Vaadin – thinking of U and I

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 a maintenance release for Vaadin 6.3. It contains several important fixes.

Please see the list of fixed issues in Vaadin @version@ for more details. Problem fixes and enhancements planned for upcoming releases can be found from the Vaadin Roadmap in Vaadin Trac.

An outline of enhancements introduced in Vaadin 6.3 is given in the Release Notes for Vaadin 6.3.0.

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 6.3 uses GWT 2.0 (included in the installation package). See General Upgrade Notes for more details on upgrading.

Upgrading from an Earlier Version of Vaadin 6

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 and 4
• Opera 10
• Google Chrome (latest version)

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.

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