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FlexWrap your mind around webforJ's FlexLayout

· 7 min read
Garrison Osteen
Garrison Osteen
Lead Technical Writer

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One of the great benefits of creating web apps is gaining access to the powerful styling and layout capabilities of CSS. In particular, CSS lets you create responsive layouts, allowing your apps to smoothly adjust their layout according to parameters like window size and device type. Apps with responsive layouts look and feel better, and they allow users to use your app in their preferred context and size. With webforJ, you have that power in Java!

But, knowing what to do with that power is another story. Perhaps you're used to carefully laying out forms with a rigid structure, and the prospect of creating designs that are adaptable and dynamic seems intimidating and complicated. So where do you start? With webforJ's FlexLayout!

Building Better CSS with webforJ's Styling System

· 7 min read
Lauren Alamo
Lauren Alamo
Software Developer

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I've spent the better part of a year building webforJ demos and documentation, and honestly, it's taught me that I knew a lot less about CSS than I thought. I thought I knew enough to get by, some selectors, basic properties, maybe a flexbox here and there. Turns out there's a difference between writing CSS that works and writing CSS that actually makes sense.

Working on webforJ's styling system has changed how I approach CSS. It handles common tasks well and gets out of your way for the interesting parts. Plus, I no longer spend half my time wondering why my styles disappeared into the void.

Design Effective Forms Using the TextField

· 5 min read
Ben Brennan
Ben Brennan
Technical Writer

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Several kinds of forms exist online: sign-up forms, order/checkout forms, and surveys. Regardless of the type of form you’ll need for your business, a bad UI can cost you returning customers. A staggering 88% of users won’t come back to a website if they had a negative user experience, so you’ll need to get it right on the first try.

While the majority of this content focuses on the single-line TextField component, you can apply these principles throughout your webforJ app to help prevent abandonment and make your forms stand out.

My First Foray into Full-Stack with webforJ

· 8 min read
Matthew Hawkins
Matthew Hawkins
Software Developer

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As I went through my computer science education at Oregon State, I realized pretty quickly that I enjoyed the UI side of things. Messing around with CSS (yes, even trying to center a div) and making pages that looked nice appealed to me way more than databases and business logic.

Somehow, I ended up working at a company that primarily used Java. Lucky for me, the project I ended up on was a Java web framework - back in my comfort zone!

I've been able to keep myself pretty much in UI land since then, in my comfort zone and happy to let my colleagues deal with all that back end stuff.

Recently our framework, webforJ, released Spring integration, and with that, my blissful isolation in UI land came to an end. As my first foray into full-stack development, I was asked to build a (very, very simple) CRUD application using Spring and webforJ both so I could learn more about the back end, and also showcase webforJ and Spring together in one project.

TLDR: It went well.

What's new in version 25.02?

· 6 min read
webforJ Team
webforJ Team
webforJ Development Team

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webforJ version 25.02 is here! This release introduces integration with popular tools to keep your apps running as efficiently as possible. Top on the list is exciting new integration capabilities with Spring Boot.

25.02 also builds on data management with Repository improvements, introduces better control over app lifecycle with listener support, and streamlines asynchronous UI updates with the new runLater API.