The development of the Visual Ajax Builder – code name Telamon – is moving on quite nicely. This week we’re sending the Beta version of the Telamon Visual Ajax Builder to the people who pre-registered over the past months. Based on their feedback we’ll make further improvements and distribute the Beta to a wider audience. If you weren’t on the Early Adopter list, please register for the second phase of the Beta program, and we’ll contact you once it’s available.

For those who are in the early adopter program, please view the Getting Started video

Evgenios Skitsanos wrote an interesting blog article that explains how to use Backbase with Microsoft’s free software development tool called Visual Web Developer (VWD). It uses the Backbase XML Schemas to enable code completion inside VWD (intellisense). VWD is then aware of the Backbase-specific tags, and will provide a list of available tags as you type, just like it does for HTML and JavaScript.

Read the blog post »

Read about Visual Studio integration on the BDN »

Data Services 1.1 release includes important new features, bug fixes and documentation additions that makes this product the foundation for a seamless client-server architecture.

Here are a few of the highlights:

• Support added for external context, enabling proper access to Session.
• The existing type support for action records is extended to include action attributes
• Logging support for debugging
• Application server support extended to include WebLogic 8.1, Oracle 9i, and WebSphere 5.1.
• Javadoc

The June Ajax Newsletter covers the availability of Backbase 4.2.1, and includes news items about the BDN upgrade, customer cases for NXP and Serena, JSF news and web app performance tuning. It also announces the Lightweight Ajax webinar for July 2nd.

Read the Newsletter »

We are proud to present a maintenance release of the Client Framework: Backbase Client Edition 4.2.1. We strongly recommend upgrading to 4.2.1. It can be downloaded at http://www.backbase.com/download.

The documentation is available on the BDN, and in the Release Notes you can find a detailed overview of the changes. Below is a short overview of what's new.

We've just published 4 updated examples for the JSF Edition. The first example illustrates how to implement Internationalization (i18n) with the JSF Edition and covers configuration, localization of widgets and localization of validation. The second example shows how to create custom JSF components, illustrated with a custom balloon widget. The third example describes how the JSF Edition and DWR can be used together for pushing messages from the server to the client. The fourth example shows how to set up a listGrid with paging, sorting and row selection.

View the JSF Examples »

The performance of Backbase applications can easily be improved with general web development best practices, such as pioneered by Yahoo!’s Exceptional Performance team. In this article I’m outlining the most important optimizations, including some Backbase-specific hints. After you’ve developed your Backbase application there are several things you can do to improve the client-side performance without changing the functionality of the application. Let’s look at the optimizations one by one.

Backbase Enterprise Ajax 4.2 Client Edition brings many new features and improvements, ranging from CSS selectors to improved data binding and redesigned skins and Widgets. Please scroll down to read the details.

With 4.2, Backbase delivers a complete Ajax solution for Java developers. First big news: all Java products are now available under the Community License. Other new features: 4.2 introduces a new Data Services module which provides easy data binding for all Java frameworks; the Struts Connector is improved; new documentation for using Backbase with Spring MVC is now included; and the new JSF Edition now seamlessly combines Backbase JSF Components with 3rd party JSF components and client-side Ajax Widgets. Read on for more news…

We've just sent out the new Backbase Ajax Newsletter, which is now also available online. It includes highlights of the BDN, interesting Ajax news and Backbase company news.