Karora

These projects are no longer under development. There's various reasons for this, but the main one, as always is that simply no one has the time anymore.

Cooee, Moomba and Orana represented some rather groundbreaking technology. We developed one of the first web app frameworks that was OSGI compatible. Not only was it OSGI compatible, but it took a large chunk of the Eclipse API and gave something to Java Web-apps that hasn't been there before - a descent platform to work on.

While Moomba and Orana are probably still at the front of thier fields, with the only other project making a similiar attempt being the Eclipse sponsored RAP, Cooee is slowly falling behind. A complete re-write of it's client-server interaction is required, ideally using a pre-existing framework like jQuery. Not only is this a massive undertaking, it effectly represents the removal of everything besides the Swing-based api.

With all of the above said the source code is available on Sourceforge. Cooee's most recent release is also floating around Maven repositories.

If you're in pursuit of the projects, check out http://sourceforge.net/projects/cooee/, http://sourceforge.net/projects/moomba/, http://sourceforge.net/projects/orana/. If you desperately want to commit something against these projects, drop us a line.

Until next time...

The Karora group (http://www.karora.org) has released version 1.1 of their Java-based AJAX framework. This release includes new components and several bug fixes aimed at improving browser compatibility and stability.

The updates to Cooee include:
- Overall improved compatibility across all major browsers. Consequently, components now behave in a much more uniform way across different environments.
- Improved handling of Modal windows
- Changes to the way in which components register event handlers
- Improved component styling management
- Transparent color support
- Improved OSGI Support

Amonst the updates, three new components have also been added to the component set, these are:
- RegExTextField: Validates input based on regular expressions with helpful user feedback
- IntegerTextField: Validates Integer number with helpful user feedback
- ActiveTextArea: A text area component which notifies the user when they have exceeded input limits

Supporting documentation around the framework has also been vastly improved.

Karora Cooee can be downloaded from the Karora website at http://www.karora.org/?q=node/14. A full changelog is also available at the website.

Karora Cooee was a project established in early 2007. The framework originates from a combination of Nextapp's Echo 2 framework and its supporting libraries such as EchoPointNG. Version 1.1 represents the project's 4th release. Karora also develops two other projects, Moomba and Orana, which are implementations of the Eclipse Workbench and JFace APIs for the Cooee framework.

Karora Update August/September
Pushing on to Cooee 1.1

After a slowing of work on Cooee last month whilst the focus was shifted to other Karora projects, September has seen an increase in activity on the project. The project has received a contribution of focus listener support which is currently being tested for inclusion into the main trunk. With some luck, this should be available for the 1.1 release.

Fixing of general Cooee issues has also gained some pace, with fixes going into the Dropdown, Checkbox and Radio components. Have a look through JIRA to see what's been happening here.

Finally, the excellent ActiveTextField and RegExTextField components in the Cooee sandbox, contributed by Will, have been marked for promotion into Cooee 1.1.

New Mailing Lists coming

We've now setup Mailman for Karora. Details on how to join mailing lists will be available in the next few weeks.

Team Project Set for Cooee available!
Cooee is a completely OSGI enabled library. In English? This means you can run it entirely inside Eclipse without needing to compile, package, jetty:run or however else you may get your Cooee app running.

To facilitate this, A "Team Project Set" is now available for Cooee that downloads all the required projects into your Eclipse environment so that you can be building and debugging an app in around 5 minutes.

More details are available here:

http://www.karora.org/forum/thread.jspa?threadID=118

We're hoping to provide a Team Project Set for Moomba in the next few weeks.

Moomba Extension points!
Moomba development continues to race ahead at a blinding pace. Late August saw the introduction of Eclipse style Extension points for action sets. How you would define an action for an Eclipse plugin essentially translates directly across into Moomba as of 0.7-SNAPSHOT. So much so that you can actually use the standard Eclipse tools for working with your plugin.xml for Moomba. Late September should see the inclusion of Extension points in Moomba for Perspectives and Views.

To see the other work that is going on in Moomba, check out the Karora JIRA.

Cooee on the iPhone!
After some recent testing by Will, it has now been demonstrated that Cooee (and Echo2) apps are able to run happily on the iPhone. Scary but true! This obviously opens up a range of new possibilities for Cooee developers, especially with the release of the new iPod touch.

New Cooee Webapp archetype on the way
Will is currently working on a new Maven2 archetype for a Cooee-webapp. This archetype will include the proper ServletListener servlet shutdown logic. It will be build on the existing simple-app archetype released a few months ago. The archetype is planned to include features for communicating with the servlet environment such as shutting down an existing Cooee instance in case the user exited by closing the browser window. And a method for using a Servlet container configuration properties file to do configuration for multi-environment deployment.

Cooee adoption continues to gain pace
The Karora Team has been made aware of more commercial projects switching over from Echo to Cooee. Switching means organizations can now run on a concrete, released version of their UI library, without having to run their own builds with patches applied. The open nature of the Karora project also means that if issues arise, they addressed and resolved in a timely fashion.

And finally...
Thank you to everyone who continues to contribute to Cooee and Karora projects in general. Contributing is anything from patch sets to bug reports to writing on the forums, and is always greatly appreciated!

Until next month,

The Karora Team

Each month, to keep the community up to date with the happenings in the community, Karora sends out an update. Here's what's been happening in Karora during July - August:

Moomba and Orana 0.5 beta's released
Moomba and Orana are Karora's implementations of the Eclipse RCP and Eclipse JFace (respectively) for Coeee. Whether you're looking for a full blown application framework for Cooee, or just a comprehensive wizard, dialog and/or viewer framework, Moomba and Orana may have something for you.

Moomba Release Announcement: http://www.karora.org/?q=node/25
Orana Release Announcement: http://www.karora.org/?q=node/24

Work continues on Moomba
With the initial release out of the way, Karora is still solidly working on Moomba this month. By the end of August, the trunk should have the Eclipse Extension point mechanism in place. This brings us closer to realizing our goal of creating a truly pluggable web application platform.

There's also been a significant amount of work going into a Moomba "sub project", porting across the Eclipse Search plugin for Moomba. This plugin gives Moomba developers a mechanism for providing a centralized search for Moomba based webapps. This is in much the same way that Eclipse allows you to search when using the IDE.

Hopefully this will also be in a usable state by the end of the month.

Cooee 1.0.2 Released
Cooee 1.0.2 has been released. This is a minor release that addresses problems with the TabPane in Internet explorer, and provides a default style name for all Cooee components.

More information is available at: http://www.karora.org/?q=node/23

Cooee work slowing
Work on Cooee at the moment has slowed down due to Karora's current focus on Moomba and Orana. However that said, the community has been helping us with forward planning via the Wiki (see below). Due to the Karora workload, we're now looking for more committers and submitters to help resolve the growing number of issues that have been identified by both Karora and Karora community. If you're interested in providing some time to help out, please contact us at info@karora.org.

Sandbox work continues
Our new committer Wil has been working hard on getting the Informagen validation components debugged in the Cooee sandbox. These are an excellent component set that providing great validation features for Cooee apps. Check out the Karora Wiki for more info.

Community helping with Cooee forward planning
There are many aspects of Echo2 that have frustrated users for a long time. The Karora community has been lending a helping hand via the wiki to plan long term solutions for issues such as Echo2 embedding and Echo2 exception handling. If you have a major fix that you'd like to see implemented, or just some basic ideas for Cooee moving forward, head over to the Wiki and start a new page or contribute to what ever is around. All ideas are welcome!

Karora continues work with Echo2 to maintain compatibility
While the Karora Cooee effort continues to speed past what Nextapp is doing with Echo2, we're well aware that for some users shifting all their code to Cooee isn't a viable option. As such, we're working with the new committer for EPNG and the community at large to try and provide solutions for bugfixes, packaging and package name compatibility. Head over to the Karora Forums to find out more.

Ongoing updates to the Karora website
We've now updated the Forums to the latest release, which addresses the sign up issues people have been experiencing.

As always, thank you to the community for your on going support.

Until next month,

The Karora Team

Following our recent announcement around the release of Moomba and Orana the readme/release notes can be found here:

http://www.karora.org/release-notes/moomba/release-notes-0.5.html