Maxa Blog

One of the neat features in Exadel Tiggr mockup creation and sharing tool is dynamic widgets. Let me explain. Let’s say you have a tab panel with three tabs. Different content goes into the three tabs. When designing mockups, there is no simple way to show what content/widgets go into the first tab, the second and so on. With Tiggr is very simple because the tab widget is dynamic. In other words, you can click on the tab and switch between them. This way you can place different content into the tabs during design as in real application.

First tab:

Second tab:

Third tab:

To edit tab label, just double-click on the text. And, to add/remove tabs, click on the tab and invoke the context-menu as shown:

Exadel Tiggr links for 2010-08-31:

• Exadel Tiggr Mockups (via Hobione’s Weblog)

• Interview with Andrey Komolov

RichFaces 3 webinar series with slides and actual webinar recordings (at the end of this post).

Read more »

If you are working on mockups for your application, then drop your pencil and try Exadel Tiggr. Tiggr is a web-based collaboration platform for creating and sharing mockups online. If you are working with a customer or a remote team, it’s the perfect tool to collaborate on UI design. If you need any help or have questions, head to http://getsatisfaction.com/exadel.

Interesting write-up on present and future of JavaFX by Osvaldo Pinali Doederlein. I had two posts on this topic JavaFX… does it have a future? (mentioned by Osvaldo) and JavaFX… it does have a future.

If you are planning to attend Herbstcampus conference in Nuremberg, September 12-15, use this URL to get 25% discount. Alternatively, you can use this booking code: ceHioRcpiD.

I’m will be doing a RichFaces 4 workshop as well as two regulation session during the conference. More information.

JSF 2 now has basic Ajax support via f:ajax tag. RichFaces 3 has a very popular a4j:support tag (in fact, f:ajax was inspired by a4j:support). RichFaces 4 comes with a4j:ajax which is based on f:ajax but upgrades the tag with more features and advanced functionality. The table below show the attributes available in both tags and how RichFaces upgrades the core Ajax functionality in JSF 2 (I’ll cover a4j:ajax extra attributes in the future).

In addition to a4j:ajax, RichFaces upgrades JSF 2 with tags such as a4j:commandButton, a4j:commandLink, a4j:poll, a4j:jsFunction, a4j:outputPanel and more (covered in future posts).

Exadel released new JavaFX Plug-in for Eclipse version 1.3.5. The two major features are:

• Setting VM parameters for JavaFX application
• Option to specify custom JNLP arguments

To download the latest version or install via Eclipse update, go to http://exadel.org/javafxplugin.

There are also a number of bug fixes and more improvements to the application launcher. You can see what else changed in the Release Notes (make sure to read changes about launch configuration).

To see what features and bug fixes or even suggest your own are making it into the next version, click here. Don’t forget the forum for any other questions/comments.

Exadel Flamingo now has support for CDI (JSR299) and Bean Validation (JSR303). You can try the features from a nightly build.

The following features are supported so far:

• Calling CDI bean methods
• Support for EL (Expression Language). Bind to values and invoke methods with EL in JavaFX
• CDI conversations
• Bean Validation (JSR303)

To download a nightly build, go to http://exadel.org/flamingo and click on Nightly builds on the right.

To get started with JavaFX and CDI/Bean Validation, you can look at these examples as reference. The client side code is the same, the only difference is instead of Seam components, you now use CDI beans on the server (and the appropriate annotations).

We are also planning to add CDI events. If there is anything else we should add, please let us know.

RichFaces 4 is not only JSF 2 based, but also undergoing a major upgrade on the framework level. Many components are being rewritten to increase performance, reduce markup size, and make them consistent across the board. RichFaces 4 is a major upgrade and brings many improvements:

• All JavaScript is now based on jQuery
• Ajax framework improvements extending the JSF 2 specification
• Component review for consistency, usability, and redesign following semantic HTML principles
• Both server-side and client-side performance optimization
• Strict code clean-up and review
• New and easy to use CDK (Component Development Kit)

Although core Ajax concepts are staying the same, RichFaces 4 brings many new changes because it is now based on JSF 2. RichFaces 4 adds many new features on top of JSF 2 through its advanced features, tags, customization, and flexibility. If you have been using RichFaces, this 1-day training will bring your team up to speed with everything new in RichFaces 4. If you have questions, please contact me at: