Aranea Blog

So the Aranea team is busy trying to get the 1.0 M3 out (currently scheduled to beginning of May). The things we are working on are:

• JSP tags. We want it to make it very simple to create new Aranea JSP tags and customize existing ones. For that we are refactoring the current tag library to be closer to the standard API and to provide a simple set of utility classes instead of scattered functions.
• Configuration. We want to be able to configure Aranea on different levels. Currently we provide a preconfigured version (that can be overrided, but not extended) and a fully configurable version, but ideally it would be nice to provide an default configuration, which can be extended or overrided on need. Although Spring gets a bit limiting for such case, we will continue to use it as it is widely known.
• Documentation. We are working to improve the technical article and the tutorial. We also are writing a 5 minute introduction to Aranea that should introduce to most concepts with one non-trivial motivating example. The reference manual is also being updated.
  
• Integration. In the technical paper we promised that one of Aranea strong points should be possibility to integrate with other frameworks and standards. Currently we are investigating the possibilities of integrating with Struts, JSF, WebWork, Wicket, Tapestry and Spring Web Flow. Most probably we will integrate with Wicket by the 1.0 GA release.

We have also put down a plan of action for the 1.0 release cycle:

• 1.0 M3. An incremental milestone release that mainly focuses on API cleanup (like JSP tags). ETA is beginning of May.
• 1.0 M4. A release that focuses on functionality (several small features and AJAX) and documentation. ETA is beginning of June.
• 1.0 GA. Focuses on stabilization and documentation. Several release candidates will be released starting right after the M4 release.

After the 1.0 release we will freeze the API and concentrate on adding features (a number of which are planned in our issue tracker).