Tabris.js 2.0 is just two weeks away, and the development team is taking this ramp down time to reflect on the release and highlight the features we're really excited about. A new major release gave us the opporuntity to update the API. We have been designing APIs for Widget Toolkits for over 10 years, and in that time we've learned a lot. In Tabris 2.0, we've modernized...
Read MoreHi, as this is my first post on the EclipseSource Blog, I thought I would introduce myself. I’m Shai Alon - new employee at EclipseSource and the mobile developer evangelist for the Tabris.js technology. I am a full stack JavaScript expert and my previous job was a team leader of a full stack JavaScript team - building complex web applications with an Ember.js frontend and...
Read MoreWe 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 you may know, RAP was released in 6 month cycles for the past 2 years, adding a in-between winter release to the simultaneous Eclipse releases. That allowed us to...
Read MoreIf you still find yourself defining methods like this public String[] getParameters(); in an interface, you should think again. Arrays are not just old-fashioned, there are good reasons to avoid exposing them. In this article, I'll try to summarize the main drawbacks of using arrays in Java APIs. [ Looking for more tips on writing clean code? See our Software Craftsmanship page. | Polish up your coding with...
Read MoreThe ability to upload files is key functionality for every Web application and, naturally RAP can upload files too. In the beginning ( RAP 1.2 ), this functionality was provided by a custom widget called Upload. This widget was based on an early version of the Qooxdoo UploadWidget contribution project. In RAP 1.4 the old Upload widget was deprecated and replaced by a new FileUpload RWT...
Read MoreThe 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 currently using ClientScripting and wish to upgrade to RAP 2.2 (which will be released in December 2013), you should be aware of some breaking changes*: Namespace: The ClientListener has been...
Read MoreCreating UIs with SWT or RAP is a common task in many projects. While we have a comprehensive set of widgets at our disposal, we only have a handful of layouts to choose from. One of the more popular layouts is the GridLayout. Together with its child the GridData it allows you to cover most of your layout needs. Sometimes nesting several composites is required...
Read MoreEclipse/OSGi has a strict versioning scheme consisting of 4 parts, separated by dots. This is well-known to Eclipse developers, and thus in the Eclipse/OSGi world the versioning problems are solved. In the past few months references to the Semantic Versioning scheme became more and more frequent. It seems similar to the Eclipse versioning, but is not quite the same. Thus a small overview is in order....
Read MoreIn the RAP project, reading and writing JSON are critical operations, since the server processes and creates JSON messages for a large number of clients at a high rate. For this reason, we need something fast for this job. When we switched to JSON, we included the org.json parser, which is reasonably small but not famous for its performance. There are many better JSON libraries out...
Read MoreApplications 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 mouse controls. Consequentially, RAP has continually improved keyboard controls since it's inception. What are Mnemonics? Should you not know, Mnemonics are the characters that get underlined in some widgets (especially the menu bar) if...
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