Right now, right here, just for you, we have launched the most interesting Beta release of the whole year: we are proud to announce the Beta release of Vaadin Designer! Have you ever pondered how your layouts actually look while writing plain Java? Have you ever suffered from not having real-time feedback of your UI design? Or have you struggled with sharing your results with your peers? Suffer no more, as Vaadin Designer is here for the rescue.
Now this is cool: during our intense closed Beta testing we measured how seasoned Vaadin developers perform with Vaadin Designer. Developers that already know Vaadin APIs like the back of their hands. The results were amazing:
- With Vaadin Designer developers were almost two times faster!
- And when asked whether they would recommend Vaadin Designer to others on a scale of 0 to 10 we got an average of 8.5!
We couldn’t even dream of such a positive response as this is just the very first 1.0 version, a Beta release. This means that it is the baseline, the minimum, of what Vaadin Designer is capable of. Think about developers that are just starting with Vaadin and don’t know all the APIs yet. Think about all the future enhancements and power features we can release in future versions. With Vaadin Designer, you can truly level up as a speedy and productive Vaadin developer. Put in the next gear!
Layouting, easy
Vaadin Designer lets you build your views by simply dragging and dropping your layouts and components in place. No more layouting hassle in plain Java. No more going back and forth between your code and browser while building your views. It is fast and it gives you the confidence in knowing that everything is exactly how you wanted it to be. Now any Java developer can take the few extra steps to provide great UX for the end-users. Also, you don’t have to start from scratch every time: use our ready-made view templates or create your own and share them with your team. And once you are ready you can preview your design with all screen sizes you need to support.
Collaborate, easy
The Vaadin Designer preview feature isn’t only for you. You can let your colleagues and even customers use it, too. While you are working on the design, you can have as many live previewers as needed with their own computers or mobile devices. Totally awesome for rapid development and prototyping.
Coding, easy
The code is still there, don’t worry. While you are working visually with your view design, your Java is generated along the way. Vaadin Designer generates a combination of a declarative HTML file and a Java class. You can edit the declarative representation directly if you wish. You can extend the Java class and continue writing your UI logic as you are already used to doing. This is where the Three-tier separation of concerns comes in to play, meaning you’ll have a statically typed design all the time. You’ll love it.
Check out all the details and goodies from Vaadin Designer’s homepage. You just need to:
- Install Vaadin Designer via Eclipse
- Get a trial license from Vaadin Designer’s homepage
- Create your first design
This could be the new best thing you’ve ever encountered in the world of Vaadin.