Bindows Blog

Bindows 3.0 Released3
Ran posted in Developing in Bindows, Special Pricing on May 29th, 2007

After a long and comprehensive beta program we are proud to release Bindows 3.0 today.

This version includes:
* Support for vector graphics (including gauges and charting) in all supported browsers
* A complete animation library
* GridPanel2 + Designer
* Improved localization
* SingleTree
* Template Based Printing
and (of course) many bug fixes and general improvements.

For a comprehensive description of the new features click here Bindows 3.0 Features.

As always, we would be glad to hear your thoughts and comments.

The Bindows Team

Bindows in BarracudaDrive Web Server3
Ran posted in Developing in Bindows, Marketing on May 10th, 2007

Real Time Logic’s BarracudaDrive web server simplifies external Intranet access and provides a secure file server and a HTTPS tunnel that is easier to use than VPN.

Real Time Logic, the world leader in device management software for telecommunications, medical and automotive applications, announced the availability of the BarracudaDrive web server, a joint venture between MB Technologies, Spinifex Computing and Real Time Logic.

BarracudaDrive provides a complete and easy to use solution for typical small business needs. BarracudaDrive’s design allows both home users and small business owners to set up and run a professional looking site without the expense of hiring web-gurus. The server also provides secure external Intranet access similar to VPN, but without the complexity.

BarracudaDrive includes the following components:

* A high performance asynchronous web server
* Lua Server Pages, a super fast scripting language
* Bindows, the leading Ajax and Web 2.0. SDK
* Web File Manager that lets you manage your files using a browser
* WebDAV is a secure file system server that lets you mount your server as a windows disk
* HTTPS tunnel, which provides easy external Intranet access
* Chat server and Web 2.0 client powered by the Barracuda EventHandler plugin
* Advanced WEB 2.0 web server administration application
* Setup application that lets any user install and make the server available on the Internet

The BarracudaDrive license allows you to develop Bindows applications that will run inside BarracudaDrive.

For Bindows developers, BarracudaDrive provides the following benefits:

* It is integrated into one server - no installation
* BarracudaDrive is very easy to install and operate
* Integrated JSON web-services makes it extremely easy to communicate with the server
* Lua Server Pages (LSP) and BarracudaDrive are much faster than PHP/Apache

You can learn more about BarracudaDrive, download a free version or purchase the FULL version at BarracudaDrive.

If you have questions about the Bindows license included in the BarracudaDrive, please contact sales@bindows.net

Bindows and IntelliJ IDEA0
support posted in Developing in Bindows on May 3rd, 2007

If you are already using Jetbrains popular Java IDE for your Bindows development you are in luck. If not, now is the time to take a good look at it. We have been working together with Jetbrains to add and improve Bindows-specific support in IntelliJ IDEA. Starting with the Selena Milestone 1 of IntelliJ we have most of the features that are needed for enjoyable development. In addition we have created our own plugin that can be automatically downloaded and installed from within the IDE. This plugin provides even more features to boost your productivity. Let’s start by going through some of the enhancements integrated to the IDE by Jetbrains.

• Inheritance
Since we use a special method called _biExtend to derive classes, editors usually don’t understand Bindows inheritance structure. This causes problems with code completion, showing none or every single function of Bindows. IntelliJ IDE understands how classes are derived and extended by looking at this method.

• Recognize public/private variables
In Bindows we use the underscore character in front of methods and variables to denote a private member. This is recognized by IntelliJ IDEA and reflected in code completion, etc.

• Support for addProperty
Bindows also includes a special function that can be used to create getter/setter methods - called addProperty. This function creates a private member variable as well as public getter/setters for it. IntelliJ IDEA sees this while parsing the code and adds those methods to code completion and navigation etc.

• Support for Bindows code documentation
IntelliJ can look at the API documentation for a function and figure out type-information as well as give you quick-lookup of the documentation text. It shows you the inparameters of a function, it knows the return type, etc.

• Type awareness
IntelliJ also has more traditional type awareness so when you type (for example):
var lbl = new BiLabel;
it then understands that lbl is of type BiLabel and this is reflected in the code completion, so it only shows you public methods available on BiLabel and its superclasses.

The Bindows plugin that we have developed has a built in web-server and can be used to quickly launch Bindows applications but also aid in debugging. Here are some of the main features:

• Launcher
Starts your browser of choice (Firefox or Internet Explorer) and runs your Bindows application without any need for creating html launchers, messing with paths etc.
It does not matter where things are. Let’s say you found some strange Bindows ADF sitting on your desktop. “What’s this?” Just open it in IntelliJ and launch.

• Logging
It can receive logging messages and data from a running Bindows application. These are then printed to a special Bindows Console inside IntelliJ IDEA. This is a useful alternative to the ‘dreaded’ alert messages.

• JavaScript evaluator
You can send JavaScript to a running Bindows application and have it evaluated at runtime. The results of the evaluation are written to the console in the IDE. This enables you to do some really neat debugging tricks that you probably could not do easily in compiled languages. You could for example rewrite methods while the program is still running. “Now that I have finally managed to somehow reproduce that bug, I wish I had put a debugger statement in that method.” No problem, just insert one. You could even use it as a calculator. Hurray!

• Code completion in Bindows XML/ADF
This will give you access to all tags and attributes as well as quick documentation lookup. We actually included the full documentation together with this feature. Just position your cursor on a tag or attribute and press Ctrl+Q.

The plugin is currently in beta and can be downloaded and installed from the plugin manager inside IntelliJ IDEA. Just look for “BindowsPlugin”. Detailed information is available in the readme.txt file included in the plugin jar file. You will of course need a copy of both Bindows and IntelliJ IDEA. There are trial versions on both our sites. We intend to further develop the plugin, so your bug reports and recommendations are always very welcome.

• Screencast
Enjoy a screencast describing Bindows development techniques using the new Bindows plugin for the IntelliJ IDEA development environment for the screencast.

Johan Lund - The Bindows Team