Introducing IT Mill Toolkit 5

Effortless web application development for Java-programmers.

Release Notes for IT Mill Toolkit Version @version@

Version 5.3.0 is the first stable release of IT Mill Toolkit 5, meaning that there are no known major problems and the API will be kept backward compatible.

Package for the experimental GWT Out-of-Process Hosted Mode

We provide a separate (platform independent) installation package (vaadin-oophm-.tar.gz) for the experimental Out of Process Hosted Mode (OOPHM) of GWT, which allows debugging client-side code in GWT Hosted Mode with a regular web browser. Using the OOPHM requires installing a browser plugin (available for Mozilla Firefox, IE, and WebKit). See the manual section on OOPHM for more details.

The Linux version of GWT Hosted Mode Browser is no longer compatible with IT Mill Toolkit 5.3.0 (#2299), so the OOPHM is the only option for debugging in hosted mode in Linux.

The compilation of OOPHM widget sets uses a large amount of stack memory, so if the JVM default is too small, you should set it explicitly in compile-widgetset.xml with the following parameter for the Java process (currently included in the example build script): <jvmarg value="-Xss1024k"/>.

As the OOPHM package is experimental, you should use it only for debugging purposes during development. For production use, you should compile your custom widget sets with the regular IT Mill Toolkit package for your platform.

Important known problems in @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.
  • #2299 The Hosted Mode Browser does not work in Linux for debugging client-side GWT code. You need to install the experimental OOPHM package instead (see above) for development. For production, you should use the regular package for Linux.

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

Requirements

IT Mill Toolkit 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, using the installation package for Linux.

IT Mill Toolkit 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

IT Mill Toolkit supports the following browsers for using the applications made with it:

  • Mozilla Firefox release 3
  • Internet Explorer releases 6, 7, and 8.
  • Safari 3
  • Opera 9.6

† Internet Explorer 8 RC1 may not be usable because of a serious bug in the RC1. #2578
‡ The current support for Opera has some limitations, such as the front page of the Sampler demo. #2652

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 (Opera 10a1 works also on Linux though also suffers from #2652). There may be differences between the exact versions of the supported browsers that may cause incompatibility with applications made with IT Mill Toolkit.

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

  • Safari 2, and 4 beta
  • Firefox 1.5 and 2
  • Google Chrome 1.0.x (available only for Windows)
  • 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 IT Mill Toolkit 5.2 and later. Links, Lynx, and other text-based browsers do not work.