Xkins / News: Recent posts

Release 1.0.1:
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This release is a revision one with a bug correction and a recompilation with JDK1.4. If you are using the POC 1.0.0, you shoud replace the xkins*.jar with 1.0.1 ones.

Changes:
1) Jar recompiled with JDK1.4

Bug Correction:
1) TemplateTag: Corrected a problem when using this tag with enabledPooling.

Release 1.0.0:
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Finally, the 1.0.0 release has came. In fact, there are not to many changes, just a few things and bugfixes.
This release is in fact the 1.0 one that should have been last year.

Next release I'll be working in XkinsFaces release. I think that a combination Shale+MyFaces+XkinsFaces could be great.
Hope I have a little more time.

Changes:
1) You can place the xkin-definition.xml files in the WEB-INF/ directory or in the classpath.
2) Server tag: Tghis new Tag in xkin definition file allows you to place resources in other server.... read more

In this article, Guillermo Meyer defines the process of skinning a Web application and explains how to skin your own applications with Xkins, a framework for managing skins. You can use Xkins along with other UI frameworks, such as Struts and Tiles. Here, Meyer walks you through an example application that needs two skins and illustrates how to add a unique skin to it.
Read the article at
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-10-2004/jw-1025-xkins.html

This new version just updates to the JSF1.1.
Also wxplains how to confiugure JSF RI examples to use XkinsFaces. Next release will have a complete example using XkinsFaces.

This article explains how you can use Xkins to skin a web application. It walks through an example with 2 skins and finally adds a new one.
Check this article at http://xkins.sourceforge.net/articles/skinwebapp

Release 0.9.9:
Changes:
1) New Attribute in template definition: A new attribute was added to the template entity to allow to group templates.
Grouping templates is usefull when composing skins and choosing a group of template from one skin to compose.
2) Processor id: You can name the processors with a new tag in xkins definition, avoiding repeating the Processor class name every time.

Bug Correction:
1) ContextHolder.getLocalContext: If the context is not set, a nullpointerException ocurred. So this condition is verified.

This new release presents a POC that shows how to use Xkins with Struts.
release 0.9.8 changes are:
1) Skin composite: allows to compose a skin with templates from other skins, in a composite fashion.
2) Proof of Concept Xkins application: uses Xkins in a Struts based web application. Allows to create a Custom Skin by the user.
3) XkinsEditor: a new class that allows to compose Skins. see example in skinAction in Xkins POC
4) Log4J: XkinsLogger is created. Uses this logging mechanism inside Xkins. XKINS category is created.
5) Add release() method to taglibs.
6) JByte: New Template processor that uses Java By Template.
7) API improvement: Allows to use xkinProcessor and create templates on the fly easily:
a) Add a constructos for Skin with name, and with name and processor.
b) Add a constructor for Processor that receives a class as the TemplateProcessor
c) Add a constructor for Content to receive a string with the content or the url where the template content is.
d) Add a contructor for Template to receive a string with the content or the url where the template content is, and with name and processor.
8) Upgrade to Velocity 1.4
9) Bug correction on reloading Velocity based templates: When a Velocity template was modified and Xkins were reloaded, templates remained cached.
This is solved in this version.
10) XkinProcessor and an undefined skin: if you create a XkinProcessor with an undefined skin name, the default skin name is used.
11) Add a SkinType getter to Xkins

Xkin's Version 0.9.7 is released. The main changes are:
-Content location. you can place content file in classpath, skin directory or other web server
-Custom Skin class: You can create a custom Skin class to set custom parameters to your skin.

XkinsFaces is set of renderers that acts as decorators of existing renderers and implements Renderers. XkinsFaces works on top of Xkins and has a basic Skin that contains all Xkins Templates needed by the renderers.

A valid xkinsFaces Skin must extend this basic Skin in order to work. So, basic skin defines a "well known" set of templates to implement and use with XkinsFaces. Anyone can create his or her own Skin extending basic, deploy this new skin in a XkinsFaces application and the webapp will look like this skin commands. In a future, there could be lots of skins you could download and deploy in your webapp to look diferent without changing anything of your JSPs, classes or HTML.

Xkin Type check is a new feature that let's you to asure that a web application loads al least one skin type. A xkin type is a skin with a set of resources and templates, so if you have tags that uses some templates you can asure that all skins has these templates. You can extend a base skin that contains all templates you need and set this base skin as the xkin type to check.

This early access is an initial version of a set of renderers for JSF that uses skins through xkins.
This version can be used with myFaces. Next versions will use Reference implementation, Struts faces and Smile.

In this new Release, you can use XkinsServlet as a dispatcher for your Xkins tempaltes. This is like VelocityServlet, but uses xkins Processor to get Templates.
This is an initial version.

Xkins home page has been redesigned. This new page includes examples and references to Velocity, Struts and JavaServerFaces.
Visit this new page in http://xkins.sourceforge.net/

This release improves Skin processing performance using VelocityTemplateProcessor by 60%. This implements a ResourceLoader from Velocity and uses a cache.

This new release has the following new features:
<ul>
<li>Xkins-Forms: A taglib that allows you to create html forms using Xkins, integrated with Struts.
<li>Independence of xkin-definition: you can define xkins templates in diferent xml files, each one in it's own skin directory.
<li>Autoreload: If set, Xkins will be automatically reloaded when detect a change in a template definition.
<li>New Skins for a more detailed demo.
</ul>