RAP mobile 0.5.7 - New and Noteworthy

Moritz Post
May 2, 2012 | 2 min Read

Once again we are releasing a new version of RAP mobile. This latest release 0.5.7 brings with it a very cool new feature that we call the “Client Canvas”. This extension of the classic SWT Canvas allows you to draw freehand on your screen with your stylus or even your finger.

Additional Features and API

Client Canvas

The client canvas provides you with basic freehand drawing options, allowing you to sketch with your stylus or your finger.  Like a regular drawing program, you can choose your color, brush size and opacity. And, you can step through the history of your drawings to undo/redo certain steps. To implement this feature we built upon the SWT Canvas object that allows us to change the pen properties via the established Canvas API. To get started with drawing you’ll just need to instantiate the com.eclipsesource.rap.mobile.widgets.ClientCanvas instead of the regular SWT Canvas. To demonstrate the Client Canvas we have created a sample where you try out a little draw-by-numbers.

Android

Browser

The RAP mobile Android client is catching up with iOS on browser support. We now support the SWT Browser widget, allowing you to show full websites or custom HTML snippets inside your RAP mobile application. We also support the Browser.evaluate() and Browser.execute() methods to execute javascript in the browser on the Android device and to make it possible to send execution results back to server. The screenshot to the right shows examples that display a full website, an HTML snippet and the execution of a custom javascript function.

Support for various SWT Shell style flags

SWT offers many ways to customize the appearance of a shell via the style flags passed to the Shell constructor. These flags are also important to create SWT Dialogs. We now support the additional SWT shell styles TITLE, BORDER and *_MODAL. The following screenshots demonstrate the various style combinations.

Bugfixes

We are constantly working towards a high level of stability and solid performance, and in this release, we squashed some bugs which deserve special mention:

  • Fixed an issue where selecting elements inside a vertical ScrolledComposite was not possible
  • The GraphicalContext used android APIs not available on the supported basline version android 2.1 (API level 7).

iOS

You’re probably already enjoying the browser support on our RAP mobile iOS client, and can now also take the Client Canvas for a test drive.  Two other things that you might notice in this release are a new UI hint to show how to enter the developer SystemMenu and improvements to modalShell rendering and animation.

Moritz Post