Echo Web Framework

I've made some updates to the Echo3 demo to show off the post-beta2 changes in the framework. The demo is available at the usual location, http://demo.nextapp.com/echo3csjs. New features include an entirely new rendering for the CalendarSelect, which now displays animated effects when selecting dates. WindowPanes and SplitPanes now offer rollover effects. The DropDownMenu renderer was given some aesthetic improvements as well. There's more to come before beta3 (notably in that TabPane will receive some significant updates), but things are progressing smoothly and beta3 is not too much farther out.

Echo3 Beta2, Echo3 Extras Beta2, and EchoStudio3 Beta1 are now available! Many thanks to everyone for the contributions, patches, and bug reports. The latest changes are reflected in the Echo3 Demo App.

EchoStudio3 is now also available as a pre-order, with pricing reduced by 20% while the product is beta. Developers who purchase the product in the pre-order period will receive one year of free upgrades from the date of the 3.0 release (rather than the date of purchase). Additionally, upgrade pricing is available for current EchoStudio licensees (at 50% of the full version price). Please contact NextApp to obtain an upgrade discount code. EchoStudio3 is of course available free of charge to EchoStudio2 users who are within their one-year free upgrade eligibility period.

Several new sections have been added to the Echo3 Component Authoring and CoreJS documentation. All blank sections should now be filled in. The component authoring example application is now verified to work properly with the latest Echo3 sources. Feedback, error corrections, and suggestions on how to improve this documentation are greatly welcomed!

Additionally, if you are interested in developing Echo3 components, please feel free to try the EchoStudio3 Rendered Component wizard which will automatically create the basic elements of a rendered component in one step.

A test release is now available for EchoStudio3 (for Echo3). This is a pre-beta release, with beta1 expected to follow very soon. If you'd like to test it, please make sure any projects on which it is used are thoroughly backed up (not that it's particularly dangerous, but this is test release #1). Another option is to simply try it in an alternate Eclipse environment / workspace.

A new EchoStudio2 release (2.1RC2) is available which contains bugfixes for Eclipse Europa (3.3) and Ganymede (3.4). A new Echo2 release (2.1RC5) is also available, which provides additional workarounds for bugs in Apple's Safari web browser. The new EchoStudio release includes the 2.1RC5 version of Echo2. Visit the Echo2 Download and/or EchoStudio Home Page to obtain these latest releases.

This server has been experiencing major reliability issues, and thus this site and all other nextapp.com sites are being moved to a new server immediately. There may be downtime during this transition.

The fourth release candidate of Echo2 version 2.1 is now available. The most significant update in this release is that all JavaScript code in Echo2 and the Extras library has been migrated to use the CoreJS inheritance model. This modification slightly reduces the size of the JavaScript modules sent to the client browser, and offers a significant improvement in the readability of client-side code. The client-side APIs are unchanged by this move.

The "CoreDoc" tool has finally progressed far enough to generate useful API documentation for the JavaScript implementation of Echo3. This tool is capable of parsing Core.extend() blocks and properly marking static, virtual, and abstract methods. It additionally supports custom doc tags, which can be used to do things like specify the style properties and layout data properties that are supported by Echo components. The tool is not being written just to document the Echo API, but rather as a generic item for use with any project written using Core.js.

The first beta release of the Echo3 web application framework is available for download. Echo3 enables the development of AJAX-based web applications in either server-side Java or (new in Echo3) client-side JavaScript. Applications are developed using a component-oriented and event-driven API, similar to that of a desktop application user interface toolkit.

The server-side Java API of Echo3 that is used by application developers is based on that of Echo2. Application code can thus be easily ported from Echo2 to Echo3, often with not much more than a package-name change.