qooxdoo 1.6 (2011-12-07)

This is a regular release, which comes with many new features and improvements besides a large number of bugfixes.

Despite being a full release, only a limited number of manual migration steps may be necessary for upgrading from the previous 1.5.x releases. See the Migration section for more details and to determine if your apps are affected. As with most releases there might also be deprecation warnings in the development version, but those shouldn't negatively affect the production version of your app. It is nevertheless suggested to get rid of those warnings early. If you need a bugfix-only drop-in replacement, you might want to check-out qooxdoo 1.5.1, the corresponding patch release.

Offline usage is an increasingly important topic in modern apps, and is now supported by the framework. New technologies like local/session storage and offline events allow for such offline capabilities in all current browsers. To bring those features right into your apps, an offline event handler has been added and also a convenient offline data store to leverage qooxdoo's powerful data binding.

To see the offline store in action, open the enhanced feedreader demo app, load some feeds and then switch your browser to offline mode. The app continues to work even in offline mode, thus after a reload of the feeds it will be able to show the previous content.

Animations and Transforms are great new features introduced by CSS3. While both features are covered by CSS3 specs, they are not easy to use for developers working on cross-browser applications. For instance, vendors often support such features only via vendor-specific prefixes, so it becomes tedious and error-prone without proper framework support.

So with qooxdoo's new wrappers for both feature sets, animations and transforms, amazing dynamic behavior can be brought to the elements of your website-oriented applications. For future releases it is planned to extend animation even to qooxdoo's high-level widget set for targeting rich internet applications (RIAs).

Check out the following three demos to see what the differences are between the available feature sets: Animations, Transforms, 3D Animation.

Please make sure you use a browser capable of those recent CSS features, for instance a Webkit-based browser like the latest Safari or Chrome. For more details about the new animation layer you might want to read the corresponding blog post.

Creating and maintaining website-oriented applications can significantly benefit from existing features of the qooxdoo app framework. For instance, data binding for a clean MVC design of your app, or the comprehensive toolchain. Many improvements have been made for low-level applications that want to build upon technologies like HTML, CSS, DOM rather than the traditional qooxdoo GUI toolkit.

One milestone along that way was to create a website-oriented view on top of the existing feedreader demo app. A handy feature for creating such HTML snippets is to allow for a smart templating engine, so the popular mustache.js solution was adopted. With data binding being a key ingredient for any decent app design, a new list controller for templates was added to perfectly match the low-level requirements. Working on a DOM-oriented level, the new animation layer could also be used right away for some nice effects.

An additional low-level app was created to particularly feature the new offline data store: The Todo app is a simple app to manage your tasks, leveraging offline storage and data binding. For more details about the Todo app, read the corresponding blog post.

A sophisticated REST layer complements the state-of-the-art transport layer that was introduced with the last release. Guided by REST principles we will see an increasing number of well-designed, service-oriented apps in the future. As a first practical building block towards that vision the new REST wrapper comes with support for URI Templates, better handling of concurrent requests, auto-serialization of the request body based on the indicated content type and more flexible ways to define required parameters. In order to showcase some of the features of the REST wrapper a new Github demo app was added that accesses the Github REST API.

The mobile framework has been improved further. In particular, the mobile widgets come with a number of enhancements: widgets can now also be put into a disabled state, and frequently requested mobile widgets were added: Popup, Blocker, Loading Indicator, Dialog (along with a manager), Atom (a combination of label and image). The toolchain of the mobile SDK helps in developing and deploying apps, e.g. CSS files are now optimized automatically. Click the "Toolbar" buttons in the mobile showcase to see the new features in action (requires Webkit-based browser). The qooxdoo mobile framework is still labeled experimental to allow for ongoing testing and advancement, so any feedback of yours when creating mobile apps with it is appreciated.

The interactive Playground is one of qooxdoo's most popular apps. Many features of the new framework release were employed to enhance it. For instance, the offline data store was used to replace the Gist feature in order to more reliably work with individual code samples. Custom samples can now be loaded and saved via local storage. The playground's layout was adjusted to host a corresponding toolbar (see bottom left). Another brand new feature to boost developer productivity is the ability to try out qooxdoo's mobile widget set interactively. Just use a Webkit-based desktop browser (Safari or Chrome) to check out the new mobile samples in the playground!

See this detailed list of about 320 issues resolved for qooxdoo 1.6, which includes the fixes of the accompanying qooxdoo 1.5.1 patch release. Besides fixes for defects, many enhancements made it into qooxdoo 1.6. See here for a detailed list of issues that were resolved for 1.6 exclusively.

• Several new run-time detection methods for JavaScript, CSS and DOM-related features, with varying browser support, available through qx.core.Environment. They have been used to replace around 60 browser engine name queries in the framework classes. (#4987)
• Added browser detection support for Samsung smart TV's. (#5792)
• More reliably detect arrays in Rhino environments. (#5109)

• Added a hook to qx.dev.StackTrace to allow custom conversion of source file names to class names. (#4660)
• Various improvements of the finite state machine. (#4940, #4941)
• ObjectRegistry runs in DOM-less environments. (#5231)
• Remove browser dependencies in qx.util.Base64. (#5282)
• Reduction of dependencies in the base layer. (#5331)
• Added offline event handler. (#4766)
• Removed all deprecated code. (#5106)
• Moved OO system related methods from qx.Bootstrap to a separate util class. (#5717)
• New method qx.core.Environment.filter(), to filter a list of expressions according to environment settings.
• qx.locale.Manager.getAvailableLocales() can now return all locales known to the application, not just those that have already been loaded. (#4090)
• Added feature detection for JSON. (#5213)

• Added an offline data store based on localestorage. (#5403)
• Several fixes in the marshaler. (#5223) (#5455) (#5401)
• Fixes in the stores. (#5669) (#5770)
• Added controller for low-level usage. (#5728)
• Handle dots and whitespaces in keys of incoming data in JSON marshaler.

• General fixes in the storage wrappers.
• Added HTML templating via mustache.js. (#5708)
• Added CSS3 Transforms wrapper. (#5769)
• Added CSS3 Animation wrapper. (#4706)
• Minor fix for the HTML5 Media wrapper. (#5837)
• Minor fix for the HTML Geolocation wrapper. (#5836)
• Add FileReader wrapper. (#4991)
• Fixed wrong implementation of setHeight in qx.bom.media.Video. The functions now sets the height correctly. (#5760)
• Fixed endless loop for invalid date formats. (#5521)
• Fixed incorrect month localization format. (#5593)
• Add security notice to API documentation of methods accepting HTML strings that are assigned to innerHTML. (#5481)

• Cancel timeout before invoking handlers because they may throw. (#5831)
• Fire onload event for successful requests when using the file protocol. (#5586)
• Fix ontimeout() always being called for sync requests. (#5629)
• Fix status for conditional requests in Opera. (#5626)
• Leave status unchanged for aborted requests. (#5626)
• Fix wrong handlers being called when aborting. (#5579)
• Track native abort. (#5572)
• When calling open(), throw if method or URL is missing. (#5797)

• Make content-type to parser mapping more robust, accept parameters. (#5475)
• Fix "fail" event fired twice for timeout or network error. (#5771)
• Not check HTTP method since custom methods may be used (e.g. when using Webdav). (#5606)
• Not parse empty response. (#5626)
• Fix intermediate phases when aborting request. (#5485)
• A user-defined content-type takes precedence, even when HTTP method is POST. (#5432)
• Include X-Requested-With header. (#5387)
• Prevent preflight request for simple cross-origin request. (#5488)
• Set default request content type to x-www-form-urlencoded for methods that allow a request body (including PUT). (#5570)
• Add {set|get|remove}RequestHeader(). (#5567)
• Revise handling of user-provided and configuration dependent request headers. (#5571)
• Facilitate subclassing AbstractRequest. (#5568)
• Detect vendor extended json/xml content types. (#5818)
• Change timeout to milliseconds. (#5468)
• Allow issuing standard JSON-RPC Version 2 requests from qx.io.remote.Rpc (experimental).

• Create new request for each invocation of action. (#5511)
• Support parameter value that evaluates to false. (#5506)
• Forward arguments received by actions to invoke(). (#5665)
• Pass params to configure request callback. (#5661)
• Better explain parameter handling. (#5512)
• Allow to overwrite existing route with map(). (#5657)
• Support Gregorio URI templates with optional parameters. (#5495)
• Parameters are optional by default; declare required parameters explicitly. (#5495)
• Support get as action name. (#5625)
• When polling resource, skip if no response received yet. (#5473)
• Made invoke() public.
• Support concurrent requests per action; invoke() returns id. (#5813)
• Allow to abort action. (#5580)
• Add baseUrl. (#5773)
• Serialize request body parameters to JSON when content type indicates. (#5811)

• Support for OSX Lion scroll bars. (#5441)
• Don't scroll container automatically when using radio buttons. (#5327)
• Fix auto-size text area when enabling wrapping in IE7. (#4976)
• Fix inheritance hierarchy of DateField. (#3161)
• Fix input event of textfield fired on every keystroke. (#5309)

• Fixes in the table widget. (#5490)
• The tables's image cell renderer now allows scaling. (#5047)
• Minor fix in the menu. (#5419)
• Make the iframe usable when hidden / not added to a parent. (#5418)

• Virtual List now supports null as model; other fixes. (#5442) (#5452)
• Added onPool method to get informed when a widget is set to the internal pool. (#5508)

• Minor corrections in the themes. (#5448) (#5610) (#5408)
• Invalid themes are now recognized and an error is shown to the developer. (#5727)
• Fixed color property for fonts. (#5368)

• New widget Dialog. (#4797)
• New widget Popup. (#4797)
• New widget BusyIndicator. (#4908)
• Added dialog manager for the most common dialogs. (#4797)
• New widget Atom. (#4960)
• Added enabled / disabled property to all mobile widgets. (#5122)
• Optimized memory usage of mobile widgets. (#5345)
• Fixed size of mobile input fields. (#5602)
• Fixed progress indicator for initial values. (#5601)
• Optimized CSS for build version. (#4889)
• Updated iScroll to 4.1.9. (#5346)
• Mobile List does now react on model changes. (#5833)
• Moved mobile twitter demo to component/tutorials. (#5663)
• Merged forgotten fix from mobile branch. Event listener are now unregistered when the mobile blocker "hide" method is called. (#5595)
• Mobile list renderer is now a composite. (#5577)
• Fixed return value of the NavigationPage._getNavigationPage function. (#5555)
• Slider min / max / step properties are now calling the right method and are raising an event. (#5523)
• The mobile root widget can now point to a different DOM element than document.body. (#5404)

• Moved all tutorial code into the main repository. (#3829)

• Fix focus handling. (#5450)

• Add tab view (all orientations). (#5378)
• Add tree virtual. (#5378)
• Use form renderer. (#5378)
• More logical organization of content. (#5378)

• New application Github, which showcases the REST data store. (#5406)

• Use new transport layer. (#5802)

• Added the possibility to use the playground with the mobile widgets. (#4828)
• Added demo specific config files for mobile demos. (#5085)
• Replaced the Gist feature with a localstorage implementation. (#5356)
• Added possibility to maximize the play area. (#5438)
• Updated the included ACE code editor. (#5298)
• Fixed cut-off text field in TreeVirtual filter demo. (#5643)

• Made the RIA view work offline.
• New website view for the Feedreader.

• New application Todo using low-level qooxdoo and offline storage. (#5731)

• Fixed toggling "Mixin included". All methods included by a mixin are now shown and hidden correctly. (# 5461)
• Selecting the right section when following a search result. (# 5451)

• New pre-compiled "portable" version of the Test Runner. Makes qooxdoo's unit testing system accessible for all JavaScript projects without requiring the tool chain.
• When executed in a basic skeleton, the test job will produce an application that will run the application's unit tests in Rhino or Node.js.
• MMock: Update to Sinon 1.2.0. (#5694)
• MMock: Decrease memory usage when using the sandbox.
• MMock: Make fake abort() switch state to DONE when OPENED and sent.

• Use new transport layer.
• Fix select-all key combo for Mac OS by listening to the "keydown" event.

• Skeletons now contain a suitable .gitignore file (for those who care).

• Changed version control system from SVN to Git, and the hosting of the qooxdoo code repository from Sourceforge to Github.
• Shaved off around 20MB from the SDK .zip (compared to 1.5), by trimming media files.

• The #ignore compiler hint now allows a glob-style wildcard ('*'), so that you can ignore entire name spaces of symbols (e.g. #ignore(foo.bar.*)).
• Trimmed resource info in the generated files. (#5411)
• Fixed issue where deleted resource files would be looked for, e.g. during resource copying.
• The source version of an app is now always generated without variants optimization. This ensures all static class dependencies will be loaded, including mixin references in calls to qx.core.Environment.filter().
• Dependencies to feature check classes are now registered with the class that calls qx.core.Environment, and not qx.core.Environment itself. This also means that dependencies are maintained correctly across parts. Dependency calculation and variants optimization are sped up by this. (#5516)

• Experimental support has been added to read QOOXDOO_PATH from the OS environment. If set, it will take precedence over configuration file macros of the same name.
• Generator command-line arguments can be passed to sub-processes created with the shell config key, by using the GENERATOR_OPTS macro. (This is interesting for nested generator invocations).

• Some preparatory work on the automatic removal of dead code. (#4028)

• Normalize alternative Unicode representations of characters in file names (e.g. as direct code point or with combining character).
• Updated CLDR data to version 2.0.1.

• Validation of class names against their containing file has been improved. Commented out calls to e.g. qx.Class.define are no longer confusing the generator.

• New entry page for the manual.
• New article about models in the manual. (#5434)
• Added documentation about qxoo. (#5169)
• Skeletons now have their own manual page.
• Much updated third-party components page, to give a better account of the files and their formats used in the project.
• Add section about MMock to Testrunner documentation. (#5147)

• Removed support for #optional compiler hints. It was just doing the same thing as #ignore, so just use #ignore instead.
• Stack trace information in log messages can now be formatted using qx.dev.StackTrace.FORMAT_STACKTRACE, which replaces qx.log.appender.FORMAT_STACK. (#4660)
• Deprecated environment key css.gradients in favor of css.gradient.linear.
• Deprecated environment key css.translate3d in favor of css.transform.3d.
• Deprecated environment key ecmascript.objectcount because the browser feature is deprecated as well.
• qx.io.AbstractRequest#requestHeaders property is deprecated. (#5571)

• Configuration: Key packages/i18n-with-boot renamed to packages/i18n-as-parts with inverted logic; please update your config.json if you are using this key.
• qx.io.AbstractRequest#timeout: The timeout parameter is now interpreted as milliseconds (was seconds). (#5462)
• qx.bom.Stylesheet does no longer auto-convert resource IDs using the resource manager. Call the ResourceManager explicitly instead.