the book lacks coverage of many of the built-in widgets that come with the ZK framework (audio controls, slider, progress meter, charts, etc.); granted, its stated intention is not to serve as a reference, but it seems a strange omission for a book about an AJAX framework. Much of the discussion around integrating with other frameworks in Ch. 5 also seems a bit thin (outside of Spring).

Conclusion

ZK Developer's Guide is a good book for those wishing to get up and running with the ZK framework quickly. Though it does not include much detail on the framework's built-in widgets, this can easily be supplemented by ZK's own online documentation.