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RAP 1.2 New and Noteworthy

Here are some of the more noteworthy things available in RAP 1.2 (June 24th, 2009) which is now available for download.

This list shows all bugs that were fixed.

  

Common

Jetty 6.1 and Servlet API 2.5 The version of Jetty that comes packaged with RAP was updated from 5.1 to 6.1. With this change, the Servlet API (javax.servlet.*) was updated to version 2.5. Please adjust your launch configurations accordingly and verify version ranges for Import-Package and Require-Bundle directives.

For more information please see bug #258628.
  
com.ibm.icu.base ICU4J is a set of Java libraries that provides comprehensive support for Unicode, software globalization, and internationalization. These libraries are packaged in the plug-in com.ibm.icu (about 3MB in size)

Several plug-ins like Workbench, Forms, and JFace Databinding make use of these libraries and so do the respective RAP apdoptions.

As of this milestone, RAP uses the Replacement Plug-in com.ibm.icu.base (about 100KB in size) in order to reduce the overall size of the target platform by almost 3MB.

Since all dependencies on ICU4J are expressed by Import-Package declarations, the replacement plug-in can be easily "re-replaced" if necessary.

RWT

JavaScript Compression The new implementation of Javascript compression is now available. It is enabled by default, when you use the "Standard" client-side library variant.

To disable Javascript compression switch to the "Debug" library variant, which sets the system property org.eclipse.rwt.clientLibraryVariant to DEBUG for the VM that is being launched.

The total size of the index page was reduced by more than 20%.

For more information please also read the comments on this bug.
  
Cursor Support The Control cursor support is now available. It is fully implemented in the following widgets:
  • Button
  • Label
  • CLabel
  • List
  • Composite
  • Canvas
  • Combo
  • Text
  • Spinner
  • Scale

To obtain an instance of org.eclipse.swt.graphics.Cursor, you should use code like this:

Cursor cursor = Graphics.getCursor( SWT.CURSOR_CROSS );
control.setCursor( cursor );

As with all resources in RWT, the Cursor instances are shared among sessions. That's why, there is no Cursor#dispose() method available.

  
Scale Widget Now there exists a Scale widget that works much the same as in SWT.

  
DateTime Widget The long awaited DateTime widget is now available. Using the style flags SWT.DATE, SWT.TIME, SWT.CALENDAR and SWT.SHORT, SWT.MEDIUM, SWT.LONG you can switch the widget mode. Additionally the DateTime widget goes by the locale from RWT#getLocale() to display the day and month names in your preferred language.

  
ExpandBar Widget RWT provides an ExpandBar control. It can be used to represent a category or group of elements. You may have a look at the org.eclipse.rap.demo.controls.ExpandBarTab class in the demo plug-in to see how to use it.

  
MessageBox With a standard SWT MessageBox you can display a message dialog without using JFace.

The same style flag combinations like in SWT are available:
  • SWT.OK
  • SWT.OK | SWT.CANCEL
  • SWT.YES | SWT.NO
  • SWT.YES | SWT.NO | SWT.CANCEL
  • SWT.RETRY | SWT.CANCEL
  • SWT.ABORT | SWT.RETRY | SWT.IGNORE
  
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.
  
qooxdoo 0.7.4 This milestone build includes a new version of the Javascript library qooxdoo. Thanks to the great support by the RAP community, most notably from Stefan Hansel who tracked down a number of significant memory leaks in qooxdoo and provided patches to the qooxdoo developers, this version now brings a major improvement in client memory consumption. With this qooxdoo version, the long-standing memory leakage problems of RAP escpecially in Internet Explorer are resolved.

Thanks to everyone who helped making this possible!

  
Slider widget Now there exists a Slider widget that works much the same as in SWT. A Slider is a control that looks like a scrollbar and represents a continuous range of numeric values. The range can be specified by the methods #setMinimum() and #setMaximum(). The current value can be obtained using #getSelection().

  
Theming Since the new theming infrastructure is now in place, we worked on making more aspects of widgets themeable. The list below details out which aspects can now be altered.
  • The background image of Buttons can be altered
  • This CSS code defines a handle for the Sash widget. 
    Sash-Handle:horizontal {
  background-image: url( "/theme1/icons/sash/h_handle.gif" );
}
Sash-Handle:vertical {
  background-image: url( "/theme1/icons/sash/v_handle.gif" );
}
  • The border style as well as the appearance of the drop-down button of a Combo widget can be changed like shown below. 
    Combo {
  border: 1px solid #1695d4;
}
Combo-Button {
  background-image: url( "/theme1/icons/combo/down.gif" );
  background-color: #9dd0ea;
}
  • The handle image of Coolbars
  • The various buttons of the DateTime, ExpandBar and Spinner widget.
  • The border color of the CTabFolder.
  • The radio, check box and cascade images of Menus
  • The check box images of the Tree and Table widget.
  
ColorDialog SWT's ColorDialog has been implemented for RWT. 

ColorDialog dialog = new ColorDialog( shell );
RGB result = dialog.open();

 
  
Button widget The Button widget has been reworked. Now there are custom implementations for check boxes and radio buttons The new features are:
  • The method Button#setGrayed() is implemented for a check box behavior that works much the same as in SWT.
  • Hover state is implemented for both radio and check buttons.
  • Images are used for check and radio icons and can be defined via theming for the default, selected, hover and grayed (only check box) state. These are examples for setting the state images for the default state of a radio button and for the combined selected and grayed state of a check button: 
    Button-RadioIcon {
  background-image: url( resource/widget/rap/button/radio-unselected.png );
}
Button-CheckIcon:selected:grayed {
  background-image: url( resource/widget/rap/button/check-grayed.png );
}
  • The Button#setImage() method now works as in SWT.
    •   
    Themeable System Images The system images used for SWT MessageBox and JFace MessageDialog can now be customized via theming. These images can also be acquired from Display#getSystemImage(). 
    
Display {
  rwt-error-image: url( /theme1/icons/dialog/error.png );
  rwt-information-image: url( /theme1/icons/dialog/information.png );
  rwt-warning-image: url( /theme1/icons/dialog/information.png );
  rwt-question-image: url( /theme1/icons/dialog/question.png );
  rwt-warning-image: url( /theme1/icons/dialog/warning.png );
}

      
    New API added For this milestone, we concentrated on implementing SWT API that was still missing in RAP. This will make it easier for the community to reuse existing code or to utilize new features. Here is a list of API methods added in this milestone:
    • TypedEvent#display
    • User data on Display (setData( Object ), setData( String, Object ), etc.)
    • Display#timerExec()
    • Monitor and its accessors like getPrimaryMonitor() on Display and getMonitor() on Control
    • Device#getClientArea()
    • RowLayout#center
    • Widget#notifyListeners()
    • CTabFolder#getItem( Point )
    • DateTime#setDate( int, int, int )
    • sashWidth and setMaximizedControl() on SashForm
    • Shell#forceActive()
    • Selection listener on Spinner
    • TabItem#setToolTipText( String )
    • Text#setLineHeight()
    • setDisabledImage() and setHotImage() on ToolItem
      
    CCombo widget Now there is a CCombo widget that works much the same as in SWT.

      
    Table improvements

    The Table widget has received a lot of bugfixes and improvements during this milestone. Fonts, backgrounds and foreground colors are now supported properly for the entire table, for table items and also for single cells. Unnessesary scroll bars are not drawn anymore. Together with alternating row colors and cell padding, which had already been added in M6, the table fits much better into modern web applications. Moreover, we added some significant performance improvements.

      
    Label theming

    The CSS property text-decoration has been added for the Label widget. Permissible values are underline, overline, line-through, and none.

      
    Group theming

    The foreground and background colors of the Group widget's label are now separately themeable to allow a more flexibile styling.

    Forms

    FormText The org.eclipse.ui.forms.widgets.FormText has been implemented in RAP. FormText is a read-only text control that is capable of rendering wrapped text. Text can be rendered as-is or by parsing the formatting XML tags like <p>, <li>, <a>, <img>, <control> and <span>. You can use the FormToolkit to create an instance: 
      FormText formText = toolkit.createFormText( form.getBody(), true );

    For further details please also see this bug

    JFace and Workbench

    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.

      
    Intro support The org.eclipse.ui.intro extension point provides a generic mechanism that can be used to create your own intro support for your application. The main purpose of this extension is to define the class that implements IIntroPart and to specify the binding between a branding and an intro part. As RAP does not support products as known from RCP you can use the org.eclipse.rap.ui.branding extension point to bind your intro to a specific branding. For example, the following contribution defines a hypothetical intro part to be shown by the workbench on startup: 
    
<extension
    point="org.eclipse.ui.intro">
  <intro
    class="com.example.SampleIntroPart"
    id="someId"
    icon="someIcon.png">
  </intro>
  <introBrandingBinding
    introId="someId"
    brandingId="com.example.someBrandingId">
  </introBrandingBinding>
</extension>
    When starting the application for the first time the intro will appear in fullscreen covering the rest of the workbench window:

    In standby mode the workbench shows the regular perspective with the intro on the right side:

    For more informations about how to use the intro extension, see Contributing a HelloWorld intro Part
      
    Databinding During the M6 milestone, the databinding core plug-ins were restructured. Like its RCP counterpart, the RAP workbench has a dependency to core databinding and thus is affected from these changes.

    Effectively, two more bundles, org.eclipse.databinding.observable and org.eclipse.databinding.property are now required to run the workbench. Please update your build scripts and launch configurations accordingly.
      
    New look and feel

    With the help of a user interface design company, we developed a new look and feel that provides a professional, serious look for RAP applications. This implementation uses the new interaction design API, which brings more flexibity to modifying the workbench presentation and allows to completely separate the styling from the application code (see the RAP help for details).

    The new design is meant to demonstrate the styling capabilities of RAP and serve as an example and a template for your application. It is included in the plug-in org.eclipse.rap.design.example and can be applied to an existing application by simply adding this bundle and using business as the servlet name.

    The development is not quite complete, some improvements will still be made before the release.

    Check out the RAP Examples Application, to see the new look and feel in action.

    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.