Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Is Struts 1.x really dead?

Lately, I've been reading a lot of posts on various websites claiming that Struts 1.x is outdated and everyone should move to one of the new and shiny web frameworks. While I admit that Struts has its shortcomings and there have been no revolutionary new features in the official releases, I have some serious doubts about this statement.

First of all, there's too much applications already developed with Struts 1.x which need to be supported, at least in the next few years. Second, there's experience. Will you really be more productive, just because a different framework allows you to do things more easily? I don't think so - the experience and thereby productivity developers gained in the last few years using Struts is more important. Just think about your first project done with Struts and compare it to your current knowledge.

And then there's too much choice.. will JSF really rule the web world? How about Tapestry, Spring, Strecks, WebWork, ... ?! I think it will take another year or two until this "war" will be over, there's no real "winner" on the horizon yet..

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Struts Plugin V0.89c for IDEA 5.1x

Just a very small update, taking over some performance improvements developed originally for the Demetra version.. and warning those who still think using Struts 1.2.8 is a good idea :-)

Stay tuned for the next release for Demetra, unfortunately I don't have enough time right now to do it..

Friday, April 14, 2006

Current development of Struts Plugin

I'm currently developing new features for tighter integration in the IDE itself:

The first one is a dedicated Structure View for all configuration files (struts-config.xml, tiles-defs.xml, validation.xml) using the standard Structure View toolwindow from IDEA (I personally don't like the way Struts Assistant does this - using yet another toolwindow cluttering your screen). Ofcourse it supports all standard features from IDEA you know and love (Quick Search, Sorting, ..). It's nearly done and will be available in the next version :-)

The second one will be a new Project View - just for your Struts needs :-) But I'm still struggling with that..

Oh yes, and there's some noticeable performance improvements, especially when using Tiles - thanks to the excellent profiler from www.yourkit.com. Unfortunately the new background highlightings still are quite slow in larger config files, we'll have to wait until http://www.jetbrains.net/jira/browse/IDEA-7128 gets resolved (don't forget to cast your vote!).

PS: a few hours later, Demetra Build #5231 is out and what should I say.. the performance problem with highlightings is gone!