In recent times, there have been a number most interesting Vaadin developments. In this post I’ve picked out 3 that you shouldn’t miss if you’re at all interested in developing cross-browser web applications in a high-level framework. Even if you thought Vaadin was not for you, it might be the time to reevaluate your options.
It’s been a while since I’ve mentioned
FCTR.be, my Vaadin powered book keeping project and framework. Not because I haven’t worked on it, but because there isn’t that much new to report. The application is now feature complete, using the techniques I’ve previously mentioned. I’m still very happy with my choice of Vaadin, but as my knowledge of Vaadin increased, the need for a rewrite of certain parts has become clear. You can certainly expect a few posts in the near future with some lessons learned.
On to the news.
Vaadin Spring Roo Plugin
Spring Roo has been taking the rapid development world by storm. It has become (one of) Java’s answer to Ruby on Rails. Using an advanced command line interface you can quickly create CRUD applications.
The Vaadin developers have created a plugin for Spring Roo, which allows you to use the Roo power to create Vaadin applications. What’s great about it, is that it plugs into the visual editor. So you can generate your application with Roo and use the Vaadin visual editor to fine-tune the looks.
Learn Vaadin Fundamentals at BlackBeltFactory
If the excellent Vaadin book is not enough for you, you can now also follow a 13 part course on BlackBeltFactory. Formerly known as JavaBlackBelt, BlackBeltFactory is an excellent resource for all kinds of Java courses and tests.
The Vaadin Fundamentals course is freely accessible (without coach) at the moment.
Scala and Vaadin
In spite of Java 7 and 8, I believe we’re going to see a gradual move away from the Java language. The Java language is hitting some walls that will be hard to solve by extending the language. The JVM, though, is only getting started. Groovy, Clojure and Scala have proven that the JVM can support widely different programming paradigms.
In that regard, I really like the experiments of mixing Scala with Vaadin. It’s not a complete success, but many libraries are going to be faced with interop to other JVM languages.
And of course there are similar experiments for Groovy and Clojure.