WEBIX BLOG

Kanban boards allow visualizing the workflow in an easy and intuitive way. And Webix has a tool that allows you to create your own Kanban Board.

There’s already a well written guide that describes how you can use the Webix Kanban Board widget. This time we’ll take a look at some tips and tricks you can use to customize the existing project management application.

Splitting the Columns

First of all, the basics. Here’s how you can create a simple Kanban Board:

And here’s the result:

We are glad to announce our small but effective and long-expected Webix update 2.5! Firstly, we can boast of Microsoft Edge support. Despite this new browser for Windows 10 hasn’t been released yet, Webix widgets already support it. Secondly, we’ve improved our complex widgets such as Pivot and Kanban, as well as added an opportunity to block time in Calendar widget. And the final traditional update is bugs fixing.

If you are too busy to read the whole post, you can download a new library version here.

Microsoft Edge ready

Since the version 2.5, Webix supports Microsoft Edge, which is a default browser for upcoming Windows 10. Microsoft has announced that it would have plenty of JS improvements over IE11 and similar performance to Chrome and Firefox browsers.

Webix is MS Edge ready, which means that your web apps will run flawlessly across a new cutting edge browser as soon as it is officially released (on July, 29).

Webix version 2.4 brings you a new UI component that allows creating portal layouts in an easy and intuitive way. Portlet component can be dragged over the page and swapped with other portlets. This behaviour allows you to rearrange your web page elements the way you want. Let’s take a look at the basics of portlet usage.

Portlets Basics

You can create a basic portlet in the same way as other Webix UI components. Just set “portlet” as the view property value. The body property defines the portlet content:

By arranging portlets into rows and columns, you can create the required layout which can be easily reorganized if necessary:

The result is shown below:

We love open source and are willing to make this part of Webix community bigger and happier. Starting from Webix 2.4, in addition to the ability to use Webix in GPL projects, we add a FLOSS Exception to the existing GPL License. Thanks to this update, you can use Webix in your applications distributed under MIT, BSD and other open source licenses!

Thus, you can use Webix in open source projects that exists under a license that is a part of the FLOSS Exception List without taking into consideration the GPLv3 restrictions. The only requirement implies that your open source project should be intended for using by end-users but not for creating a library for software development purposes.

FLOSS License List

Want to know which FLOSS licenses can Webix be distributed under?

Starting with version 2.4, Webix provides you with a new way of user interaction improvement. Validation Messages can be pretty useful in case you want to make sure that users will fill in all your web forms properly.

Let’s take a look at how it works. Here’s an example of a registration form:

You can check the Form documentation page if you want to get more details of form creation with Webix.

We have some great news for you! Webix was updated to the version 2.4 which includes such great enhancements as a new Portlet widget, MultiCombo and Range Slider form controls, naming only the smallest part of all the changes.

Portlet widget

JavaScript Portlet is a layout component that can include another component inside of it. Moreover, it’s possible to re-order portlets by drag-and-dropping them in the necessary position on your web page.

Therefore, you shouldn’t write lines of code to change the arrangement of your web page. All that you need is to grab a portlet by the handler with an inserted widget and put it at the place of future drop which is highlighted by a specific color. Want to check its performance? View this demo.

There are many ways how Webix UI can be used for creating an astonishing app. One of such cases is Gantt Chart Maker – GanttPRO, a modern app for scheduling projects, assigning tasks and managing their priority.

Ace is a handy JavaScript code editor. It combines the possibilities and behavior of popular editors like Sublime, Vim and TextMate. Ace is maintained as the primary editor for Cloud9 IDE and is the successor of the Mozilla Skywriter (Bespin) project. You can build Ace into your web page or app with ease.

And now it is possible to use Ace Editor with Webix UI.

TL; DR Grab the final package from https://github.com/webix-hub/webix-firebase

Dynamic Web

Not so long ago web apps were slow and phlegmatic. The whole page had to be reloaded to update information. AJAX has only slightly improved this situation. Now we update separate blocks instead of reloading the whole page. Hardly had we got used to this technique, when a new web transformation appeared on the scene. It is dynamical web, where the content of pages updates by itself.

Now you can find such elements on Facebook or Twitter pages, for example. Data are changed there without our participation. As soon as someone has added a comment or re-tweeted the post, the changes are reflected on the page immediately.

There are several technologies behind dynamical web. WebSockets are the most important of them. You can read how to use them with Webix here. However, web sockets present a very low level of abstraction. Fortunately, it’s possible to get all the benefits of dynamic updates without diving so deeply into the details of data synchronization. There are several great solutions created by web enthusiasts. They allow avoiding difficulties and creating cool dynamic apps.

Material Design in Webix UI

This year a hard-working Webix team has released a new Material skin which was developed under the impression of Google Material Design. Your web apps built with the use of a new skin will look cleaner and clearer, which will allow your end users to concentrate on the main functionality of an application. Moreover, due to the responsive behaviour of Webix material skin your final app will operate perfectly and look good on a wide range of devices.

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