RAP Mobile for Android 0.5.3 - New and Noteworthy
The latest Android client for RAP mobile (v0.5.3) is now available. We are always looking for feedback so we urge you to take part in our developer preview program to experience the client firsthand.
Besides the usual bugfixes, performance and stability improvements, the 0.5.3 release brings some often requested features to an Android handset near you.
For more information visit: https://rapmobile.eclipsesource.com
The Tree widget supports the SWT.VIRTUAL style flag
The support of the SWT.VIRTUAL style flag allows you to easily scroll through huge amounts of data. While you are scrolling through tree content, the data to be displayed is automatically loaded on demand in the background. Intelligent pre-caching makes it possible to have content visible even when scrolling very quickly. If the complete data cannot be delivered quickly enough, you are still able to scroll through the available content while the data is fetched in the background.
Buttons can be colorized programmatically
We refined the support for background colors on buttons. You can now call button.setBackground(redColor) to change the background color of the button. The change in color applies not only to the default state but to all button states such as pressed, disabled, focused etc.
Opening and closing shells is animated
In the Android client we map an SWT shell to behave similarly to an Android activity. Multiple activities can be stacked on top of each other and the user is able to switch between them with the back button on the device. The creation and destruction of an activity is animated according to the current device. We play these very same animations on shells when they are created or closed. On a Samsung Galaxy S2 (Android 2.3.x) a fly-in animation is performed whereas on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus (Android 4.0.x) a fade/scale animation is applied.
Text widget tooltip is displayed in text field
If a tooltip is set on a Text widget we now display the tip inside the Android EditText. You can use this to add hints for completing fields.
Font probing on startup is implemented
When starting a new RAP session we measure the probe strings sent from the server. These probe strings allow the server to categorize the clients according to their text sizes. The server can use cached string sizes so that it doesn’t have to request that the client re-measure strings cached in a previous session.
UI updates are accumulated to execute in one operation
When a server response triggers UI changes, we now gather all these changes and execute them altogether. Previously, we applied the UI changes on the fly which resulted in incremental changes to the UI. The new approach creates a more native-like experience as the UI changes state in one operation.
Client sends a customized HTTP User-Agent string
The RAP mobile Android client sends a customized User-Agent string. It contains the Android version, information about the device and the RAPmobile client version. Example: Android/4.0.2,14 (samsung; Galaxy Nexus) RAPmobile/0.5.3
