Author
Timothy Clare, Technology Evangelist, Potix Corporation

Date
December 8th, 2009

Version
ZK 5 RC 2

Architectural Advancements

Server+Client Fusion

Since 2005 ZK has been renowned for its server-centric approach, providing the ultimate in productivity gains. We will continue to push the server-centric envelope to make ZK even more productive. In addition to the server-centric approach, developers can now optionally leverage the full controllability of client-side programming using jQuery and GWT^[1]!

ZK is developer-centric

It's the developer's choice whether to implement a function using either server-side or client-side development according to their requirements. In fact, now developers do not need to choose between productivity and controllability as you can use both server-centric and client-centric approaches in the same application, even in the same page! The amalgamation of these two development strategies is called Server+Client Fusion.

It is not about server-centric or client-centric, it is about developer-centric!

For more information, you can take a look at the following resources:

The server-centric and the Server+Client Fusion approach
Client-centric approach 1 2

Ajax-as-a-Service

One of the main new architectural features is the ability to load client-side JavaScript packages from distributed servers. This means that a local copy of the library does not have to be kept, freeing authors from constantly updating their application to use the latest libraries. This architecture delivers EAI integration at the client-side, enabling the same close knit ease of integration of a backend system but at the client!

For more information on this topic you can take a look at Tom's blog post here

Change to LGPL License

To extend our reach beyond what a GPL-licensed framework can achieve, ZK 5 CE^[2] is now moving to LGPL (Lesser General Public License) offering more freedom and allowing ZK to be integrated with more frameworks under different licensing models.

Now, with the LGPL-licensed ZK 5 CE, you are free to use, develop and deploy your ZK powered application/framework, regardless of whether it is open source, proprietary, or commercial.

ZK 3 and older versions were licensed under the GPL and will continue to be in the future. For more information, please visit the license page.

New Components

Flash Charts

ZK 5 now provides a new charting component which uses flash to render the charts on screen. The flash chart provides advantages such as the ability to redraw charts in a more visually pleasing manner and customize the chart styling.

Below is an example of a ZUL file and resulting chart.

private FlashChart chart;
public void doAfterCompose(Component comp) throws Exception {
	super.doAfterCompose(comp);
	SimplePieModel model = new SimplePieModel();
	model.setValue("2009", "Java", new Integer(500));
	model.setValue("2008", "PHP", new Integer(600));
	model.setValue("2007", "ASP", new Integer(400));
	model.setValue("2006", "C++", new Integer(1200));
	chart.setModel(model);
}

For more information please refer to http://docs.zkoss.org/wiki/Introduction_of_FlashChart.

Colorbox

In ZK 5^[3] we introduce a new component, named Colorbox. The Colorbox provides an easy way for an end user to pick a color. In addition to it being a separate component, the Component Menu has also been extended to provide support for the colorbox.

For more information please refer to http://docs.zkoss.org/wiki/ZK_5.0_Component_Colorbox.

Security & Performance improvements

Ignoring client commands

When a component is invisible or disabled, under normal circumstances you would not want to accept commands sent from the server. With ZK 5 this is now possible, for more information on how to implement this functionality please take a look here!

More caching control of the ThemeProvider

With the advent of ZK 5 you are now able to configure if and/or how your CSS is cached by the browser. This provides performance enhancements meaning that unnecessary data is not sent to the browser.

For more information and examples please take a look here!

Reusing the Desktop

In ZK 5 it is now possible to reuse a Desktop rather than creating a new one from scratch. This gives a performance benefit as the Desktop does not have to be recreated and disposed. For more information please take a look here.

Ease of use

Freezing columns

In ZK 5 you are now able to freeze columns within a Grid and Listbox. This mirrors functionality seen within Excel and makes data in these components easier to read, interpret and handle.

The following code demonstrates how to freeze a column within a Grid:

<grid>
	<frozen style="background: #dfded8" columns="3">
		...
	</frozen>
</grid>

For more information and a demonstration please click here!

Auto fitting columns

When you want to resize a column of a Grid or Listbox, all you now need to do is double click the column when the mouse is over where the columns meet and the column will automatically resize to fit its contents. To enable this functionality Grid's columns need the attribute sizable="true". In other words, all sizable column provides the auto-fitting functionality. For example:

<grid>
        <columns sizable="true">
            <column label="column 1"/>
            <column label="column 2"/>
            <column label="column 3"/>
        </columns>
        <rows>
            <row>
                <label value="cell1"/>
                <label value="cell2"/>
                <label value="cell3"/>
            </row>
        </rows>
    </grid>

The Event Queue

When server push was introduced in ZK 3, we minimized the server-push API to two methods: activate and deactivate. Once activated, a developer could access any component in any way he liked. However, it still requires some knowledge of thread programming. We have now encapsulated the use of server push in the form of event firing and listening, named the Event Queue (org.zkoss.zkmax.ui.eq.EventQueue)^[4].

We extended the event queue to support the concept of scope. Currently, there are two scopes: desktop and application. Within the desktop scope, an event queue is visible only to the associated desktop. Within an application scope, an event queue is visible to the whole application and any thread (not just event listeners) can access it. The application-scope event queue is based on the server push but the developer doesn't need to know that and he doesn't need to do any thread programming, as it is handled automatically by the event queue.

For more information on the Event Queue please take a look at the relevant Small Talk.

Enhanced Datebox

The Datebox has now been enhanced as you can see in the demo below.

Button supports Ctrl+Click when hyperlinked

When a button is used to link to another page, see example below, you are able to hold Control and click on the button to follow the link in a new browser window. It makes the navigation more like a hyperlink.

<button label="Goto hello" href="test.zul"/>

Improved Layout Control

vflex/hflex support

You are now able to embed any component into the vflex/hflex containers, meaning the layout and size of each control can be controlled. You can find out more information regarding this in this Small Talk.

File upload

Within ZK 5, the file upload has been redesigned so it can be integrated with any widget. For example, buttons and menu items can now be used to upload a file. In addition to this, the display of the upload status has been enhanced and can be customized easily.

For more information and a live demo please click here!

The vbox and hbox

The vbox and hbox now have a XUL box model with align and pack attributes, the align attribute specifies how child elements of the box are aligned when the box size is greater than that of its' children combined. For vboxes the align attribute defines how they will be aligned horizontally and for hboxes how they will be aligned vertically. An example below shows a vbox with the align attribute set to stretch and the results of such.

<window width="300px" height="200px" title="Datebox test" border="normal">
	<vbox width="300px" height="150px" align="stretch">
		<button height="30px" label="Goto 1" />
		<button height="30px" label="Goto 2" />
		<button height="30px" label="Goto 3" />
	</vbox>
</window>

In the above example the stretch option will stretch the button out to fit the container, using start, center and end will align you buttons on the left hand side, center and right hand side respectively.

The pack attribute defines where the controls are placed within the box if the combined size of the controls is smaller than that of the size of the box. When the box is a hbox they describe the position horizontally and when the box is a vbox they describe the position vertically.

An example below shows a hbox with it's pack attribute set to end.

<window width="300px" height="200px" title="Datebox test" border="normal">
	<hbox width="300px" height="150px" pack="end">
		<button height="30px" label="Goto 1" />
		<button height="30px" label="Goto 2" />
		<button height="30px" label="Goto 3" />
	</hbox>
</window>

In the above example the end option places the buttons on the right hand side of the window. The other options start, center and stretch will position your buttons on the left hand side, center and spread them out to fill the container.

Special cases

If you specify "stretch,start", then the Extra proportionally and evenly allocated space for each child is placed on the right or bottom side of the child
If you specify "stretch,center", then the Extra proportionally and evenly allocated space for each child is split equally along each side of the child
If you specify "stretch,end", then the Extra proportionally and evenly allocated space for each child is placed on the left or top side of the child

If there are {@link Splitter} child inside Box component, then the box behaves like setting stretch pack attribute; no matter you specify "stretch" in pack attribute or not

New Cell component

In ZK5, we have introduced a new component named Cell which can be embedded into a Grid or Box (Hbox and Vbox) to fully control the layout and the style. You can now use the rowspan or the colspan property to layout your Grid, for example a content cell can now cross over multiple rows. The code below demonstrates how to do this:

<row>
	<cell sclass="years" rowspan="12">
		...
	</cell>
</row>

More information and a live demo is available here!

Functional Improvements

Sizable Panel

The panel can now be resized so long as the attribute sizable is set to true. The example ZUL below shows a panel which can be resized and the image displays a panel which is in the process of being resized.

<panel sizable="true" id="panel" framable="true" width="500px" height="400px"
    title="Panel"
    maximizable="true" minimizable="true" border="normal"
    collapsible="true" closable="true">
    <panelchildren>
        <textbox width="100%" height="100%" />
    </panelchildren>
</panel>

Input element supports inplace editing

In ZK5, all input elements can have the in-place-editing functionality, like the combobox, textbox, datebox, and so on.

For example,

<textbox inplace="true"/>
<combobox inplace="true"/>
<datebox inplace="true"/>

The inplace property is used to enable or disable the in-place-editing function for the input element. More information and a live demo is available here!

After clicking a button it can be disabled

To prevent multiple clicks of a button upon clicking a button and a process executing the button is now disabled. The button is then re-enabled after the processing has finished, this is done using the autodisable feature.

<button id="ok" label="OK" autodisable="self" />

The above code demonstrates autodisable functionality, it is possible to re-enable buttons using the following method.

<button label="enable all" onClick="ok.disabled = cancel.disabled =
false"/>

Timebox now supports new date format

The timebox now supports new date formats, for example you can now use a to signify it is am or pm. The input string follows the formatting of the SimpleDateFormat.

Below is an example of using a within the format.

<zk>
	<window title="Test">
		<timebox cols="20" format="a hh:mm:ss"/>
	</window>
</zk>

The Fisheye control supports dynamic images

The Fisheye^[5] now supports dynamically created images, for example you can create an image using the Java2D libraries and then set the content of the fisheye to the create image, below is an example of how to do this.

<?page title="Auto Generated index.zul"?>
<zk>
	<window title="test of autodisable">
		<fisheyebar><fisheye id="fish1" /></fisheyebar>
		
		<zscript>
		import java.awt.*;
		import java.awt.image.*;
		import java.awt.geom.*;
		
		
		void draw() {
			BufferedImage bi = new BufferedImage(200, 200, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
			Graphics2D g2d = bi.createGraphics();
			Line2D line = new Line2D.Double(0, 0, bi.getWidth(), bi.getHeight());
			g2d.setColor(Color.blue);
			g2d.setStroke(new BasicStroke(100));
			g2d.draw(line);
			fish1.setImageContent(bi);
		}
		
		draw();
		</zscript> 
	</window>
</zk>

ToolbarButton enhanced

A button supports the toolbar mold and the toolbarbutton derives from a button with the default mold set to "toolbarbutton".

	<window title="Test">
		<toolbar><toolbarbutton label="toolbarbutton" /></toolbar>
	</window>

As a compatibility note, when using the toolbarbutton when it is not in a toolbar it will produce a hyperlink. Now within ZK 5 you are able to use a new control called the a which will produce a normal hyperlink!

Overlapping windows improved

The overlapping windows have been improved to included better pop-up functionality and the ability to close the pop-up by clicking on the area surrounding it.

Wiring components in a nested ID space

ZK 5 can now wire components to controllers when they are in a nested ID space. For example we have two ZUL files:

Main file

<window id="mywindow" apply="MyComposer">
    <include id="i" src="includeme.zul" />
</window>

Included file - includeme.zul

   <textbox id="username" />

Before ZK 5 you could not access the textbox "username" from "MyComposer", however now you can. To do this you need to specify:

public class MyComposer extends GenericAutowireComposer {
         Textbox id_of_include$control_id;

        ...
}

In the case of our example this would be:

public class MyComposer extends GenericAutowireComposer {
         Textbox i$username;

        ...
}

Readonly combobox supports keystroke selection of items

The combobox now supports selection of items using keystrokes.

<zk>
  <zscript>
    String[] data = new String[30];
    for(int j=0; j &lt; data.length; ++j) {
      data[j] = "option "+j;
    }
    ListModel strset = new SimpleListModel(data);
  </zscript>

  <window id="window" width="100%" height="100%">
    <combobox model="${strset}" readonly="true" />
  </window>
</zk>

The above code outputs:

Custom attributes now support databinding

Custom attributes now support databinding, for example in the following example an instance of the class foo is bound to a btn attribute of a Button.

<listbox id="listbox"  model="@{fooList}"  height="200px" selectedItem="@{selectedFoo}">
	<listhead sizable="true">
		<listheader label="bar"/>
	</listhead>
	<listitem self="@{each=str}" value="@{str}">
	        <listcell>
	                <button label="drilldown..." onClick='alert(self.getAttribute("btn").item)'>
		                <custom-attributes btn="@{str}"/>
	                </button>
	        </listcell>
	</listitem>
</listbox>

Client engine supports Canvas

The client engine now supports dynamic loading of the Canvas. To include a dependency on ZK canvas you can specify it using ZK 5's package dependencies. To do this please take a look here! For more details on dynamically loading and specifying packages in ZK 5 you can refer to this link.

Configuration

Control whether to allow content to be indexed by search engines

With ZK 5^[6], you can control whether the generate HTML page can be indexed by the search engines (aka., crawlable). By default, it is not crawlable^[7]. You can enable it by using the example below.

<system-config>
   <crawlable>true</crawlable>
</system-config>

Specify javascript directory

You are now able to specify one or multiple locations of your JavaScript files, since it is overkill to place some JavaScript widgets within a JAR file. You can specify a directory using the following markup.

<library-property>
  <name>org.zkoss.web.util.resource.dir</name>
  <value>/WEB-INF/cwr</value>
</library-property>

Use ZK.xml to store application specific information

The zk.xml file can now store application specific information, meaning that this information can be used within your own application or plug-in. This is a lot more convenient and will save developers time and effort!

Download & other resources

References

↑ Coming soon!
↑ ZK 5 is released under three editions: CE (Community Edition), PE (Professional Edition) and EE (Enterprise Edition)
↑ Available in ZK 5 PE and EE
↑ Available in ZK 5 EE
↑ Available in ZK 5 PE and EE
↑ Available in ZK 5 EE
↑ On the other hand, ZK 3 and prior is always crawlable.

Comments

[1] Coming soon!

[2] ZK 5 is released under three editions: CE (Community Edition), PE (Professional Edition) and EE (Enterprise Edition)

[3] Available in ZK 5 PE and EE

[4] Available in ZK 5 EE

[5] Available in ZK 5 PE and EE

[6] Available in ZK 5 EE

[7] On the other hand, ZK 3 and prior is always crawlable.

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[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

Anonymous

New Features of ZK 5.0 RC2