Backbase Ajax 360

Backbase has been a leader in providing Ajax solution. They have released Backbase Ajax 360 is a complete enterprise Ajax solution. It includes everything needed for efficient, risk-free browser-based RIA development and life cycle management. It is solution for ensuring successful Ajax implementations in an enterprise environment.

The new product delivers a complete set of development tools designed to significantly improve developer productivity. Another major advantage is that, the company adds comprehensive services on top of the Framework. They also provide Ajax-based RIA architecture expertise, Ajax training, professional development services and enterprise premium support

Talking about Backbase Ajax 360: It’s a complete enterprise solution built on open standards. The framework includes the entire DHTML stack: (X)HTML, CSS, JavaScript, DOM, XMLHttpRequest, etc. It also supports XPath, XMLEvents, SMIL, XInclude, XMLSchema, and XSLTransform. In addition, Backbase also supports Java standards such as JSF, Facelets, Struts, Spring MVC, JSR 168 and JSR 286. Unlike other available products, Backbase's standards-based solutions work with existing applications and technology. It reduces risk and accelerates development cycles.

Backbase provides a rich Enterprise Ajax Framework with widget interoperability, communication, and binding control to data sources. It also takes care of all routine tasks and requirements, allowing developers to focus on the unique aspects of an application, the business logic and UI composition. The system includes more than 250 pre-built and pre-tested Ajax Widgets and functions. IDE plug-ins is also available for the Eclipse development platform and Adobe Dreamweaver. In addition, Backbase provides real time debugging functionality directly from within the Web browser.

Another major ability is Enterprise Integration. Backbase Ajax client technology is fully server agnostic as well. The software seamlessly integrates with common Web servers, application servers, and portal and SOA mashup servers. It is compatible with any server: Java EE, .NET, PHP, and ColdFusion. In addition to its client technology, Backbase provides additional pre-build connectors and/or runtimes for the Java server platform (e.g. Struts, JSF, Portal, Spring MVC).

I haven’t tested the new product yet. But it looks like Backbase has done their homework to compete with others.

Firefox 3.0 Alpha 5 ready for download!

Mozilla released Firefox 3.0 Alpha 5 codenamed Gran Paradiso on June 6th. The new version uses the next generation of Mozilla’s layout engine, Gecko 1.9. It is ready for download but for testing purpose only. Some of the changes included with Firefox 3.0 Alpha 5 are:

• Bookmarks portion of Places has been enabled.
• New crash reporting system, Breakpad.
• New Javascript-based Password Manager.
  
• Support for Growl notification under Mac OS X.
• Support for native controls on Mac OS X.
• and some bug fixes in Gecko 1.9.

More details can obtained about the new release from Mozilla and they have provided a feedback form as Gran Paradiso is still a baby!

Styles in Flex

Flex provides many ways to apply styles to UI components and make the UI appealing. It has been designed to provide a very attractive UI and interaction which other technologies lack to provide. Lets looks at some the facilities Flex provide to modify the appearance of Flex components.

Flex components have properties can define the size of a font or text colour or the background colour of a container. In Flex, some styles are inherited from parent containers to their children, and across style types and classes. This means that you can define a style once, and then have that style apply to all controls of a single type or to a set of controls. Like CSS in HTML, you can override individual properties for each control at a local, component, or global level, giving you great flexibility in controlling the appearance of your applications. At the same time, Flex does not support controlling all aspects of component layout with CSS. Properties such as x, y, width, and height are properties, not styles, of the UIComponent class and, therefore, cannot be set in CSS. Other properties, such as left, right, top, and bottom are style properties and are used to manipulate a component’s location in a container.

We will go through three different methods of applying the styles. They are: External style sheets, Local style definitions and Inline style definitions.

External Style Sheets:

You can use the CSS files apply styles to a document or across entire applications. You can point to a style sheet with simple tag. The following example shows how to add an external CSS file to a Flex application.

<mx:script source=”test.css”>

You can include the CSS files that come with the SDK to get a better look and feel. Also you can create style using photoshop.

Local Style Definitions:

You can set the style for a MXML file or application using the tag. In this case the style becomes local to that particular file. You can apply different style attributes like color, font attributes, padding etc on any components.The following example shows how to apply style locally:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<mx:application mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml">
<mx:style>
.redFont {
fontSize: 15;
color: #FF0000;
}
</mx:Style>
<mx:button stylename="redFont" label="Red Font">
<mx:button label="No Style Applied">
</mx:Application>

Inline Style Definitions:

Another alternative method is to apply style to a component inline. These properties apply only to the instance of the control. This is the most efficient method of applying instance properties because no ActionScript code blocks or method calls are required. In this case we apply styles in the component tag itself. For example if we want to apply font size 15 to the button we write:

<mx:button fontsize="15" label="A button"/>

Similarly, we can apply other styles like color, theme color etc.

For now we have talked about the ways to apply styles using the tag. You can make use of Action Script also to apply styles. You can make use of setStyle() method to set the style to any components. Another way is to use Style Manager to manipulate the style of components.I will talk about these methods later as a separate blog entry.

Google Releases Calendar Directory

Google introduces a directory of public calendars! Now you can quickly add calendars, search them and browse them. The public calendars are categorized like “Top Picks”, “TV shows”,” Events”, “Sports” , “By Google” and more…

You can add these calendars or view them. Anyone regardless of whether they’re using Google Calendar can view the calendar details by just clicking the linked title for a specific calendar. When you add a calendar to your calendar account, you can then see it integrated as part of your main calendar, color-coded as usual. You can also then set up event reminders.

To have your own Calendar be added to the directory, simply make it public. So Google Calendar is getting updated at last, I was waiting for this. Another new feature to Calendar is the “Add Calendar to Toolbar” option on the top right.

What’s Google next update?? ;)

Adobe's LiveCycle Enterprise Suite

Adobe introduced Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite (ES), an integrated family of software for automating processes that help businesses and governments engage with customers, citizens, partners, and suppliers. LiveCycle integrates the capabilities of Flex with PDF technologies. It will make use of Flash Player and Acrobat Reader to enable a new communication between people inside and outside the organization. This new communication style will enhance the integrity, management of information and improve the business process.

Adobe has recently started to target the content management and collaboration sector of software. LiveCycle is yet another step into these sectors. With LiveCycle ES, organizations can deliver applications that are easier to interact with. This enables companies to better communicate with people who are usually frustrated or confused by on-line procedures for doing transactions. These new applications will decrease costly cycle times, and manage information faster and more accurately.

LiveCycle ES improves how people worldwide interacts each other and access products and services. Organizations can use LiveCycle ES to interact with customers through high-quality; self-service applications that provide quality service and still minimize costs.The major technologies that will help are Flex, Apollo and PDF technology on the client side. The success of Apollo will play a major roll in the coming further.