RAP 1.2 M3 - New and Noteworthy

Here are some of the more noteworthy things that are available in the milestone build M3 (November 19, 2008), which is now available for download.

This list shows all bugs that were fixed during this milestone.

RWT

Generic CSS Theming Engine With a new, entirely CSS-based theming infrastructure, RWT can now render styles defined in CSS theme files directly. CSS themes are no longer translated to properties internally and are thus fully supported now. As an example, for widgets that support the :hover state, it is now possible to change any property on mouseover, which has not been possible before: 

  Button[PUSH]:hover {
    font: bold 12px Helvetica;
    color: white;
    background-color: #1695d4;
    border: 2px solid #9dd0ea;
  }
          
          This change is an important foundation for the further improvement
          of the themeability of RWT widgets.
          Theming based on property files is still supported in this milestone,
          but it will be discontinued in M4.
Improvement of Session Startup Performance The current version provides improvements regarding the session startup performance. First the creating of the startup page is less CPU intensive. Second the javascript library content is not embbeded in the startup page anymore. It is delivered separately. As the library content doesn't change after server start it can be zipped once and buffered. This reduces CPU usage significantly. The library is stored in the browser's cache and need not to be reloaded on subsequent application visits.

JFace

Cell Editors With the implementation of JFace cell editors, including all the necessary event handling, RAP can now offer editing support for JFace viewers. There's still one tough issue remaining, that relates to the way the Firefox browser handles key events. However, the API is available and cell editors are basically working.

Tooling

Launch without opening browser The RAP launcher now allows to disable the startup of a browser on every launch. This comes in handy when working with fixed ports and an external browser.

The above features are just the ones that are new since the last milestone build. Summaries for earlier builds: