Though Wings can look back on a history starting 2001 we still believe that the concepts behind Wings counts to the most advanced and innovative one in the market. Why do many people still try squeeze object-oriented software designs into page-oriented frameworks?
Below is a short list of selected feature highlights of Wings. You can also try them out [create Demos] or read more aobut the details behin the Wings user guide.Features
Conceptual features
The API of Wings orients itself on its big brother Java Swing for desktop applications. This makes the API of Wings ideal for component-oriented programming and a high level of code reuse.
Popular frameworks like Sun JSF and Apache Struts rely on a heavy mix of different technologies like Java, JSP, XML & Tag libs. This implies that the association between the different media have to be maintained manually to be always in sync. Errors between these assoication implies bad suprises during runtime while pure Java-based frameworks like Wings can leverage of the compilers consistency checks.
Using the provided Wings framework components the presentation logic can be easily implemented in pure java. The Wings Pluggable Look & Feel (PLAF) is responsible of transforming the visual properties set by the logic into the according web presentation. The overall design can be easily modified using a global CSS stylesheet and layout template. This centralized approach makes i.e. updates to the corporate design very easy.
Wings is completely Open Source under the GNU LGPL. Hence it can be used royality free in commerical applications.Technical features
New Features starting with Version 3.0
Starting with Wings release 3 the developer can easily switch his implemented Wings applications to use AJAX techniques for incremental page updates just by configuration. No need for any further implementation.
The Wings extension pack wingX now contains a set of major AJAX-enhanced interactive components like suggest boxes, interactive date pickers, scrollbars and color choosers ready to use for the developer with the same convenient Java API like the other Wings components.