What's new in the coming version 3.0 ?
The new JPilot jIRC applet is now based on latest SWING from Java platform.
Not only it will take advantages of the improved widgets support but it also
provides a new way to customize the applet.
As matter of fact almost every aspect of the applet can be configured or customized.
It will not be limited by a set of applet html paremters pre-defined like the current version, but you can now use HTML to do layout and customization(Sorry, yes you will need some basic HTML knowledge).
Demo with World of Warcraft theme
Use HTML to layout components
Mainly there are 3 files being used for configuration.
Config Screen HTML Page - Click here for example.
Chat Screen HTML Page - Click here for example.
Properties file - Click here for example.
As you can see from the above example, components placement is completely up to you. You can mix images and HTML elements to layout the page anywhere you want.
JPilot will also supply serveral customized components to help complete the desgin of a page. Things like specialized button, multi channels tabbed screen, user list etc.
A complete documentation will be provided later on. For the most part, you can get a feeling of what we have by looking the sample files above.
Limitation on HTML and CSS support
HTML and CSS support in the built-in Java plug-in is not compatible with traditional browser.
Based on Sun's documentation, it is HTML 3.2 and subset of CSS. Obviously, no JavaScript is supported.
Special care need be paid when dealing with these HTML page, as Java Plug-in is less forgiving for errors and cannot handle advance features.
So keep it simple and if one way doesn't work, try some other ways.
What Java version it required?
In theory, any Java Runtime or Plugin version 1.4 or above will work, but it is recommended that users to have the current Java Runtime version 1.6.
It is because Java 1.6 startup time is MUCH faster than before, less buggy than before, users experience will be easier to control or monitored.
What is the current development status of this new version?
This is the first public preview release for version 3.0, it should be considered as draft/alpha quality.
Production use of this version is welcome but not recommended yet.
Currently, documentation is far from complete, it will be added as soon as possible.
There will be bugs, new features, drop features in coming days.
Your feedback is highly appreciated.
Please send us what you think to support@jpilot.com .
Preview Download
Last but not the least, if you want to play around with the latest version, here is the zip file.
