The Pivot development team is happy to announce the release of Apache Pivot 1.3. Apache Pivot is a platform for building rich internet applications in Java. It combines the enhanced productivity and usability features of a modern RIA toolkit with the robustness of the industry-standard Java platform. Pivot is currently undergoing incubation at the Apache Software Foundation.

Notable updates in this release include:

• New FileBrowser component - Pivot now includes out-of-the-box support for navigating the local filesystem. A screen shot is shown below.

  

• New FlowPane component - Though Pivot previously included a FlowPane container for laying out components in a horizontal line, the previous version did not support wrapping. Pivot 1.3 includes a new FlowPane which arranges components in a horizontal line and wraps when contents don't fit on a single line (the former FlowPane class is now called BoxPane). See the Flow Panes section of the Pivot tutorial for a live example.

• Enhanced scripting support - Script code (written in any JVM-compatible scripting language) can now be embedded directly within a WTKX document (previously, it had to be stored in an external file), and event handlers are now much easier to define in WTKX. In fact, it is now possible to construct an entire Pivot application using only script and markup! See the source code for the iTunes Search demo application, which uses JavaScript to define some event handlers, for an example.

• Platform support for context menus and menu bars - While these components were available in previous releases, they are significantly easier to work with in Pivot 1.3. Callers can now attach a menu handler to any component, and the framework will handle the details of invoking context menus and configuring the menu bar based on where the user right-clicks or which component has the focus, respectively.

• New card pane transitions - CardPane now supports a number of selection change transitions, allowing developers to easily add visual interest to an application. Transitions include:

  • Crossfade
  • Horizontal/vertical slide
  • Horizontal/vertical flip
  • Zoom in/out

  See the Card Panes section in the Pivot tutorial for some examples.

• Support for bounded preferred sizes - Callers can now specify minimum and maximum values for preferred width and height, ensuring that a component does not grow or shrink beyond a certain size.

• Support for resource inheritance - Resource instances can now define parent resources, inheriting resource properties and optionally overriding values set by the parent instance.

• Charting updates - The JFreeChart provider has been updated to work with the latest release of JFreeChart (version 1.0.13). An example can be seen here.

• A new logo!

  

• All classes in pivot.* renamed to org.apache.pivot.*.

• Numerous bug fixes, optimizations, and other improvements.

Finally, unlike earlier versions, which required a minimum of Java 5, Pivot 1.3 will require Java 6 update 10 or greater, allowing us to fully take advantage of the improvements Sun has made to the JRE in the new Java Plugin.

Complete release notes for Pivot 1.3 are available here. For more information, please visit the Pivot home page.