Tag Interface Component Library (TICL) 1.0 Final Release
Posted By: Borislav Iordanov on July 31, 2002
Kobrix has announced the immediate availability of TICL (Tag Interface Component Library) 1.0 Final. TICL is library of server-side user interface components accessible through JSP tags. Like a conventional desktop toolkit, the components maintain state and manage interaction logic with the end-user with little or no assistance from the programmer.
Kobrix is free for non-commercial use.
Read more about TICL at http://www.kobrix.com.
If you are already a TICL user, check out the release notes at
http://www.kobrix.com/ticl/releasenotes.jsp for the latest changes.
More info
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One of the major goals of TICL is to bring RAD-like development to the WEB platform. Programmers can concentrate on logical functionality and build JSP pages by placing TICL components through tags and responding to user events. Every component is self-contained and manages interaction with the end-user. Visual appearance of components is abstracted into a high-level styles framework. In fact, TICL is probably the only server-side Java toolkit that rivals Microsoft ASP.NET's web controls.
The library is tailored more towards WEB application development, rather than content only oriented sites. It is designed to quickly build clean, robust, well-structured and therefore highly maintainable code. It integrates seemlessly into existing JSP applications and it will work on any standard compliant JSP 1.1 container (e.g. Tomcat 3.2.1 and above, Resin etc.) and with fairly recent versions of the popular browsers.
Core features are:
- A powerful and extensible server-side event model. Component-end user interaction is encapsulated into a well defined set of server-side events. You can of course define event listeners, develop custom events, event filters etc.
- Predefined components like panels, tabbed panels, tree views, DHTML menus, table views. Most can perform their interaction with the end-user at the browser through DHTML or by making a trip back to server on every user action (like expanding a tree node or minimizing a panel) - that is components are either "client" or "server" managed.
- Smart browser handling. A complete framework for dealing with browser (user agent) capabilities, including detection of dynamic properties like connection speed, screen resolution, available plugins etc.; supporting JSP tags; on the fly selection of component rendering based on the current user agent.
- A high-level styles framework for complete customization of the look&feel of components. Styles can be organized into themes. An inheritence mechanism of style objects provides for a powerful high-level structuring. The framework allows for a clean separation between look&feel and functional behaviour of GUI elements. No more copy&paste, no more code cluttering with tedious, browser-specific HTML details - consistency of look&feel can be easily achieved by maintaining a single TICL style sheet, a simple XML file, that is applied to all pages in your WEB application.
- Full encapsulation of HTML forms, including a file upload component, augmented with things such as server-side command handlers, labels and DHTML tooltips. Form fields are typed, true server-side components. Not limited to the standard HTML form fields, they operate on a high level and custom ones can be developed and plugged into the framework.
- A very powerful and easy to use declarative form validation mechanism (both client and server-side). You define validation rules and handlers for invalid forms in a clean, declarative way. The same rules you define can be applied at the client (through automatic generation of the necessary JavaScript) or at the server. Special purpose syntax allows you to easily handle interdependencies between field values.
- A Data Objects framework integrated with TICL forms. Allows you to manipulate complex aggregate structures and associate them with forms for automatic mapping to/from form field values and data object fields (e.g. Java beans). A type mapping framework allows you to map any form field type to any Java type.
- An integration module for the popular Struts framework is provided also. For example, it is possible to use the powerful TICL form tags with Struts' ActionForms.
TICL is FREE for non-commercial and non-govermental use, and for an unlimited evaluation period. It comes with an extensive, over 200 pages, Reference Manual. To download it, please goto http://www.kobrix.com and select Downloads from the TICL pulldown menu. If you are not already a TICL user, you may need to register first.
We sincerely hope you will enjoy TICL and are looking forward to your
feedback!
Best Regards,
Borislav Iordanov
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borislav@kobrix.com
Kobrix Software Inc.
http://www.kobrix.com
