Looking back on another eventful year for the RAP project, today we’re proud to publish the results in a new release, RAP 2.2. Let’s have a look at the highlights:

Client-side Scripting

We started off the work on RAP 2.2 with integrating the ClientScripting from the Incubator project into RWT. With this new feature, you can now attach scripted listeners to a widget. Those listeners are directly executed on the client, allowing for immediate feedback. This is particularly useful for validation of user input. You can see the difference in our online example.

Modernized ToolTips

In the second milestone, we focused on improving the user experience of tooltips in RWT. Tooltips can now point to the widget they annotate and are positioned relative to this widget, not to the mouse position.

The pointer images can be adjusted by new theming properties. In addition to the new look, we also fine-tuned the behavior of tooltips. They come up quicker and do not vanish until the mouse pointer is moved. Moreover, tooltips can now also contain markup:

Row Templates

SWT provides tree and table widgets to display data, but nothing that compares with styled lists known from mobile interfaces. We decided to make those modern UIs possible in RAP anyway. Instead of creating a custom widget with a new API, we came up with a template API that lets you change the item presentation of existing tree and table widgets. A row template applies to every row of a table and defines text and image cells that can be freely arranged.

With this API, you can re-use existing SWT and JFace code and just define a new presentation. This feature is also already available in the latest version of Tabris, our RAP-based platform for Android and iOS.

[ More on RAP from our blog: RAP technology overview | Using RAP in an industrial setting? Our technology subscription secures your investment for years to come. ]

News from the RAP Incubator

The RAP Incubator project is a place where new features and add-ons for RAP are being developed. Two new components have been added recently that are worth mentioning. The Auto suggest component allows to attach type-ahead search to an existing text field

and the rich text editor for RAP is now also part of the RAP Incubator project.

Last but not least, the FileDialog has been polished and supports multi-file selection now.

Download

RAP 2.2 is available on the download page as p2 repositories and as zip files. The core libraries rwt, rwt.osgi, and rap.jface can also be found on Maven Central.

You can find a more detailed list of changes in the RAP 2.2 New and Noteworthy.

Thanks to the RAP committers and to all contributors who helped with this release by testing, discussing, and pointing out problems early. We wish you all a relaxing X-mas vacation and look forward to another great year with RAP. The next release will be RAP 2.3 in June 2014.