Rich Internet Applications (RIA)

Canoo Engineering is proud to present the next generation of UltraLightClient! Download the Beta here!

The RIA-Framework (Rich Internet Application) has been completely overhauled and enhanced with a series of innovative and useful functions. These will enable more efficient and convenient deployment in future, as well as adding some attractive features to the design of the user interface.

UltraLightClient will bear the name ULC Core from now on, and forms the basis of the new Canoo RIA Suite, which will officially be released at the beginning of May. The suite is designed in a modular fashion, allowing you to compose functionality according to your own needs. And you only pay for those modules which you actually require.

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The Highlights

• The new Chart Functionality enables you to present even complex facts and figures clearly and simply.
• Using the integrated Animations Framework you can develop dynamic and attractive content in future.
• Further sophisticated graphic features allow even more attractive designs: transparency, rounded angles etc.
• Easy integration to Google App Engine.

THE NEW MODULES AT A GLANCE

ULC Table Plus: this package enables you to implement even the most complex tabular requirements in a rapid and straightforward manner.

ULC Web Integration: simply integrate any browsers such as Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer into your application developed under ULC. Web services and plug-ins like Google Maps or Flash Player can thus be launched directly in the application.

ULC Office Integration: this ULC Core module supports the future import and export of Excel and Word files out-of-the-box. The contents can then be stored as PDF files and later printed.

ULC Enterprise Portal Integration: using this optional extra, existing portlet applications can be easily and efficiently augmented with ULC applications.

ULC Visual Editor: with the optimized visual editor you can generate your ULC applications by drag & drop even more easily and, as usual, without any manual programming effort whatsoever.

ULC Load: put your ULC applications though extensive load and performance tests using ULC Load. Thus you can be confident that your applications can bear up to the most rigorous demands in an operational environment.

Download the Beta here!

This is just a quick note about the WJAX Java developer conference that take place last week in Munich.

The conference program was quite balanced and beside the main stream topics about SOA (ServiceOrientedArchitektur – represented by the SOACon conference), Spring, Application Security and OSGi there was a huge number of different topics, which were addressed by several talks.

Most interesting from my point of view were following sessions:

• Keynote from Jonas Jacobi: Re-architecting the Web with HTML 5 Communication.
• Talk from Karsten Lentzsch: Efficient design of swing UI’s.
• Talk from Angelika Langer: Java programming in the age of multicore.
• Talk from Dierk Koenig: RESTful JEE with Grails.

Canoo was exhibiting on a booth, which gave the great opportunity to present and talk about our products UltraLightClient (ULC), the just released language application for the IPhone (using canoo.net), our demo for the new JavaFX platform and fancy UltraLightClient / Swing rich client applications. In addition Canoo members used the presence to keep in touch with existing costumers, contact new ones or presented the company to potential new staff members.

Canoo Online Quiz

All the visitors on the booth and all other interested software developers had and still have the possibility to join an online quiz. Its possible to win an iPod touch or one of ten ‘Groovy in Action’ books. The quiz can be found at www.canoo.com/quiz and will end at the 30.11.2008.

Dierk König, Canoo fellow and author of the ‘Groovy in Action’ book, was holding a groovy workshop and was giving a talk about RESTful JEE with Grails.

Stephan Gillmeier and I attended the recent BlogCamp in Zürich, Switzerland.

Stephan Gillmeier presented an excellent talk on Canoo’s German language blog “Fragen Sie Dr. Bopp” (in English “Ask Dr. Bopp”):

www.canoo.net/blog

This is where Canoo’s chief linguist Dr. Stephan Bopp publishes some of the questions we receive at www.canoo.net.

As a special highlight, Stephan Gillmeier revealed one of his plans for Canoo.net:

An iPhone application to look up words on Canoo.net.

Canoo’s CEO Hans-Dirk Walter is presenting a one day course on Rich Internet Applications and AJAX on 12th September 2008.

The RIA course is part of a three day training “Web-basierte Informationssysteme” from 10th to 12th September 2008 and will be held in German at the ETH in Zürich. Participants may choose to attend only one day or the entire course.

Praktisch alle Menschen haben Zugang zum “Web”, sei es privat, dienstlich oder zunehmend auch mobil. Das Web ist damit praktisch jederzeit für jedermann verfügbar. Der große Erfolg des Webs liegt darin begründet, dass das Web die Kosten für das Abrufen und Bereitsstellen von Information stark reduziert hat. Dieser dreitägige Kurs stellt die grundlegenden Technologien des Web und der Entwicklung von Web-basierten Anwendungen vor. Am ersten Tag werden Web Services und dienstorientierte Softwarearchitekturen (SOA) vorgestellt, die die Grundlage für verteilte Informationssysteme bieten. Am zweiten Tag wird XML als eine der grundlegenden Technologie zur Repräsentation, Speicherung, Austausch und Verarbeitung von Information vorgestellt. Am dritten Tag werden Rich Internet Applications und die Programmierung von modernen graphischen Benutzerschnittstellen behandelt.

Here is a summary of the RIA topics that will be presented (in German):

Rich Internet Applikationen (RIA) sind die nächste Generation der Webtechnologie. Sie verbessern die Benutzerschnittstellen und erweitern den Anwendungsbereich von Webapplikationen entscheidend. Ihr wesentlicher Beitrag: sie verbinden die Vorteile server-basierter Web-Technologie mit Interaktionsmöglichkeiten für den Benutzer, die man sonst nur von lokal installierten Desktop-Applikationen kennt.

Durch das Schlagwort AJAX und Anwendungen wie Google Maps, Flickr oder e-Opinion, die mit dieser Technologie implementiert sind, wurden Rich Internet Applikationen über die technische Entwickler-Community hinaus bekannt.

Häufig wird übersehen, dass AJAX nur eine (sehr einfache) Implementierungsalternative ist, um das übergeordnete Ziel ergonomischerer Benutzerschnittstellen zu realisieren. Dieser Kurs gibt einen Überblick über die Ziele, die man durch den Einsatz von RIA Technologie verfolgt, die Architektur und Entwurfsmuster für Rich Internet Applikationen sowie einen Überblick über Technologiealternativen, um solche modernen Systeme zu realisieren. Zusätzlich zu den Konzepten werden Demonstrationen und praktische Beispiele geliefert, um eine richtige Erfahrung mit diesen Technologien zu bekommen.

Summary of the Course Details:

When: Wednesday 10th September 2008 to Friday 12th September
Where: ETH Zürich, IFW-Gebäude, Hörsaal A 36 , Haldeneggsteig 4
Lecturers:
Prof. Dr. G. Alonso, ETH Zürich
Prof. Dr. D. Kossmann, ETH Zürich
Dr. H.-D. Walter, Canoo AG
Course name: Web-basierte Informationssysteme

Register for this course at the ETH Zürich website.

This course is part of an ETH Zürich course program for IT professionals called “Kompaktkurse für Informatiker”.

Last week I attended LIFT in Geneva, Switzerland. LIFT is a conference that explores the challenges and opportunities of technology in society. The conference discusses new technologies and their impact on society from a user’s point of view.

Here are some trends I observed:

Disclaimer: this is my personal view and interpretation of LIFT. Please feel free to add a comment or point out any errors.

Better Interfaces

There are companies such as Headshift looking to create new web tools that will help to manage information overload and personal productivity in large networks or organizations. They held a workshop at LIFT to hear ideas and opinions about hybrid web interfaces for email, RSS feeds, and concepts such as Getting Things Done.

I was in a parallel workshop called Forgetful Interfaces, discussing new ways to display the huge amounts of stored data we have accumulated. It was a very broad discussion and I went out of the workshop with more questions than answers. One proposal was to build interfaces like the human memory: data linked to recent events is available immediately, and as time flies, the data – i.e. the interface items related to the data – that you have not used over the past year fades away. For example, items in a to do list are important in the short term, but will tend to clutter search results one year from now without adding any added value.

These two workshops highlight the need for better web interfaces for knowledge workers. The amount of information from various data streams is due to increase, and the challenge is to build business process, as well as knowledge management tools that will increase efficiency and productivity. As Web 2.0 moves into the corporate world, I’m expecting the need for richer, adaptable interfaces to grow.

Scalability

One of the most common questions asked by the Venture Night panel on Wednesday evening was: What about scalability? If your web app is successful and draws millions of users, will the architecture be able to handle this? How are you addressing the performance issue?

Mobile computing

Francesco Cara of Nokia described the evolution of mobile communication ecosystems. We are currently in the third stage where new features and services are being introduced rapidly, new players such as Apple and Google moving into the market, the complexity is increasing, and more mobile applications are accessing the Internet directly.

Within this context, I couldn’t help but think of Canoo’s RIA for Mobiles project, that Christian wrote about in January 2008.

Further links on LIFT 08:

LIFT videos

Bruno Giussani’s blog

Stephanie Booth’s blog

Hannes Gassert’s notes in the Liip blog