Curl Rolls Out Version 6.0

Curl releases a new version of its enterprise rich Internet application platform.

Curl has announced Version 6.0 of its Curl rich Internet application platform, which is targeted at helping developers build RIAs for the enterprise. Curl 6.0 delivers enhanced user interface capabilities and enables developers to create enterprise mashups that integrate JavaScript and Curl APIs. The new release supports thousands of APIs such as charts, controls, record sets, animated 2-D and 3-D graphics, internationalization and more, company officials said. Cambridge, Mass.-based Curl announced Curl 6.0 on Nov. 19.
The Curl 6.0 platform includes a "skinning" package that provides new appearance options for controls, including drop shadows, custom images, gradients and rounded corners. The product offers support for anti-aliasing and alpha blending, as well as several new AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) interoperability features and server interoperability features. The product also features an IDE (integrated development environment), which includes a drag-and-drop visual layout editor, debugger, performance profiler, interactive documentation and deployment tool, among other things, company officials said. Moreover, applications created with Curl 6.0 can make calls to JavaScript APIs in the surrounding Web page and can also be controlled from JavaScript in the surrounding page. The product also features support for parsing and creating data streams in JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). And with these features, Curl can be used to build mashups that include data accessed using existing JavaScript APIs, company officials said. Richard Monson-Haefel, an analyst at the Burton Group, said in a statement, "In addition to providing common UI widgets and other controls, Curl surpasses many RIA solutions in terms of richness by providing a solid foundation on which to build extremely sophisticated graphics to visually represent very large sets of data." Bert Halstead, vice president and chief architect at Curl, said the company concentrated on a specific type of customer. "Our focus on the enterprise has enabled us to see the specific pain points that organizations face when developing their most mission-critical, sophisticated, Web-based applications," Halstead said in a statement. Click here to read more about a Curl-commissioned study that compares RIA tools from Curl, Microsoft and Adobe. At the end of October, Curl announced the open-sourcing of portions of the code for the Curl RIA platform into three open-source projects under the Apache V2.0 License and hosted by SourceForge. Among the three projects is the Web Services Development Kit, or WSDK, which provides components enabling the development of Curl applications that make use of Web services such as SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) or WSDL (Web Services Description Language) and an XML document model. The second project, known as the Curl Data Kit, or CDK, is a library that facilitates data-centric application development in Curl. It features support for client-side SQLite databases, which is the same standard supported by the AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) and Google Gears. The third project is called Curl Development Utilities, or CDU, and provides functions supporting application development, including unit testing and project development. Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest news, reviews and analysis in programming environments and developer tools.