Just a couple of months ago we released Vaadin Framework 8.0, a major version of our popular Java web framework that renewed the API and added dozens of improvements. Now, we are soon shipping version 8.1 which contains some highly requested features. The most interesting ones are:
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Components in Grid: Display not only data but also UI components such as buttons, checkboxes or any other UI components inside Grid cells, without developing custom client side extensions.
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Drag & Drop in Grid: Drag and drop rows to the same or another Grid. This is built with standard HTML5 technology to ensure the highest compatibility with supported browsers and make it interoperable with e.g. desktop applications. As drag and drop is a rather complex and versatile feature, we’d love it if the beta testers could look into the renewed D&D features and give us some feedback!
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Tree and TreeGrid components: Show hierarchical data using the new Tree and TreeGrid components.
Other improvements
But that’s not all! The Vaadin team together with Liferay specialists and community members worked hard to make Framework 8.1 apps easy to use with Liferay 7. We did this by ensuring that our OSGi configuration is top notch and tested the setup extensively together with Sampsa Sohlman of Liferay.
To see a list of other small improvements, refer to the beta release notes and the full list of changes from Github.
How to try it out?
The easiest way to try version 8.1 is by creating a new Maven project. Just run the following command and import the generated project to your favorite IDE:
mvn archetype:generate \ -DarchetypeGroupId=com.vaadin \ -DarchetypeArtifactId=vaadin-archetype-application \ -DarchetypeRepository=https://maven.vaadin.com/vaadin-prereleases \ -DarchetypeVersion=8.1.0.beta3
Try Vaadin Framework 8.1 now and let us know what you think. You can report any issues, suggestions or findings on GitHub or the forum. Thanks in advance!