2021 has been a busy year here at Vaadin! Before we quiet down for the upcoming holiday season, we wanted to take a moment to rewind and review some of the Vaadin highlights in our annual year-in-review roundup.
Releases, releases, releases
The product team's release cadence was packed. We introduced new features and plenty of improvements throughout the year including four feature releases and Vaadin 14.8 LTS. You can find the full list of releases and their respective features on GitHub.
Some new features and improvements worthy of a mention include:
- stateless Fusion
- a Quarkus integration for Flow
- official Gradle support for both frameworks
- experimental Vite support
- accessibility improvements in Vaadin components
…and more!
Vaadin community news
We introduced the Vaadin Community Award (or VCA, for short) to highlight outstanding community members and recognize their valuable efforts in the Vaadin community. Read more about the perks of winning the award and meet the 2021 winners on our Vaadin Community Award page.
Alejandro Duarte sat down with the 2021 VCA winners to chat about key topics on the software industry, app modernization, and Java web development. Piqued your curiosity? Here are the links to the interviews:
- The evolution of the software industry with Andrea Bosio
- Java and moving business logic to the database with Syam Pillai
- On Java and modernization of web applications with Simon Martinelli
- Discovering the Vaadin Java web framework with Adrián Szegedi
- Advantages of using Java for the front end with Ricardo Cantillo
#VaadinTips and tutorials
We produced 63 new YouTube videos over the past 12 months! These include livestream recordings, Vaadin Tips videos, full courses and more. You can find all of our published videos over on the Vaadin channel, and whilst you’re there, don’t forget to subscribe to keep up in 2022.
If you happen to have some extra downtime during the holidays and want to refresh your Java development skills, we highly recommend the following video courses: Alejandro Duarte’s six-part mini series on how to develop a Java Web App, as well as the 2021 update for the Building Web Apps with Spring Boot and Vaadin tutorial by Marcus Hellberg.
Psst. We also updated our in-depth Fusion tutorial - Build a Full-Stack Reactive Spring Boot and Lit Web App.
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From the community
We launched the Vaadin Community Discord server a year ago and today it has over 1,700 active members. Join to discuss anything Vaadin-related with the community. You can share tips, get advice on coding problems and, in turn, help others solve their problems. The Discord server is also the place to chat with the Vaadin team; ask about upcoming features and get in-depth insight into the product.
In November, we opened the Built with Vaadin repo on GitHub. It is an open list of projects built using Vaadin. To have your Vaadin project showcased, please send a pull request and we will add it to the list. We are always impressed to see the variety of projects our community members build.
Living life online
2021 was the year of gathering online, and we were no different. We hosted a number of webinars, livestreams and events. For example:
In the spring, we hosted an online event, Vaadin Insights: Unlocking the Value of Legacy Applications, where Migration Practice Lead, Ben Wilson, unlocked our thoughts about modernization projects to help decision makers on the path to crystallizing an optimal outcome for your business app. The webinar is available online for everyone to watch. Check it out!
Vaadin Dev Day Spring 2021 also took place online for the second time, but nonetheless it was a success! We had three speakers with talks around Vaadin Flow, including high-performance database access, advanced JavaScript integrations, and new features coming to Vaadin Flow in the near future. If you missed the event, we've got you covered! You can watch the full broadcast here.
More product news
Design System Publisher launch
Design System Publisher is a tool for creating a documentation website for your own Vaadin-based design system, meaning the components, theme features, UI patterns and guidelines that your application UIs are composed of. Did you know that with Vaadin Pro you can access the free trial? Find out more in the docs.
Free tier introduced for Collaboration Engine
A large majority of you asked us to introduce a completely free tier of Collaboration Engine for developers relying on the open-source Core Vaadin offering. As always, you asked and we delivered! Now you can start for free with 20 users per month, and you can upgrade to a commercial license at any point. Get your free “universal” license file!
Get started with Vaadin Start
Vaadin Start is a free, online configurator for generating Vaadin web apps, fast. You can choose between Vaadin Flow (if you prefer Java) and Vaadin Fusion (if you prefer TypeScript). However, the frameworks are interoperable and can be used independently or together in a hybrid app!
You can still get started by downloading a skeleton starter directly from GitHub or use the experimental Vaadin Command Line Interface. Do note that you won’t be able to configure these applications before downloading them.
Practical Vaadin: Developing Web Applications in Java
Alejandro Duarte’s third book on Vaadin, Practical Vaadin, was published in 2021. Duarte covers topics ranging from the key technologies in Java web development, to how to set up your development environment, and all the way up to implementing advanced features like server push and database connectivity. Grab your copy on Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and several other online bookstores.
What's next?
Phew, it’s been a busy year at Vaadin! We’re currently collecting input for next year with the 2021 Vaadin Community Survey. Your feedback is invaluable to us; we use your input to direct our vision and improve your experience with Vaadin going forward. Help us to help you, and take the survey here. It only takes a few minutes!
…and finally, we cannot part for the holiday season without a gift, right?! Our gift for you this year has been developed by Product Owner, Giovanni Lovato, and it is – drum roll, please - The Collaboration Engine Sampler!
We look forward to seeing what exciting projects, events and new features will enter the world of Vaadin in 2022. In the meantime, do join the Vaadin Discord server to have a chat with our team and other Vaadin community members!
Thank you all for an incredible 2021 – it’s been quite a ride! Stay safe, stay healthy, and see you in 2022!