Rich Internet Applications (RIA) » Java RIA

RIA Forum on GUI Technology

Felix Schrape — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:29:23 +0000

We are happy to announce the second RIA forum which will take place in Darmstadt (close to Frankfurt), 23rd of April 2010! This time, with Canoo Engineering AG as premium sponsor, four well known speakers will talk about the advantages and disadvantages of four different ways to create effective user interfaces (especially in business contexts).

Instead of giving details here I recommend to visit the forum page directly: http://www.riaforum.com (in German). Please be aware that we can only provide entrance to a limited audience, so if you want to join, make sure you sign up quickly.

Canoo Fellow Dierk König about Pros and Cons of Language Diversity

admin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:43:38 +0000

Watch an interesting interview (in German) with Dierk König about the actual language diversity in the Java community — Groovy, Scala, Clojure, JRuby and all the rest of them! If you are interested in this topic, we also recommend to take a look on the schedule of the Java Language Days 2010 (moderated by Dierk König and Markus Völter (itemis).

When is it worth deploying RIA technology?

admin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:30:52 +0000

Excerpt of ”Rich Internet Applications for Business”, an article by Hans Dirk Walter, CEO Canoo Engineering AG (in print).

Even if RIA technology continues to expand steadily in the future and the number of purely HTML based applications does decline, it is nonetheless not recommended to resort to an RIA framework or library for technology’s sake alone when developing online applications. Instead, the decision depends on the user interface requirements.

Figure 1 provides a schematic illustration of various categories of application depending on usage, and shows the dependency of these applications with regard to interactivity requirements and interface richness (UI functionality, drag & drop, graphics).

Typical web applications such as online shopping or rail timetables, that are only occasionally visited by their customers, need to be self explanatory and easy to operate. Speed and sophisticated interaction are of secondary importance in these cases. This type of application is best implemented using form based “wizards”. The functionality offered by HTML is generally more than sufficient in such cases. This does not apply, however, to productive systems, whose users often spend several hours per day with the application. The interface need not necessarily be self explanatory, while training is normally worthwhile. These kinds of application should be developed using RIA technology. The final types of program identified are games, which place the most demanding requirements of all in terms of interactivity (extremely speedy program reaction times in response to rapid successive inputs), as well as sophistication (3D animations, film sequences, etc.) Such application have so far scarcely been realised in satisfactory quality as RIAs.

The renaissance of user-oriented interface designs

admin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:15:10 +0000

Excerpt of ”Rich Internet Applications for Business”, an article by Hans Dirk Walter, CEO Canoo Engineering AG (in print).

Alongside the ascendancy of the World Wide Web (WWW) as global information platform, its technology has increasingly been employed as the basis for enterprise applications in the course of the last 10 years. Web based application have successively squeezed out the previously widespread client-server applications. Ever more IT managers have recognised the operational advantages of centralised application management (re-)enabled through this technology and have placed a total emphasis upon HTML in their application development. This trend has rather conveyed the impression in recent years, therefore, that page based user interfaces were the last word, while user-oriented layout and design appeared consigned to oblivion.

In the wake of the euphoria surrounding HTML there were always organisations who expressed their dissatisfaction at the shortcomings of pure HTML interfaces. Meanwhile, a significant number of middle sized IT companies made their money developing RIAs for such organisations. Publicly, however, these efforts scarcely attracted attention. It was not until the Eclipse project, with its popular Rich Client Platform (RCP)[1] several years ago, that the ordinary developer was once again reminded of the far more ergonomic interfaces of the client-server technology of the 1980s and 1990s.

The term “rich client” now became newly synonymous with this technology. Since RCP is a “fat client” technology it did not correspond to the centralised “zero footprint”[2] approach of classical HTML applications. These benefits, in which no application specific code whatsoever was of installed on the client, thus employed so called “rich thin client” technology, which in turn however merely represented a transient niche. It was not until Jesse James Garrett coined the phrase “Ajax”[3] in 2005, thus bestowing respectability on JavaScript based Internet technology that the idea of “Rich Internet Applications” became familiar to a broader public, who has since been demanding the same level of interface interactivity in online connections as that of pure desktop applications.

This trend has been reinforced to now by discussions about the fuzzy, yet enigmatic term “Web 2.0”[4]. According to this “hype”, the hitherto largely passive bulk of internet users would become highly active web content authors in the coming years or even site “programmers”. Thus, “Web 1.0 was commerce. Web 2.0 is people. [...] 2015, everyone alive will [..] write a song, author a book, make a video, craft a weblog, and code a program” (Kelly, Wired[5]). However, in order to motivate and enable the average surfer not just to consume but also to actively contribute new content, the web needs to be equipped with a suitable interactive interface, with whose help the user can rapidly and easily become active. RIAs bridge this gap perfectly with respect to the dizzying expectations of Web 2.0. They represent the technology, without which the entire aspiration and utopia would evaporate.

However, RIA technology offers so many advantages not only for the Web 2.0 community but also for everyday enterprise applications, that the demise of exclusively HTML based “poor ugly web applications” (PUWA) is foreseeable in the not too distant future.

[1] Jeff McAffer, Jean-Michel Lemieux: Eclipse Rich Client Platform; Addison-Wesley, 2005.

[2] “Zero footprint” means that no additional Software needs to be installed on the client in order to launch an application

[3] Jesse James Garrett: AJAX: A New Approach to Web Applications; www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php

[4] Tim O’Reilly: What is Web 2.0;

[5] Kelly, K.: We are the Web. In: Wired 13.08 (08/2005)

Significant Software Development Developments 2009

Felix Schrape — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:34:49 +0000

Recently, Dustin Marx postet his top ten of the most “Software Development Developments of 2009“. Here is a short summary as a basis for further discussion:

Mergers and Acquisitions: SpringSource acquiring Cloud Foundry, SpringSource itself being acquired by VMware; Oracle’s acquisition of Virtual Iron and GoldenGate, Microsoft’s acquiring of Interactive Supercomputing, Google’s acquisitions of companies such as reCAPTCHA and Teracent, etc.

Changing Landscape of Software Development Conferences: Colorado Software Summit and SDWest and SD Best Practices terminated their long-running tradition in 2009. There is speculation that JavaOne 2009 may have been the last.

Java IDE Wars: IntelliJ IDEA has been the only one of the four leading Java IDEs that has not been available without charge. In 2009, the availability of an open source community edition of IntelliJ IDEA potentially changed the Java IDE landscape.

Groovy: Groovy claims to be “the most popular and successful dynamic language for the JVM”. According to Marx, this certainly seems to be the case (he mentions the high number of books on Groovy (and Grails) and the existence of a DZone area dedicated to Groovy (Groovy Zone) for evidence.

Java EE 6: Marx defines the December release of Java EE 6 as a significant development in the enterprise space.

Oracle buys Sun: According to Marx, even developers who do not use Sun or Oracle products are likely to be at least indirectly affected by this acquisition because it will almost certainly affect the entire software development competitive landscape.

Also included in the ranking were topics as:

Programming Environments for Mobile Devices
Bing Search Engine
Scala
Java SE 7 News
Cloud Computing
Google Chrome OS

If you are interested in Marx’ full review of 2009, please read his blog entry at JW Blogs. He also cited other annual reviews from JavaLobby and Computerworld. So what are last year’s most significant developments in software development from your point of view?

ULC Load 3.0.2 available for Mac OS X

marcel — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:02:44 +0000

We are pleased to announce that ULCLoad 3.0.2 for Mac OS X is now available for download.

This are maintenance release for ULCLoad 3.0. Please see the release notes for a list of implemented feature requests and fixed problem reports.

Please note: the ULCLoad 3.0 license key is valid for all software releases labeled ULCLoad 3.0. If you already have a ULCLoad 3.0 license key, a new license key is not required.

Fix release for ULC ‘08 update 4 available

marcel — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:02:24 +0000

We are pleased to announce that new maintenance releases for UltraLightClient is now available for download.

This is a maintenance release for UltraLightClient ‘08 that fixes the issue
UBA-7852 introduced by update 4.
In addition we have fixed three other issues

[UBA-7573] – ULCComponent.add/removeNotify() does not work inside ULCTabbedPane and ULCCardPane
[UBA-7580] – Missing column selection event for ULCTableTree with expansion listener
[UBA-7760] – [Mac OS X 10.5.7, JRE 1.5] Installing shortcuts on the dock messed up the dock

Please see the ULC ‘08 update 4 release notes for the complete list of implemented feature requests and fixed problem reports.

Please note: the UltraLightClient ‘08 license key is valid for all software releases labeled UltraLightClient ‘08. If you already have a ULC ‘08 license key, a new license key is not required.

Maintenance release,ULC Visual Editor for Eclipse 6.1.2 is now available.

marcel — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:27:44 +0000

We are pleased to announce that the maintenance release ULC Visual Editor for Eclipse 6.1.2 is now available.

Installation from the update site: http://update.canoo.com/ulcve is easily done using the eclipse built in software installation and updating mechanism

This is a maintenance release for ULC Visual Editor for Eclipse. Please see the release notes for a list of implemented feature requests and fixed problem reports:

Please note: the ULC Visual Editor 6.1 license key is valid for all software releases labeled ULC Visual Editor 6.1. If you already have a ULC Visual Editor 6.1 license key, a new license key is not required.

Maintenance Releases ULC ‘08 update 4 and ULCLoad 3.0.2 available

marcel — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:17:37 +0000

We are pleased to announce that new maintenance releases for UltraLightClient and ULCLoad are now available for download.

These are maintenance releases for UltraLightClient ‘08 and ULCLoad 3.0. Please see the ULC ‘08 update 4 release notes and the
ULCLoad 3.0.2 release notes for a list of implemented feature requests and fixed problem reports :

Please note: the UltraLightClient ‘08 license key is valid for all software releases labeled UltraLightClient ‘08, the ULCLoad 3.0 license key is valid for all software releases labeled ULCLoad 3.0. If you already have one of these license keys for your product, a new license key is not required.

Jazoon ‘09: Deploying Java apps from a website

Mike — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:03:19 +0000

Session title: Wuala Webstart – Launching a Java Application directly from a Website
Speakers: Luzius Meisser – Caleido AG / Wuala

Luzius describes Wuala (which I’ve never heard of until now) as an all for offline file-storage. The goal was to make this available in as many contexts as possible, and to get the app up and running as fast as possible, which resulted in them creating their own webstart implementation.

In the speaker’s implementation of webstart he demonstrates how the app starts before the complete app is loaded… which if I’m not mistaken is also possible in Java webstart.

The strategy: Load a trusted applet, copy loader.jar into a temp folder and run it. Now RCP exists as it’s own process and consequently survives browser closure…

On the server-side the apparently smart webstart server (the server counterpart to loader.jar) “learns” which classes are needed first and subsequently delivers the app faster and faster with time.

Some extremely wordy slides are shown which are impossible to read because Luzius is talking. To read or to listen? That is the question.

What I’m extracting from this mix of written and spoken words is that their webstart solution enables quicker downloads and updates than conventional Java webstart.

Summary: This short talk was a little confusing to follow until I realised that I was hearing about two technologies: (a) Wuala – the offline file storage solution; (b) The unique webstart implementation – which was developed in order to improve Wuala’s quality. Nevertheless, I found it quite interesting to learn of the existence of Wuala… 20 minutes well spent.