Overview

With many improvements, new features, and completely redesigned tools (e.g., Visual Editor), Studio 3.5 is a step forward in the IDE developer experience of building Nexaweb applications. The following are areas of major change. Known issues and resolved defects are also discussed at the end.

Highlights

1. Completely redesigned Visual Editor
2. Full XAL Support
3. Legacy NXML Suport
4. Backward Compatibility: importing Studio 2.4 and 3.0 projects into Studio 3.5 is supported
5. Performance Improvements
6. Web Tools integration and project publishing has been greatly enhanced
7. Nexaweb Java Plugin Improvements
8. New Manage Events workflows
9. Simplified user interface
10. Support for custom Ajax tags 
11. Installer Enhancements
12. Known Issues
13. Defects Resolved 

This release supports Windows XP and Windows 2000.  Nexaweb Studio is based on Eclipse 3.2.1 - which does not support Windows Vista - therefore this release does not support Windows Vista.

New Features

New Visual Editor

The new Visual Editor enables a seamless UI design experience for creating both Java and Ajax applications. Laid out on a simple grid system, all components display visual cues for borders, selection, resize, or move and respond to edit operations. Some of the major changes in Studio 3.5 are as follows.

Highlights

• Drag & Drop now supports all layouts
• Move and Resize operations now support all layouts
• Scrollable Canvas is now an SWT native widget
• Global clipboard and edit operations :Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete
• Overlays now indicate selection and resize capabilities of components
• .xal, .nxml file support
• disabled components are rendered disabled, but can still be moved and manipulated
•  visual delegates for unknown tags (e.g. flash components in Ajax applications) allow developers to lay out the screen even if Visual Editor can't render the custom component
• Java plugin support -  java plugins packaged as Nexaweb Java Plugin projects are rendered in the canvas and can be manipulated like other components
• font pt is now rendered as pt, not px
• Ajax WYSIWYG - support for Ajax-specific markup
  • fontSize = %, cm,mm, in, em, ex, pt, pc
  • borderStyle = dashed, dotted, double
  • x,y,height,width = %, cm,mm, in, pt, pc
  • colors from HTML specification = aqua, fuchsia, lime, maroon, navy, olive, purple, silver, teal
  • textDecoration = line-through, overline
• textAlign attribute

Improved XAL Support

Studio 3.5 now fully supports both the NXML and XAL language. Developers can now use Studio 3.5 to help create Rich Internet Applications using either XAL or NXML, although XAL is now the preferred choice for development. Recent improvements in NXML and XAL support were realized with the following fixes.

• All wizards, menu operations, toolbar buttons, and Drag & Drop generate correct XAL
  • fixed several defects where incorrect XAL was being generated
  • fixed several defects where NXML was being generated instead of XAL
  • Any syntactical differences between Ajax and Java are properly generated by all wizards
• Best used with Platform 4.5.6

Legacy NXML support

Customers who have worked with Java projects using NXML syntax may create a new NXML project or import an existing one in Studio 3.5, and take advantage of the new features including the new Visual Editor and Manage Events wizard.

• NXML projects can be created against platform 4.5, 4.2, and 4.1
• All new Visual Editor features work with NXML files in the same way they work with XAL files, but generate valid NXML
• All wizards, menu operations, toolbar buttons, and drag & drop generate correct NXML

Important note when importing NXML projects

The project nature for NXML must be manually added to the project file once imported to enable NXML support.  The project file can be found in the project root and has the name ".project".  To add the NXML nature, add the line indicated below within the <natures/> element.

    <natures>
        ....
       <nature>com.nexaweb.common.NxmlNature</nature>
    </natures>

Backward compatibility with old Studio Projects

This provides an easy upgrade path for an existing Java project with NXML syntax created in 2.4, or a Java or Ajax project with XAL syntax created in 3.0.3.

• Projects created in Studio 2.4 or 3.0 can be imported into Studio 3.5 and will automatically upgrade the project structure
• Import supports importing Studio 2.4 and 3.0 projects

Performance Improvements

Performance was improved in multiple areas by reducing Studio’s load and execution times, and memory usage.

• Faster Project Creation and Upgrade
• Faster Visual Editor loading
• Less memory consumption during project creation and upgrade
• Faster Properties View population
• Status indicator when VE is opening schemas
• Outline View refreshes faster after deleting large amounts of data

Improved Publishing

The file structure of a project has been modified so that it is deployed to an application server correctly and smoothly.

• resolved some issues which resulted in incorrect state of the server
• automatic server start and restart if necessary to run a project

Nexaweb Java Plugin Project Improvements

Java Plugin projects have been enhanced by tighter integration with Studio 3.5 tool sets.

• Java Plugin projects now support XAL
• Fixed several bugs around publishing plugin changes to other projects and building a distribution JAR
• New Visual Editor renders Java Plugins like other components allowing developers to work with custom components directly in VE canvas

Manage Events Wizard

The new Manage Events Wizard streamlines generating client-side code for various types of event handlers. Macro Wizard has been integrated into Manage Events Wizard’s workflow.

• Event Wizard has been refactored into Manage Events
• Simplified workflow now requires less screens and tightly integrates with other wizards (MCO, Macro, Servlet, JSP, XModify)
• Next and Previous buttons now remember values between all screens
• All event attributes are now visible in a table.  Advanced users can configure multiple events using content assist directly from this dialog.
• Validation prevents users from mis-configuring event handlers

Simplified Design

• All decision dialogs now have a default property selected.  These are all stored in the preferences dialog
• Layout Wizard View has been changed to a simpler Refactor Layout context menu operation
• Simplified Toolbar by removing buttons which were not frequently used
• Simplified Welcome Perspective by removing links which were not frequently used
• Simplified Application Overview Page by removing links which were not frequently used
• New layout for Nexaweb Perspective reduces the need to go to other perspectives and simplifies drag & drop
• Outline View now only shows the XAL tree

Minor Enhancements

• In the properties view, dialogs now exist to configure border properties which allow specifying individual values for each border, or a single value for all borders (borderColor, borderStyle, borderWidth, borderCorner, padding).
• Added useful information about current platform version and build in the application overview page.
• Many new icons throughout studio (plugins, data components, event wizard to name a few).
• Customizable palette for unknown Ajax components allows specifying a Visual Delegate component to represent the plugin on canvas.
• New License dialog makes it easier to add a license file both at startup and in Preferences.
• New Facet for adding accessibility support to Nexaweb Java Platform projects
• id="" is no longer incorrectly added to components after drag&drop or undo operations
• Export to WAR now correctly compiles src, src-shared, and src-client source directories into the proper class files

Installer Changes

Studio's installer was upgraded to a higher version to take advantage of new features in the new installer. The installation workflow has changed in the following ways to provide a better installation process.

• Installer now allows users to specify the workspace location
• Installer now bundles a 1.5 JRE
• Installer will now prompt the user when the chosen installation folder contains a previous installation of Studio. During the prompt the user may either choose a different installation folder or uninstall the old version of Studio before installing the new version

Known Issues

• Microsoft Vista is not supported.  Studio 3.5 is based on Eclipse 3.2.1, which does not support Vista.
• Renaming Projects does results in an unusable state; this will be resolved in future versions of Web Tools.
• Changing classes in src-client and src-shared puts server into a restart state
• Visual Editor does not support all possible Ajax syntax:
  • textDecoration=blink
  • margin
  • fontWeight = bolder, lighter, 100, 200...900
  • fontFamily = fantasy, cursive
  • colors = the enumerated browser supported color list is not supported by Visual Editor, only the enumerated Java color names and enumerated HTML color names
• Visual Editor does not render CSS based styling (supported by the Ajax client)
• In a non-default workspace, there may be errors and warnings in the Problems view after creating an Ajax or Java project.  This is because validation is enabled and validators find errors in both JSP and JavaScript files.It also takes a long time for Ajax projects to build with validation on.Validation is disabled in the default workspace (specified during Studio installation).To turn validators off for a non-default workspace, go to Window -> Preferences, click on Validation, and check "Suspend all validators".

Defects Resolved

The following defects found in pre-Studio 3.5 releases have been fixed in this release.