Group items tagged

Vaadin is a Rapid Application Development (RAD) framework for RIA applications. I only know it for a few months but since I started experimenting with it, I'm really in favor of it. I see a lot of advantages compared to Sun's Java EE standard front-end framework JSF. First of all Vaadin is a java library, so you only have to write Java to build a complete frontend. No need for a specific frontend language, no need for converters (for comboboxes),… This also implies that you can use the full Java power on the frontend side and that's an huge advantage because frontend code is now type-safe and easily refactorable. You can unit test your frontend with JUnit. You can also use all existing java libraries on the frontend side, for example LOG4J. Another advantage is the fact that Vaadin is easy to learn (JSF isn't!) and to use: it's straigtforward. It feels like developing desktop apps and for me developing desktop apps feels much more intuitive than developing web-apps the way I'm used to. Vaadin uses convention over configuration. No need to register new components, validators or whatever in different xml files. Themes have a default folder and a default folder structure. Vaadin is very well documented. There's the book of Vaadin wich explains every aspect of the framework very clear. On the site there's a blog, a FAQ section, a wiki, a forum, examples with Java source code, … It's very easy to extend. Want to create your own Validator? Just implement an interface or extend another Validator and use it. Want to create your own custom server side component? Just extend the CustomComponent class or extend from another component. There's also an add-on directory where you can download UI components, data components, tools, themes, …

"Community Dashboard Framework (CDF) is a project that allows you to create friendly, powerful, fully featured dashboards on top of the Pentaho BI server. Former Pentaho dashboards had several drawbacks from a developer's point of view. The developing process was awkward, it required know-how of web technologies and programming languages, and basically it was time-consuming. CDF emerged as a need for a framework that overcame all those difficulties. The final result is a powerful framework featuring the following: . It is based on Open Source technologies. . It separates logic (JavaScript) of the presentation (HTML, CSS) . It features a life cycle with components interacting with each other . It uses AJAX . It is extensible, which gives the users a high level of customization: . Advanced users can extend the library of components. . They also can insert their own snippets of JavaScript and jQuery code. CDF can be used: . As part of a Pentaho solution. This is the most common scenario. . In a standalone mode as an alternative to the Pentaho User Console . Integrated with Portlets, PHP applications, intranet portals and even desktop applications. "

""Coming from desktop application development, I have found the IT Mill Toolkit [Vaadin] to be a lot of help in the transition to web application development. With the toolkit, writing AJAX enabled web applications is as easy as writing Swing based GUI code. It hides so many frustrating details, and handles browser independence so I don't have to worry about it. Using the toolkit makes it quite easy for me to write sophisticated web applications." Bo Thorsen, Monty Program AB"

Remus Information Management. It is a free OpenSource client application for the management of information with a connection to multitude of data repositories and a desktop-integration for an optimal usage for the offline management, visualization and easy accessibility of information to the user. The biggest efforts are the linking of information throughout different repositories, the offline storage, the clean representation and the fast search through the information.

Eclipse Rich Client Platform has come a looong way since it was first introduced (and used in Eclipse IDE). The new Eclipse RAP (Rich Application Platform) is also becoming more and more attractive for deploying existing or new Eclipse RCP applications to the web. One of my the projects I'm working on is developed on top of Eclipse RCP. It uses additional plugins such as EMF (Eclipse Modeling Framework) including EMF Editor UI, Teneo (EMF Persistence for Relational Databases), and Hibernate. After some work, I managed to run the whole application on both Eclipse RCP (desktop) and Eclipse RAP (web-based). See the screenshots for proof. Thanks to the recently released EMF Support for RAP I don't have to let go any of the nice EMF generated editor UIs for the web-based RAP version. What's amazing is how little the work I have to do to port the RCP app to RAP. The changes I needed to do is not changing code, but juggling dependencies to plugins and/or packages. Also creating a few platform-specific plugins (different based on whether I deploy on RCP or RAP).

" Registered 2008-09-26 by Michael Terry Déjà Dup is a simple backup tool. It hides the complexity of backing up the Right Way (encrypted, off-site, and regular) and uses duplicity as the backend. Features: * Support for local, remote, or cloud backup locations, such as Amazon S3 or Rackspace Cloud Files * Securely encrypts and compresses your data * Incrementally backs up, letting you restore from any particular backup * Schedules regular backups * Integrates well into your GNOME desktop For Ubuntu users, there are three ways to get Déjà Dup: * Supported releases: http://apt.ubuntu.com/p/deja-dup * Stable release backports: https://launchpad.net/~deja-dup-team/+archive/ppa * Daily builds: https://launchpad.net/~deja-dup-team/+archive/testing If you are interested in contributing, there are many ways to help: * http://live.gnome.org/DejaDup/GettingInvolved"

"This release brings some brand new features in GWT Application development Java API for Adobe Flex (AIR and Browser) More then 500 rich UI Compoments for your application ( http://www.gwt4air.appspot.com/) Client side file processing. Specially PDF and Excel Easy integration with your existing GWT application. Because the project is based on GWT, no need of a middleware to connect the Flex UI to the backend "