Sneak Peak: AribaWeb localization (code and screencast)

[AribaWeb Team]

AW Group,

There have been numerous questions on this forum about AribaWeb's support for Localization.  We're finally ready to expose AW's built-in localization capabilities, and we're even throwing in some helpful new tools to streamline the localization process:

For an overview, check out this new screencast:

http://www.vimeo.com/3959864

To try it out, download and build the latest source code from subversion (http://code.google.com/p/aribaweb/source/checkout).  We've updated subversion with a preview of the changes coming to the RC3 binary release.  This includes not only the localization features, but solutions for a bunch of other issues reported on this list as well -- you can see the details below.

Please give it a try and let us know what you think!

Thanks!

-The AW Team

New in Version 5.0RC3 - PREVIEW 2 (4/1//2009)

---------------------------------------------

- Localization support

    - Distribution now includes localized resources for aribaweb and widgets frameworks

        (German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese,

        Russian, Swedish, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese)

    - MetaUI string externalization support

        - Support for $[] localized string contants in .oss files

        - Support for externalization of auto-generated labels (e.g. string file lookup is

          performed for class, module and layout labels that would otherwise be defaulted

          based on "decamelized" version of name)

    - New localization script and ant targets:

        - ant localize:         externalize strings from source to base locale (en_US) csvs

        - ant localize-meta:    externalize default metaui labels to base locale

        - ant localize-locales: propagate new strings locale-specific resource directories

    - New "Pseudo-Localization" mode to enable seeing strings tagged for externalization/localization

        (before they are actaully translated)

    - New Localization Editor tool

        - Embedded UI to manage localization process

            - See all app project directories and their locales and strings files

            - Menus for running the above ant targets to perform externalization

            - String file editor for viewing, editing and saving .csv files

            - BabelFish service integration for performing sample auto-translations

    - Partial localization of Demo and MasterDetail examples

    

- Component Inspector: Content Highlighting

    - Alt-hover in the main document now shows the region for the leaf component that will

      be inspected (upon click) in the Component Inspector

    - Hovering over lines in component inspector highlights the corresponding area in the document

      window 

- Form layout: support for labels above fields (instead of to the left)

    - MetaUI layout trait 'labelsOnTop' to use this layout

- MetaUI Search

    - Support for Range search on Number and Date fields (when using database "Structured Search")

    - Support for rendering Search Form outside of result table header

        - Module trait "SearchInToc" to put search form in TOC (with narrow labelsOnTop rendering)

        - Refactored MetaSearch and MetaDetailTable to create MetaTable -- more meta-controllable table setup

- IE8 support

    - Pages are auto-tagged with IE7 meta tag and javascript updated to parse for IE8

    

- Misc fixes

   - AppCore apps not showing new global tabs (@module added in Application.oss) by default

   - .oss files should be parsed as UTF-8 by default (support for extended character is string constants)

   - Fix MySQL inactivity disconnect issue (by setting c3p0 connection pool to

     testConnectionOnCheckout=true)

   - Chooser: Many fixes - Keyboard nav: retain text focus upon edit to choosers and popups, ...

   - AWReload: avoid loop when dynamic source recompilation fails to yield expected new .class file

   - Hitting return incorrectly submitting forms that don't have explicit actions

   - PulldownButton shouldn't show menu on click when disabled=$true

- Enhanced examples

    - MasterDetail example now demonstrates 1) adding a tab via metaui module,

      2) top-level nav actions

- Build system improvements

    - Faster builds and smaller wars: strip unneeded Xinha files from ariba.widgets.jar

    - Fix resource packaging error when rebuilding from clean on Windows (was resulting in exceptions about

      "bad date format", etc, due to missing resources).

    - ariba.src-all.jar should include metaui-jpa and awreload source

    - Fix 'war' target not forcing build of app jar

    - Fix bug with resource copy resulting in every bigger copy of build directory into docroot