BETA version of Glory Release

15th of May is the date that our Glory release will be released, though as a little preview and also hopefully to get some valid feedback upon the stuff we've already done we've wrapped up a BETA version of Gaia for our users to try out and test :)





There are lots of changes already, and there will be many more before the release is finished, so technically this isn't truly a "BETA version", but more like an "ALPHA version" of that release since mostly few changes are being made after a "BETA release" is available. But the stuff we've done already we're so extremely proud of so we thought it would be rude and selfish to keep them for ourselves ;)

The most important change is the fact that Gaia executes between 6 and 25 times faster on the server now thanx to caching of the logic in the PropertyStateManager(Web)Control classes. A huge thank you to Odd-Henrik and Lars Einar in Multicase for suggesting this change.

Then we've fixed several issues with combining Aspects of different types together on the same widget. Some are still "impossible" like e.g. combining AspectDraggable together with e.g. AspectClickable since ScriptAculous is basically stopping the bubbling of events up to the AspectClickable to be able to fire. But most of the other incompatibilities are sorted out between combining aspects.

Another really huge change is the ability to now set values of Gaia Widgets in Page_Load Event or OnLoad overridden methods of the page. Before there was a big bug in Gaia which made this impossible. But now this is very much possible.

A third huge change is that Gaia now serializes values of "non-Gaia" controls which means that you can have ASP.NET controls like DropDownList, CheckBoxes and so on and if the values of those controls are being changed you will have access to the CHANGED value of those controls in Gaia Ajax Callbacks. This should make DotNetNuke, EPIServer and SharePoint integration far easier with your Gaia Toolbox ;)
Plus not to mention it'll be far easier to "ajaxify" an existing ASP.NET website by using Gaia.

Then in addition we have lots of other minor changes, I'll just sum them all up fast here and the curios ones can download and check for themselves;

• Made more consistancy between the different constructors of Aspects (slightly "breaking change")
• Handle support for AspectDraggable meaning you can set a Widget draggable but only if dragged on a specific "handle" DOM element (or widget within in)
• "Silent" support for AspectDraggable (using the quiet option of ScriptAculous)
• "Effect" support for AspectDraggable which makes it possible to have effects when widget is dropped to make it "fade out"
• Checking to see for "www" as prefix to domain and letting your domain server license still function for your domain even though served through www. prefix
• Now all properties of all aspects also have getters and setters which might make the code for the constructing of aspects more readable
• Concatenating all "common" JavaScript files in release builds which means that the number of HTTP connections will reduce by at least 4 per page
• New class called XhtmlTextWriter (in Gaia.WebWidgets.HtmlFormatting namespace) which is a far better way of constructing XHMLT compliant markup. Useful for control designers and lots of other things. We're using it internally "all through" the library ourselves.
• ...lots of smaller bugs fixed ;)

So as you can see, we're still on our toes to serve our users and I hope as many as possible would like to give this version a "try" and give us feedback on missing features, bugs and so on. Though please remember that this is a BETA version and we don't encourage users to use it in production environments...

Oh yeah, almost forgot, you can download the BETA version here ;)

Tags: asp.net programming gaia ajax