We just received notification that ThinWire has been chosen as a finalist for an eWEEK Excellence Award in the Application Development category along with Adobe Flex and Komodo IDE. Previous winners in this category include Borland JBuilder, IBM Websphere Studio, and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003.We are obvoiusly very excited about this and look forward to the announcement of the winners on June 11.
{ Category Archives: News }
Richard Baldwin, long time tutorial writer, just had the third tutorial in his five part series on ThinWire published on IBM Developer Works. Here’s an excerpt from his article:
“ThinWire is an open source development framework that lets you build Web applications that look and feel like desktop applications. This five-part series explores how to develop rich Web applications using ThinWire and Java™ programming. In this installation, learn how to write a template class that defines one of the most commonly used Web page layouts.”
Although he wrote this tutorial prior to RC1, the majority of the content is still accurate so this should server as a great tutorial to help developers get a handle on the component level styling model in ThinWire. Get your free developer works id today and read the full article
I came across this award the other day:
“Every year, one of the world’s largest Java technology events, the JavaOne[sm] conference, culminates with the the Duke’s Choice awards. The awards celebrate extreme innovation in the world of Java technology and they are granted to the best and most innovative projects using the Java platform.”
Well, as you might imagine, I think ThinWire qualifies for this and I hope there are a number of you who feel the same and would like to help us win one of the awards that are going to be given out this year. One of the requirements for a submission however is that we include comments and contact information from developers, managers and executives who have successfully put the technology to use.
While we are going to include information from some of our direct clients, I’d really like to include the same kind of information from companies outside of CCS’s client base. The reason for this is that you people have chosen to use ThinWire for it’s technical & business merits. CCS’s clients choose our company because of what our end-product offers, not so much because of the technology that it is built on, so that’s why your prospectives are likely to be the most valuable to the judges.
So if you’d like to help, put together a paragraph or two describing how you are using ThinWire and what it offers you that alternative solutions don’t. Then submit that, along with one or more contact’s from your company (include phone & email) to either community@thinwire.com or info@thinwire.com. Be sure to run it past the appropriate people in your company because if we win, Sun will be publishing an article on ThinWire and they will include quotes from the information you send in. Additionally, the ThinWire team will add choice quotes to the main ThinWire website. This has the potential of being very beneficial to your company, but make sure the appropriate people are ok with such an endorsement.
On a final note, I’d like to say that it’s the support that you all provide which will help ThinWire to continue it’s growth and success. The more successful ThinWire is, the more successful all of you will be in your efforts to use ThinWire because we’ll continue to expand our commitment to the open source project. Ultimately, the more you help, the stronger the community will be and the more solid the framework will be, which will benefit everyone. Don’t let the marketing arms of the large companies beat us with gobs of cash and equally large licensing costs. You know ThinWire is great, now show your support!
Thanks.
Richard Baldwin, long time tutorial writer, just had the third tutorial in his five part series on ThinWire published on IBM Developer Works. Here’s an excerpt from his article:“With ThinWire, an open-source development framework, you can build Web applications that look and feel like desktop applications. In this five-part series, you’ll learn how to develop rich Web applications using ThinWire and Java™ programming. Here in Part 3, you learn to use ThinWire styling support at both a global level and an individual component level.”
Although he wrote this tutorial prior to RC1, the majority of the content is still accurate so this should server as a great tutorial to help developers get a handle on the component level styling model in ThinWire. Get your free developer works id today and read the full article here.
Lead ThinWire developer, Joshua Gertzen just posted some information on his blog about an article that was recently published in AjaxWorld Magazine. Check it out.
Our company continues to grow significantly as a result of our premier lending application suite, which is built on ThinWire. This year we are looking to add 10-20 people to the company, which puts us at 30%-40% growth for 2007. In any case, we are currently in need of 8 people to fill the open positions within CCS. You can read more about the positions here: http://www.customcreditsystems.com/careers.html
While the currently available positions are not directly tied to ThinWire platform development, nearly everyone at CCS works with ThinWire based systems on a daily basis. Additionally, we will be looking to expand our dedicated ThinWire developer base soon, so use this as an opportunity to get your foot in the door! Thanks!
Richard Baldwin, long time tutorial writer, just had the second tutorial in his five part series on ThinWire published on IBM Developer Works. Here’s an excerpt from his article:
“With ThinWire, an open-source development framework, you can build Web applications that look and feel like desktop applications. In this five-part series, you’ll learn how to develop rich Web applications using ThinWire and Java. In Part 2, you learn to use the SplitLayout class in conjunction with your own layout management code to dynamically change the layout of a ThinWire GUI based on the current size of the Web browser window.”
Although he wrote this tutorial prior to some minor changes in the SplitLayout API that came with RC1, this is a great tutorial to help developers get a handle on the concepts behind the SplitLayout and layout management in general. Get your free developer works id today and read the full article here.
ThinWire in Top Ten on SourceForge after Latest Release & LGPL Licensing
DALLAS, TEXAS - A major release of the open source ThinWire platform went out the door on Friday the 8th. AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 East speaker and lead ThinWire architect, Joshua Gertzen, reports that the release has already skyrocketed its ranking on SourceForge.net to #8 out of 136,000 projects. Combined with ThinWire’s announcement that the platform will henceforth be licensed under the less restrictive and free for commercial use LGPL, some are predicting that the platform’s unique and powerful approach could change the way that business applications are built. “With v1.2 RC1, ThinWire adds more significant features then any prior release, making it the most powerful enterprise class open source Ajax platform.” says Gertzen.
ThinWire is a free for commercial use, Java development platform that allows you to easily build applications for the web that have responsive, expressive & interactive user interfaces without the complexity of the alternatives. While virtually any web application can be built with ThinWire, when it comes to enterprise applications, the framework excels with its highly interactive and rich user interface components. Use ThinWire to handle the view-layer of your Java EE (J2EE) application and you’ll be able to provide an unparalleled user experience, while at the same time completing your project faster than ever. “Creating a solid and high performance platform that meets the needs of the business world is our number one priority.” Gertzen notes, “As a result, the default style of the framework has a very professional and Windows like feel, although a number of styling options are available to meet almost any need.” To experience the ThinWire platform and interact with its components and features, visit the Playground Demo application online.
The Dallas based software and consulting firm Custom Credit Systems, who specializes in delivering advanced solutions to the financial lending industry, started building the platform in 2002 to meet the demanding needs of its market space. “The humble beginnings of the platform may initially seem unconventional, but when you think about it, innovation often comes from small groups of highly visionary people.” says Brian Shaw, CEO of Custom Credit Systems. “In fact, CCS has been a leader in technology development for many years.” Mr. Shaw continues, “Our Company pioneered the use of scripting languages for Windows applications in the late 80’s and developed dynamic web functionality (aka AJAX) as early as 2000, so this level of innovation is a key part of our culture.” CCS has deployed ThinWire based products into a number of organizations starting in late 2004, including one of the top-ten banks in the U.S.
As part of ThinWire v1.2 Release Candidate 1, the framework is now available under the GNU Lesser General Public License, otherwise known as the LGPL, making it free for all commercial and private uses. Additionally, CCS is now offering support subscriptions, training and consulting services to interested parties. “Making the framework open source and free to use is very important to all of us because we feel strongly that this platform has the potential to change the way web applications are built.” says Gertzen, “But we also understand the need that many companies have for guaranteed support and occasional help to make their initiatives successful.” Over the next month, additional information about these paid support and consulting services will be added to the ThinWire website, but in the meantime you may inquire for information by contacting CCS using the information provided below.
ThinWire Services from Custom Credit Systems
- Address: 801 East Campbell Road, Suite 652, Richardson, Texas 75081, USA
- Email: info@thinwire.com, sales@customcreditsystems.com
- Phone: +1 (888) 644-6405
Joshua Gertzen, the primary architect behind the open source ThinWire AJAX Framework, will be one of 125 speakers and presenters March 16-19, 2007, at AJAXWorld Conference in New York! The presentation he will giving is called “Effective AJAX for Everyone Including the Enterprise”:
“For all the great things that AJAX adds to the Web developer’s toolbox, it can also add layers of complexity to a Web development stack that is already bursting at the seams. Choosing an AJAX framework that aligns its capabilities with your needs is important in achieving both your near-term and long-term goals. Therefore, understanding the four levels of AJAX frameworks that Gartner has identified can help you make a better decision. This session will outline a range of criteria you should consider in your decision as well as discuss the benefits of a Level 4 general purpose framework.”
This release includes a major change in licensing terms. The prior two releases were licensed under the General Public License (GPL), which was quite significant in of itself since it allowed everyone access to the source code and allowed anyone to use the framework so long as their code was also licensed under the GPL. Of course, not everyone is in a position to do that and frankly, it wouldn’t make much sense for most people to license there proprietary software under such a license.
To address that, our original thought was that we would provide a commercial license for the framework at a reasonable price in order to help fund the continued and rapid development of the framework. However, we feel strongly that ThinWire is one of the most capable Ajax RIA development environments, especially for Java developers. Therefore we want to guarantee that the widest group of developers have the opportunity to use the framework and the best way to do that is to not only open source it, but open source it in a way that allows it to be used for free, which is the way we ultimately feel development platforms should be. So as of this release, ThinWire is licensed under the LGPL and therefore it may be used in any software project, commercial or otherwise, without further obligation. You still can’t modify the framework without letting us know, but other than that, you’re free to do as you will.
Now, you might be wondering what we are going to do to support the framework. Well, for starters, the company that built the framework and continues to support it has a direct investment in the technology because all of its products are built on top of it. In fact, an earlier release of the framework has been in use within two top twenty U.S. banks for the past year and is currently being deployed to many others. Not only does this guarantee that the framework will be fast, stable and powerful, it also guarantees that it will continue to be supported for many years to come. As a side note, Custom Credit Systems (CCS) has been in business since 1989 and its business of building highly integrated end-to-end lending solutions continues grow every year and it’s likely this will continue into the foreseeable future.
Additionally, with this release we are now offering support subscriptions to those who want or need dedicated and timely responses to any issues they have related to ThinWire development. In the coming weeks, we will be updating our website to outline the details of these subscriptions, but in the meantime feel free to contact CCS directly via the information provided below for more information. Aside from support subscriptions, we are also offering both ThinWire consulting and training services to those who are interested. Further, we understand that not everyone is comfortable with open source licensing, so for those who would prefer a more traditional commercial license, please contact us for pricing. Ultimately, it is our goal to grow the community around ThinWire while at the same time continuing to invest in further development and we are feel strongly that this is the right direction to go. Please show your support for the team and the framework by spreading the word about this great framework.