Cappuccino 0.9 released with key/value bindings

The developers at 280 North have announced version 0.9 of Cappuccino. This new major release of open source web framework introduces key/value bindings, improved table and outline views and new components such as Steppers, TokenFields, Cursor, Browser and Alerts. The LGPL licensed Cappuccino and Objective-J allow developers to create applications using technologies similar to Apple's Cocoa and Objective-C, but for deployment to the web.

Cappuccino tracks and extends the Cocoa and GNUStep APIs and the addition of full Key/Value Binding support brings the toolkit much closer to the state of the art with Cocoa. Key Value Bindings allow objects such as arrays to be bound to UI components so that the UI automatically reflects the contents of the object. Keys form part of a path which can be used to refer to information in more complex objects. The Cappuccino developers have included support for bindings in their nib2cib tool which converts Cocoa Interface Builder nib files into a form which can be used by Cappuccino applications.

The improved tables and outline views now also support bindings along with the ability to group rows, handle inline editing of cells, the reordering and resizing of columns and variable row heights. New components in the framework include CPAlert, a totally rewritten warning dialogue; CPBrowser, for displaying hierarchical data; CPCursor, a simple API for changing the appearance of the cursor; CPPredicate, a mechanism for expressing filters; CPTokenField for creating auto completing fields, and CPStepper for incrementally selecting values. Also new is NativeHost, announced some months ago, which allows Cappuccino applications to be built as desktop applications. Currently it supports Mac OS X but Windows and Linux support is promised in the future.

The developers are now working on their roadmap for version 1.0 and how the seven core team members and 67 contributors to date can work together to produce a complete and stable 1.0 release. Full details of the changes in version 0.9 can be found in the change log, and details on how to download and install the framework are available

(djwm)