Screenshots from our Demo Workplace

Find below some screen shots from our JavaFX based rich client solution, CaptainCasa Enterprise Client 5.0.
Regards, Björn

Photos from yesterday's Community Meeting

Thanks to all having participated in yesteday's Community Meeting!!!
Please find some photos below (thanks, Antje, for taking them!).
Regards, Björn

JavaFX based Rich Client Applications - IX. CaptainCasa Community Meeting

Begin of October 2013 we released version 5.0 of our rich client framework "CaptainCasa Enterprise Client". Version 5.0 now includes a full JavaFX frontend, running as rich client in front of server side business applications.

All tooling is available in JavaFX as well, so the framework is 100% JavaFX!

This year's CaptainCasa Community Meeting on 11th of December 2013 is a good opportunity to get to know the framework, the people around it - and to see a lot of JavaFX being used in the context of (big) business applications...! The community meeting is held in Heidelberg, Germany. More information is available here: http://www.captaincasa.com/pdf/eclnt_CommunityMeeting_IX.pdf

In case of interest please contact info@CaptainCasa.com.



CaptainCasa Demo Workplace, screenshot:

http://www.CaptainCasa.com

IX. CaptainCasa Community Meeting

The IX.CaptainCasa Community meeting will be held on 11th of December close to Heidelberg, Germany.

Please find some more info her:
http://www.CaptainCasa.com/pdf/eclnt_CommunityMeeting_IX.pdf  

This year of course the JavaFX client will play an important role. During last year's community meeting we decided to go the JavaFX way, based on some first implementation proof of concepty. In the meantime the JavaFX client is part of our delivery since June 2013 - and was quite silently released with our 5.0 release from 1st of October 2013.

Everyone using CaptainCasa Enterprise Client and/or being interested in CaptainCasa is invited. Please register by mail (info@CaptainCasa.com).

Regards, Björn

CaptainCasa Wandertag 2013

Unter diesem Link gibt es ein paar Bilder zum CaptainCasa Wandertag vom letzten Wochenende (21.09.2013). Danke nochmal an alle, die sich in den Süden Bayerns aufgemacht haben!!!

Björn

Documentation Update as Part of Release 5.0

In the meantime we published CaptainCasa Enterprise Client 5.0. We did not (yet) spread the message out, but are very close to do so... - background: we used the opprtunity to clean up some areas of CaptainCasa Enterprise Client, which are not related to the big "JavaFX message":

• The Developer's Guide was updated - some chapters (e.g. page navigation, workplace management) were completely rewritten. The whole Guide now bases on PageBeans being used for development consistently.
• The Demo workplace was updated as well: first of all we really had to exchange our "wp"-dispatcher by a "d"-dispatcher... In the documentation we have "#{d." expression everywhere, but the demo workplace had "#{wp." - this always was somehow confusing. And: all the examples showing navigation now also are based on page beans navigation.
• We added two new tech documents: one describing typical page bean patterns, one describing how to sign the client side jar files, so that the user sees your company behind the client software (and neither "Unknown publisher" nor "CaptainCasa").
• ...and, related to this: we now deliver the client side JAR-files with a CaptainCasa certificate.

Please note: from 4.0 compatibility point of view, the 5.0 update is a "normal" update. There is no special thing to follow: it is a direct successor of the 4.0 line. The key message of the 5.0 release is: JavaFX is now an official part - and not "in beta" as before.

Björn

Icupis - A very nice Product based on CaptainCasa

I received the follwing document by Makis Deftereos - the person behind a software product "Icupis" that manages information and processes within the intensive care unit of hospitals.

Icupis - pdf

So: pay attention when staying e.g. in the university hospital of Heraklion (Greece): you may see CaptainCasa screens!
 
Thanks a lot, Makis, for sending us the information!

CaptainCasa FX Client - Beta Phase started

The JavaFX based client of our rich client framework is now included in the normal installation package - marked as "Beta" of course. After installation you have the option to either use the Swing based client - ...or to use the JavaFX based client.

Both do the same, rendering screens - the layout of screens coming from a central JSF based server. So the rendering result is very similar. OK, with JavaFX it looks smarter - and animations are much nicer... ;-)

We currently concentrate on a Windows based delivery - just to save resources on our side. We will prepare explicit installation scenarios for Linux and MacOS later on. (For the brave ones: there is a zip package containing "everything you need", but some shell scripts to start the FX client are missing...)



A couple of improvements and bug fixing was done in the meantime...:

Images now can be mirrored and sheared just by adding some prefix in front of the image-URL:

This is a general feature of all images, regardless if it's shown in a button or if it's the background for a pane.

It's possible to now to add mapped-areas to an image definition. Each mapped area contains an id and some tooltip information. The user sees the mapped areas on top of the image when moving with the mouse over the corresponding area. Clicks are sent back to the server processing.

The screenshot is showing a gaphics (PNG) which was created by a JFreeChart based reporting on server side. JFreeChart has an interface to collect map-information, which is quite nice. ...OK, we know: JavaFX has some graphics library on its own to produce charts like the one above...! But still, most reporting systems are on server side, producing image output as PNG or whatever file.

Hot-Key definitions were added. Either hot-keys are added directly to cetrain components (e.g. Button) or the arey added to popup menu defintions. There's a flexible way to define which popup menu is valid for which area - so you can define one hot key to be used in different ways on different parts of the screen. (If you want so ...).

The slider and progressbar components are available now as well.

...all in all: everything quite fine from the JavaFX client development...! The beta phase is planned to be finished somewhere mid of Q2/2013.

FX Client Update

Quite a lot functions were added to out FX client in the recent days. You can test the client by going to http://www.captaincasa.com/fxclient.html
Remember: the client is a thin client written in JavaFX, being fed by a JSF based server application running centrally. Please view more information here: http://www.CaptainCasa.com .

The Calendar Field is available, both as stand alone calendar and as popup calendar:

Touch screen support is available. When clicking into corresponding fields a context-specific touch dialog is popping up, allowing direct user input via virtual keyboard.

The schedule control is alive again - supporting all features like drag and drop of items. Both schedule orientation are supported, horizontal and vertical. This is the horizontal example:

 
The paint area component is available, now using JavaFX based animation, which makes it much nicer than the pseudo-navigation that we have to use with our Swing client.

Also have a look into the client's new scrolling through grids. In order to minimize the round-trips to the server, there is a certain "pseudo scrolling" which makes the use much nicer.

Last but not least: we did some test, using the client on a Linux machine - and were very satisfied with results. Basically we did not find any severe problem yet, so compatibility between Windows-JavaFX and Linux-JavaFX is really good! This is the screen shot showing the client running on Ubuntu 12:

"Why we use JavaFX" - Paper

I often get asked why we use JavaFX for the core of our UI processing - and why we don't use HTML5.

I now wrote a paper about this, which is too long to be added into this post, so here is the link: http://www.captaincasa.com/pdf/20130124_JavaFXPositioning.pdf

Maybe you are in the same situation sometimes as well, and maybe some items of the paper may help you in some discussions.

Of course the paper is written from my point of view, which is influenced by having to do with quite complex business applications in the area of  financials, controlling, logistics, human resources, manufacturing execution etc. - And: sorry, I am not a native English speaker...

FX Client Update

We made a new version of our FX client available ("News" on http://www.CaptainCasa.com). The following features are now implemented:

...we now have a real HTML editor - which is part of the standard control set of JavaFX. This was always some lack in the Swing client: the missing of a simple, but working!, HTML editor

...all FILEUPLOAD* and FILEDOWNLOAD* components are available again. Nice: in JavaFX the original file dialogs of the operating system are used for choosing a file - no more home written Swing-Dialogs here anymore!
Unfortunately there is one annoying missing feature: the full file name cannot be proposed into the file selection dialog, but only a directory name can be proposed. This feature is coming with JavaFX 3.

...LONGPOLLING, which is an invisible component, is working

...the grid does not support all internal features yet (e.g. selection without going back to the server), but it re-gains feature by feature! Below you see a rather complex grid - in which a grid is arranged within a grid cell itself. If this has any practical relevance...? I am not too sure...

So, development is going on quite busily. We also made the first checks for memory leaks (and of course found some issues...) - and really feel so good in a Java based  client environment: start Visual VM, start the client, observe it and profile it - and get clear results about instances which are not removed properly...!