--- title: Background order: 5 layout: page --- [[intro.background]] = Background The Vaadin Framework was not written overnight. After working with web user interfaces since the beginning of the Web, a group of developers got together in 2000 to form IT Mill. The team had a desire to develop a new programming paradigm that would support the creation of real user interfaces for real applications using a real programming language. The library was originally called Millstone Library. The first version was used in a large production application that IT Mill designed and implemented for an international pharmaceutical company. IT Mill made the application already in the year 2001 and it is still in use. Since then, the company has produced dozens of large business applications with the library and it has proven its ability to solve hard problems easily. Millstone 3 was released as open source in 2002. Progress has often required hard decisions to avoid carrying unnecessary legacy burden far into the future. Nevertheless, our aim has always been to keep migrations easy. [[intro.background.toolkit-5]] == Release 4 with Single-Page Rendering The next generation of the library, IT Mill Toolkit 4, was released in 2006. It introduced an entirely new AJAX-based presentation engine. This allowed the development of AJAX applications without the need to worry about communications between the client and the server. [[intro.background.toolkit-5]] == Release 5 Powered by GWT ((("IT Mill Toolkit"))) ((("AJAX"))) IT Mill Toolkit 5, released initially at the end of 2007, took a significant step further into AJAX. The client-side rendering of the user interface was completely rewritten using GWT, the Google Web Toolkit. ((("Google Web Toolkit"))) IT Mill Toolkit 5 introduced many significant improvements both in the server-side API and in the functionality. Rewriting the Client-Side Engine with GWT allowed the use of Java both on the client and the server-side. The transition from JavaScript to GWT made the development and integration of custom components and customization of existing components much easier than before, and it also allows easybackport/45765/stable30 backport/45848/stable28 backport/46013/stable26 backport/46013/stable27 backport/46013/stable28 backport/46114/stable30 backport/46124/stable28 backport/46124/stable29 backport/46124/stable30 backport/46140/stable28 backport/46140/stable29 backport/46140/stable30 backport/46218/stable27 backport/46218/stable28 backport/46218/stable29 backport/46218/stable30 backport/46222/stable30 backport/46307/stable29 backport/46418/stable29 backport/46480/stable28 backport/46480/stable29 backport/46480/stable30 backport/46534/stable27 backport/46691/stable30 backport/46780/stable30 backport/46780/stable31 backport/46887/stable29 backport/46931/stable28 backport/47180/stable26 backport/47180/stable28 backport/47265/stable30 backport/47316/stable28 backport/47316/stable29 backport/47316/stable30 backport/47339/stable28 backport/47339/stable29 backport/47339/stable30 backport/47349/stable28 backport/47349/stable29 backport/47349/stable30 backport/47399/stable30 backport/47425/stable28 backport/47425/stable29 backport/47425/stable30 backport/47441/stable29
