# Vaadin – thinking of U and I

Version @version@ « Back

Version @version@ built on @builddate@.

## Release Notes for Vaadin @version@

- Overview
- General Upgrade Notes
- Instructions for Upgrading from IT Mill Toolkit 5
- Important known problems in Vaadin @version@
- Requirements

Vaadin @version@ is an update release for Vaadin 6. In addition to various fixes, it contains a number of significant enhancements.

### Enhancements

- Implemented server-side logging using java.util.logging, allowing you to specify loglevels and get rid of unnecessary messages. See #5715 for more info.
- GWT has been updated to version 2.1.0
- Widgetset builder has been optimized to only look for paintables in Vaadin add-on jars (containing an add-on manifest). If you are packaging your own widgets into jar file, ensure they also contain the Vaadin add-on manifest.
- TwinColSelect supports separate captions for the right and left selects (#2942)
- TextField supports sending of TextChangeEvents as the user types. (#2387)
- Localization of LoginForm. (#5226)
- Tooltip support for MenuBar items. (#5919)
- All component containers support getComponentCount().

### Backward Incompatible API Changes

The following changes can break backward compatibility in applications using an earlier version of Vaadin:

- Table.setColumnCollapsed throws IllegalStateException instead of IllegalAccessException if collapsing is not allowed.
- Window.removeWindow(Window) now triggers window close listeners also when called explicitly. See #3865 for more info.
- RichTextArea no longer extends TextField as it cannot implement (and never has) a large part of the TextField API.

- AbstractStringValidator and now converts non-String values using toString() prior to validation (#5785). This also affects most built-in validators such as IntegerValidator.

### Backwards compatible API Changes

The following backwards compatible class/method changes have been made:

- SplitPanel has been deprecated in favor of VerticalSplitPanel and HorizontalSplitPanel.
- TextArea has been split from TextField to a separate component. As a result TextField.setRows has been deprecated.
- PasswordField has been split from TextField to a separate component. As a result TextField.setSecret has been deprecated.
- Button.setSwitchMode has been deprecated in favor of CheckBox. Remember to set CheckBox in immediate mode.
- ItemClickSource has been renamed to ItemClickNotifier for consistency with other classes.

### Theme changes

The following changes have to be made to themes created for earlier versions of Vaadin in order for them to work correctly with Vaadin @version@:

- Due to the fixes for tickets #5066 and #2681, the Table component has a slightly changed DOM structure in it's header.

- The sort indicator (arrow icon) has been moved from being the background of the "caption container" DIV, to it's very own DIV. This DIV can be styled by the .v-table-sort-indicator selector. Sort indicator images can thus no longer be placed in the .v-table-caption-container DIV.

- TwinColSelect DOM structure has changed slightly to support captions for the left and right column.
- TwinColSelect now supports .v-select-twincol-caption-left and .v-select-twincol-caption-right for the left and right captions.

New themeing possibilities:

- Table

- All cells in a sorted column now get the .v-table-cell-content-sorted CSS class, allowing styling of the sorted items.
- The alignment of the column captions can now be changed in CSS by styling the .v-table-caption-container-align-[left|center|right] CSS classes. This makes it possible to align all captions left, for instance.

### Change Log, Future Releases, and Upgrading

See this list of closed tickets for a full list of tickets fixed in this release.

Problem fixes and enhancements planned for upcoming releases can be found in the Vaadin Roadmap in Vaadin Trac.

As always, when upgrading from an earlier version, you should recompile any custom widget sets and refresh your project in Eclipse. If you are upgrading from earlier than 6.3.0, notice that Vaadin 6.4 uses GWT 2.0 (included in the installation package). See General Upgrade Notes for more details on upgrading.

## Upgrading from Vaadin 6.0 or 6.1

The way how widget sets are defined was simplified in Vaadin 6.2. Existing projects, where custom widgets (a custom widget set) are used, must be migrated when upgrading to Vaadin 6.2 or later. Projects where the default widget set is used do not need migration. For most projects this should be a quite painless upgrade.

For applications where custom widgets are used (also applicable to widget projects):

- Remove the getTag() method from all components and replace it with a `@ClientWidget(VClientSideWidget.class)` annotation. Tag names are no longer used to map the server-side and client-side part of the component. This is done automatically using the `@ClientWidget` annotation.
- Remove the `WidgetSet.java` file. This file is no longer needed as the mapping between the server- and the client-side is done automatically using `@ClientWidget`.

If you are using widgets from another project (typically in a separate JAR file):

- Acquire a new JAR which is compatible with Vaadin 6.3 and add it to `WEB-INF/lib`. The widget set compilation will automatically include the JAR in your `.gwt.xml` during compilation if you use the Eclipse Compile Widget Set button. For Ant/Maven you need to specify the location of the widget set JARs that you want to include in the application widget set.

If you package a widget set as a JAR for use in other projects:

- Replace `getTag()` with `@ClientWidget` and remove the `-WidgetSet.java` as described above.
- Add a "Vaadin-Widgetsets: <fully qualified name of widgetset>" (e.g. "Vaadin-Widgetsets: com.example.widgetset.mywidgetset") row to the META-INF/MANIFEST.MF of the JAR file. This enables the widget set builder to automatically detect and include the widget set in other projects.

## General Upgrade Notes

When upgrading from an earlier version of the Vaadin library, you should always do the following:

1. Install the new Vaadin JAR to your project

- If using the Vaadin Plugin in Eclipse, download and select the new version in project preferences.

2. Install new GWT JARs if the GWT version has changed

- The Eclipse plugin will automatically download the new GWT and update launch configurations and the project build path when you update the Vaadin version.

3. If you have custom widget sets, recompile them with the new Vaadin library using the included GWT compiler
4. If using the Eclipse IDE:
   1. Refresh the Eclipse project by selecting the project folder and pressing F5
   2. Restart the application server

Using the Vaadin project facet in the Eclipse IDE does the steps 1 and 2 automatically.

## Instructions for Upgrading from IT Mill Toolkit 5

While the Vaadin 6 API is otherwise mostly backward-compatible with IT Mill Toolkit 5.4, the change of the product name has made it necessary to reflect it in the Java package names, some name prefixes, and some other details.

### Server-side Upgrade Instructions

- Java Package names have changed:

- In all Java files using IT Mill Toolkit, rename package prefix `com.itmill.toolkit` → `com.vaadin`
- You also need to update the `web.xml` deployment descriptor:

- The servlet class is now com.vaadin.terminal.gwt.server.ApplicationServlet.

- Changes in themes:
  - Rename `WebContent/ITMILL` → `WebContent/VAADIN`
  - If you have extracted the built-in themes and widgetsets in IT Mill Toolkit JAR to the folder to have them served statically by the server, remove the old content and re-extract from Vaadin JAR.
  - This may require changes to build scripts for custom widgetsets, as well as to any code that relies on the old naming (it is discouraged but possible).
  - The new "`reindeer`" theme is the default theme in Vaadin; the old "`default`" theme in IT Mill Toolkit 5 has been renamed as "`runo`"
  - There is no longer a theme with name "`default`"
  - In your custom theme, replace:

    | `@import "../default/styles.css";`
    → | `@import "../reindeer/styles.css";` | if you wish to use the new default theme,
    or → | `@import "../runo/styles.css";` | if you wish to use the old default theme.

  - Use the new default theme with `setTheme("reindeer")` and the old one with `setTheme("runo")`.
  - CSS class names now start with "`v-`" prefix instead of "`i-`"
  - Search and replace "`.i-`" → "`.v-`" in custom themes
- Embedding Vaadin applications in web pages:

- The name of the JavaScript variable used for launching applications has changed from "`itmill.toolkitConfigurations`" → "`vaadin.vaadinConfigurations`"

- Other changes in naming:

- Rename references to `translateToolkitUri()` → `translateVaadinUri()` method in ApplicationConnection class.

### Client-side Upgrade Instructions

The following changes are relevant only if you have developed or integrated custom client-side widgets with Google Web Toolkit (GWT).

- GWT 2.0 is required for compiling custom widgets (optional)

- You need to upgrade GWT
- The GWT Compiler class name has changed:

- Replace `com.google.gwt.dev.GWTCompiler` → `com.google.gwt.dev.Compiler` in your widget set build script (Ant) or launch configuration (Eclipse).
- Replace the output directory argument for the compiler with the new WAR output argument: `-out` → `-war`. The directory parameter for the argument remains unchanged.

- The "I" (IT Mill) prefix in client-side widget classes has been changed to "V" (Vaadin), for example: IButton → VButton.
- Rename IToolkitOverlay → VOverlay

## Notes and Limitations for Google App Engine

The following instructions and limitations apply when you run a Vaadin application under the Google App Engine.

- Applications must use GAEApplicationServlet instead of ApplicationServlet in `web.xml`.

- Session support must be enabled in `appengine-web.xml`:

          <sessions-enabled>true</sessions-enabled>

- Avoid using the session for storage, usual App Engine limitations apply (no synchronization, i.e, unreliable).

- Vaadin uses memcache for mutex, the key is of the form `_vmutex<sessionid>`.

- The Vaadin WebApplicationContext class is serialized separately into memcache and datastore; the memcache key is `_vac<sessionid>` and the datastore entity kind is `_vac` with identifiers of the type `_vac<sessionid>`.

- DO NOT update application state when serving an ApplicationResource (e.g ClassResource.getStream()).

- AVOID (or be very careful when) updating application state in a TransactionListener or a HttpServletRequestListener - they are called even when the application is not locked and won't be serialized (e.g ApplicationResource), and changes can thus go missing (it should be safe to update things that can be safely discarded later - i.e valid only for the current request)

- The application remains locked during uploads - a progress bar is not possible

## Important known problems in Vaadin @version@

- #1155: Uncompressing the installation package fails in Windows if using the default Zip uncompression. Uncompression gives (in Windows Vista) an error message about too long filenames, and a more obscure message in other versions of Windows. Workaround: use 7-Zip or some other good unzip program for Windows.

For other known problems, see open tickets at developer site dev.vaadin.com.

## Requirements

Vaadin is available for the following operating systems:

- Windows (see the Zip installation notice above)
- Linux
- Mac OS X Tiger (mac) or Leopard (leopard)
- Other UNIX operating systems, such as Sun Solaris

Vaadin supports Java Servlet API 2.3 and later versions and should work with any Java application server that conforms to the standard. It supports the following application servers:

- Apache Tomcat, version 4.1 or later
- BEA WebLogic® Server, version 9.2 or later
- IBM WebSphere® Application Server, version 6.1 or later
- JBoss Application Server, version 3.2.8 or later
- Jetty, version 5 or later
- Glassfish, version 2 or later

Vaadin supports the following browsers for using the applications made with it:

- Mozilla Firefox 3
- Internet Explorer releases 6, 7, and 8
- Safari 3, 4 and 5
- Opera 10
- Google Chrome 5

The support for browsers follows the support by GWT. The browsers are supported on both Windows and Mac, if available. Firefox is supported also on Linux. There may be differences between the exact versions of the supported browsers that may cause incompatibility with applications made with Vaadin.

The following browsers are not supported but have been found to work to a large degree:

- Safari 2
- Firefox 2
- Older versions of Google Chrome
- iPhone (firmware 2.2)
- Midori (0.1.2)
- Epiphany (2.22.3), Galeon, and other Gecko-based browsers. Also WebKit-based Epiphany (2.22.3) works.
- Konqueror 4.2 (3.5.x does not work)
- Nokia Internet Tablet N800 and N810 (ITOS 2008, Opera-based browser).

The reported versions are those that have been tested, though other versions may work as well.

Nokia E-series phones, such as E90, have been known to work with older versions, but not with Vaadin 6. Links, Lynx, and other text-based browsers do not work.