RAP 1.3 M3 - New and Noteworthy

Here is a list of API methods added in M3 :

• Display#addListener() and Display#removeListener() which allow to register for SWT.Close and SWT.Dispose events.
• Display#disposeExec()
• Display#close()
• Shell() default constructor
• SelectionEvent#stateMask, that represents the state of the keyboard modifier keys at the time the event was generated
• Improved Display#getDefault() - now creates a display if executed from the user-interface thread. (see bug 293809 for details)

Constructors for the following resources were implemented

• Cursor
• Color
• Font
• Image

The factory methods (Graphics#get*) are still the recommended way for dealing with resources in RWT. If single-sourcing is desired and the extra memory is justifible, using resource-constructors might be considered.
With this change, also dispose() and isDisposed() were introduced. Even though these methods exist for all resources (shared and non-shared) it is considered an error to disposed of factory-created (shared) resources and an IllegalStateException is thrown in this case.

New API has been added to interact with the browser's history stack. The IBrowserHistory implementation can be obtained via RWT.getBrowserHistory(). To create a new history entry, you can use its createEntry() method. In order to receive notification of user-directed changes to the current history entry, use addBrowserHistoryListener().

To see the browser history support in action, see the RAP Examples

We implemented a themeable focus indicator for buttons. This allows to show the focus rectangle inside the buttons.

We extended the theming for a couple of widgets (such as CTabFolder, CLabel, Combo, Spinner and DateTime) and improved the new "fancy" design e.g. the support for standalone views was added.

A great deal of the bugs and enhancement requests fixed in M3 are related to design and theming.

The RAP Application Launcher now has an option to specify the session timeout in Seconds. This can come in handy if you whish to test session shutdown scenarios and saves you from remembering the lengthy org.eclipse.equinox.http.jetty.context.sessioninactiveinterval VM argument.