IT Mill announces the release of Vaadin 6, a major revision of its server-driven RIA framework formerly known as IT Mill Toolkit. In addition to many enhancements and fixes, the release includes two entirely new tools: an Eclipse plugin and a preview version of a WYSIWYG user interface editor.

The release of Vaadin 6 comes just months after the first stable version of IT Mill Toolkit 5. With the demanding stabilization effort of the core library behind, the company is concentrating on new features, tools, and building up the community.

"The new name clarifies the difference between the company and the open source product", explains IT Mill CEO Joonas Lehtinen. "The user and developer communities are growing fast, so we did not want to postpone the long overdue name change any longer."

The release of Vaadin 6 comes just months after the first stable version of IT Mill Toolkit 5. With the demanding stabilization effort of the core library behind, the company is concentrating on new features, tools, and building up the community.

With the unique server-driven concept developed by IT Mill, Vaadin provides a solid base for building rich web user interfaces for demanding web applications.

New Tools for Developer Productivity

The Vaadin plugin for the Eclipse IDE will accelerate the work of the developers and help them build good looking web interfaces for Java enterprise applications even faster.

The visual editor is especially useful when you are a new user and getting introduced to the framework

In addition to creating new web application projects using Vaadin, it supports the creation of client-side widgets using Google Web Toolkit, making the creation and integration of custom or third-party widgets trivial.

The WYSIWYG editor that also works under Eclipse is still under development, but the preview version included in Vaadin 6 release lets you see what is coming.

"The visual editor is especially useful when you are a new user and getting introduced to the framework", says Lehtinen. "You can easily learn all the built-in components, how you create a layout using the layout management components, and how you generally build an application. Later, the editor can prove great for prototyping."

The Eclipse plugin as well as traditional installation packages that include demos and sample code are available for immediate download at the www.vaadin.com website for Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms.

In the next months, the development of Vaadin will focus on finishing the new WYSIWYG editor and developing major enhancements to the library itself.

Write Java, Nothing Else

Vaadin is proving to become the next major step forward in the evolution of web technologies. Built on the best Java web development concepts, Google Web Toolkit, Ajax, and server-side Java, it is a pioneering concept for RIA (Rich Internet Application) development.

Using tons of widgets, developers can build rich web applications easily with Java on the server-side, much like creating regular desktop applications with Swing or AWT. There is no need to know anything about the client-side Ajax code or JSON communications working under the hood.

Open Source to the Core

If the versatile set of standard widgets is not enough, developers can continue coding with Java on the client-side using Google Web Toolkit (GWT). "You can easily extend the standard widgets and integrate new ones in Java. This is a unique and highly productive combination of technologies", explains Mr. Lehtinen.

IT Mill Ltd is a Finnish software company specializing in the design and development of Rich Internet Applications. Vaadin, formerly IT Mill Toolkit, is the flagship open source product of the company, for which it provides commercial development and support services.

Live demos: http://vaadin.com/demo/
More Information and download: http://vaadin.com/