Tim Buschtoens

Tim Buschtoens

Tabris.js 2.0 – Top 10 Features: TypeScript & JSX

July 17, 2017

Tomorrow Tabris.js 2.0 will be released and we conclude our count-down of the top 10 new features with our favorite addition: support for TypeScript 2 & JSX. TypeScript 2 & JSX We significantly …

Tabris.js 2.0 – Top 10 Features: Windows 10 Support

July 14, 2017

The Tabris.js 2.0 release is almost here (July 18) and we continue with our count-down of the top 10 new features in the major release. Number 2 is support for the Universal Windows Platform. Get here …

Tabris.js 2 now supports Windows 10 Apps

March 20, 2017

As of version 2.0 (Beta 2), Windows 10 officially belongs to the family of platforms supported by Tabris.js, the cross-platform Mobile App development framework. This means the Tabris.js 2 Windows …

Tabris.js Tips & Tricks: Parts 1 - 3

November 20, 2015

1 - A module for every page! The Page widget and JS modules are a natural fit. The backbone of your Tabris.js App should consist of modules defining pages. For example ‘MyPage.js’: exports.create = …

How to find local resources in Tabris.js

August 14, 2015

The built-in, node compatible module system of Tabris.js makes it pretty easy to find and load JavaScript files within your project. NPM modules aside, all paths are relative. So even if your current …

RAP 3.0 Released

June 24, 2015

It’s good to be back. After using half-year release cycles for the RAP 2.x versions, taking a full year for RAP 3.0 felt eerily long. On the other hand I think it was exactly the time we needed to …

Nebula Grid and FileDialog are now part of RAP

March 19, 2015

If there is a theme for RAP 3.0, it is to bring the current incarnation of the framework to its fullest potential. On the one hand this meant cleaning up API and code and raising the minimum …

Working with modules and libraries in Tabris.js

January 23, 2015

Tabris.js implements a module system as outlined by Common.js and supported by npm. Modules are a great way to organize your application code into isolated units. Unlike conventional scripts they …

RAP 3.0 Release Schedule Update

December 10, 2014

We have recently updated the RAP 3.0 release plan, it is now going to ship together with the Eclipse Mars release train in June 2015. I would like to provide some insight into this unusual update. As …

RAP 3.0 M3: revised ScrollBar, row templates in Nebula Grid

November 17, 2014

Last Friday, 14 November 2014, we published another milestone build for RAP: RAP 3.0 M3. It is available for download from https://www.eclipse.dev/rap/downloads/. This milestone is mostly about …

RAP 3.0 M2 - What's new in Widgets

October 15, 2014

Once again these are exciting times for RAP as we are preparing for the next major release, RAP 3.0. We continue to clean up code, work on the look and feel, and integrate matured Incubator …

It's the small things in life...

August 20, 2014

… like tiny red circles with numbers on them. RAP 3.0M1 (to be published this Friday) consists mainly of internal changes, like getting rid of old API and IE8 support. However, we did have time to add …

(Yet) Another Charting Widget for RAP

July 21, 2014

Maybe you’re familiar with Ralf Sternberg’s d3 widget for RAP (it’s part of the RAP Examples Demo). Like the name implies, it’s a charting widget based on the d3 library, which uses SVG to render its …

Eclipse RAP 2.3 is here!

June 25, 2014

Yes, the rumors are true, you can finally download RAP 2.3.0 from our website, from Maven Central, or conveniently bundled with the Eclipse 4.4 IDE as “Eclipse for RCP and RAP Developers”. Highlights …

Even fancier RAP Tables with Templates & native CSS

June 20, 2014

In RAP 2.2 we introduced the Row Templates feature, which allows you to layout the cells of table rows in different ways than just in columns. In RAP 2.3 we improve on this a bit by allowing not just …

RAP and Accessibility / Screen Reader

May 28, 2014

As I mentioned in my previous post about RAP and Selenium, EclipseSource offers a commercial Add-On that adds WAI-ARIA support to RAP. While we use it mainly for UI-Tests, that’s not really the …

How to write UI tests for RAP with Selenium 2.0

April 29, 2014

We’re occasionally asked how RAP supports UI tests. And while we were aware that there are developers creating UI tests for RAP, we never gathered much experience ourselves. However, in recent months …

How to write better Jasmine tests with mocks

March 27, 2014

Copyright (c) Pivotal Labs I recently started using Jasmine to write my JavaScript tests. I really like it - it made writing tests actually kind of fun. I especially love that you can write tests …

A look at the Internet Explorer 11 Developer Tools

November 25, 2013

Ever since the release of Internet Explorer 9 Microsoft has put a very noticeable effort into catching up to other browser (specifically Chrome and Firefox) in terms of compatibility and performance. …

RAP 2.2M3 introducing "Row Templates" on Tree & Table

November 14, 2013

Behold! ;-) After moving ClientScripting from Incubator to RAP proper in M1 and revising ToolTips in M2, we finally introduce an all new key feature in 2.2M3 called Row Templates. Row Templates will …

Coming Up: RAP 2.2M2 with sexy new ToolTips

September 27, 2013

RAP 2.2M2 is due next week, and if you use any ToolTips (the property, not the class) in your application you will notice quite a few changes. First, ToolTips have a new default look, and they can now …

Introducing RAP AutoSuggest

August 30, 2013

A while ago we started a new RAP Incubator project, the DropDown widget. This is basically a List widget that can be attached to a text field, like the pop-up of a combo box. In itself this widget …

RAP 2.2M1 published, ClientScripting changes

August 26, 2013

The first milestone of RAP 2.2 has been published last Friday. It’s main attraction is the RWT Scripting feature which was formerly known as the incubator “ClientScripting” project. If you are …

How to debug RAP 2.x custom widgets and client listener

August 2, 2013

RAP 2.0 introduced the JavaScriptLoader service to allow custom widgets to load their scripts dynamically. However, because this is based on an “eval”-like JavaScript feature, the scripts did not …

Four ways to deal with private members in JavaScript

July 5, 2013

I’ve been programming JavaScript for a few years now, and the one thing that definitely bothered me from the beginning was the lack of built-in support for private object members. The feeling that …

RAP Client Scripting Phase II (3/3)

June 7, 2013

Part 3: Cross-Widget Scripting The most glaring limitation of ClientScripting since it’s inception was that a listener can only manipulate the widget that fired the current event. Consider, for …

RAP Client Scripting Phase II (2/3)

June 6, 2013

Part 2: How to Pass Data to Your ClientListener A ClientListener is executed in a completely different environment to a traditional SWT listener. The only data it has access to is the event object, …

RAP Client Scripting Phase II (1/3)

June 5, 2013

Part 1: RAP 2.1 and Client Scripting The RAP ClientScripting add-on was introduced with RAP 1.5/Juno to enable more responsive input validation on text widgets. The basic idea is that while most …

The D.I.Y. RAP Client Construction Kit

April 12, 2013

Since RAP 2.0 has fully implemented the JSON-based RAP Protocol I was eager to test it’s full potential myself. The Tabris clients for Android and iOS already exist and others may follow, but as I’m …

Writing JavaScript Tests with Jasmine for RAP

April 2, 2013

If you are writing unit tests for your Java code, then you should also write them for any other code you wrote for the same project. Otherwise these tests only give you a false sense of security. RAP …

Keyboard Controls in RAP: Next Step Mnemonics

March 15, 2013

Applications built with RAP are often designed for high productivity: The faster you can control the app, the more work you can get done. In many cases, keyboard controls are significantly faster than …

RAP 2.0 RC1 published

January 18, 2013

The RAP team wishes everyone a Happy New Year and proudly presents the first release candidate for RAP 2.0. When you look at our New and Noteworthy log for RAP 2.0 RC1, you’ll notice that we are going …

RAP ClientServices explained

December 17, 2012

One of the bigger changes in the RAP 2.0 API is the introduction of client services. These are features that interact with the client, but aren’t directly related to the widget toolkit. Since there …

Eclipse RAP on Windows 8: First Impressions

November 12, 2012

Along with the release of Windows 8 also came the new Internet Explorer 10. (It has not yet been released for Windows 7.) While IE9 was an impressive (but overdue) technical improvement over IE8, IE10 …

How to deal with whitespaces in the Eclipse IDE

October 8, 2012

Whatever your project’s specific policy on whitespaces is (tabs vs. spaces, etc), the most important rule should always be consistency. Not just to make your code look nice, but also to avoid issues …

Why should we always program in English?

September 3, 2012

Want to be a developer, but your English is really, really bad? Are you learning some other language and want to practice while doing your job? Or do you just want drive your colleagues insane with …

Scrolling in mobile Web-Apps

July 30, 2012

I love Android, but its default browser is terrible. For relatively simple, static websites it’s okay, but i’m talking about complex HTML(5)/JavaScript applications here. And while Safari for iOs is …

Client-Side input validation with RAP ClientScripting

March 23, 2012

The RAP team started working on a new feature called ClientScripting. It’s still in it’s infancy and will not (yet) be part of the core framework , but its already very useable. The goal is to allow …

CKEditor for RAP

March 22, 2012

If you ever need a WYSIWYG editor in your RAP application, look no further. I originally implemented this as an example of how JavaScript applications can be embedded in RAP as custom widgets. So if …

Using Key Events effectively in RAP

March 8, 2012

Good keyboard controls have become a staple of modern web applications, such as Google Mail, Github (press “?”) and Flickr. However, almost every browser implements key events slightly differently, …

Performance boost for RAP 1.5

November 14, 2011

Consider this: I measured the time needed to create 200 Buttons in RAP 1.4 and RAP 1.5M3, and it shows a considerable performance boost (at least for the browsers i tested). One reason for this is …

CSS3 and Shadows in RAP

April 17, 2011

RAP already offers advanced styling features including customizable cross-browser gradients, rounded borders and animations. We now complete this feature set by introducing advanced, configurable …

A new Google Maps Widget for SWT and RAP

December 18, 2010

Your early Christmas present from EclipseSource: a custom-widget that displays, controls and reacts to a Google-Map. While there have been similar widgets before, this one is the first (as far as I …

RAP 1.4 with improved iPad support

September 29, 2010

If you ever wondered if RAP runs on the iPad, the answer is now YES. We fixed a number of iPad-related bugs for 1.4M2, and now it runs (almost) trouble-free. You can even start your RAP-application in …

RAP now does animations

May 4, 2010

Animations are an integral part of most modern UIs, including many “web 2.0”-applications and websites. (Just watch carefully when opening google.com.) They have become so common that we even …