5 new things in Riena 2.0 M5 (just shipped)

February 4, 2010 | 2 min Read

We proudly present Riena 2.0 M5 - the first release in the 2.0 stream.  As you can see by the long New & Noteworthy, we have been very active in last six weeks. Read on for my five favorite new things:

1. Pluggable Marker Decorations

The new BorderMarkerSupport draws red-borders around a widget and replaces the standard ControlDecoration. You can select either error decoration style via the Look-and-Feel settings.

2. Enhanced Master/Details Widget

The Master/Details Widget automatically links a table with the details area on the bottom (or top). It is used heavily by some of Riena’s consumers. As a result we have been receiving good feedback and have added several requested features on this milestone:

  • nicer border (includes button area, separates table from buttons with a single line)
  • API to participate in the life-cycle (before / after selection, apply, remove, new)
  • API to ‘suggest’ a new entry - it will show in the details area and Apply will enable
  • API to tweak the margin and spacing of the Master/Details widget

3. Image Button Widget

The SWT Buttons have a system-defined look that is hard to customize (for example the background color cannot be changed). Riena’s ImageButton Widget emulates a button using three images (standard, hover, pushed state).

4. Multiple Default Buttons per Controller

Riena’s Controllers have a new API that supports several default buttons per controller. The default button has a blue glow when enabled. In that state it will automatically be pushed when the user hits ENTER (anywhere).

5. Controller Testing

Controller testing is now very straightforward and has been decoupled from the UI (widgets). Just subclass AbstractSubModuleControllerTest to get started. In addition your controller has to use the new API getRidget(Class, String) instead of getRidget(String). The package org.eclipse.riena.client.controller.test in the org.eclipse.riena.tests bundle has several examples.

Read the New & Noteworthy for additional details on these items.