Wicket is one of the three component based web frameworks being widely talked about these days, including Tapestry and JSF. Wicket pages can be mocked up, previewed and later revised using standard WYSIWYG HTML design tools. Dynamic content processing and form handling is all handled in Java code using a first-class component model backed by POJO data beans that can easily be persisted using your favourite technology.
Some of the major new features of Wicket 1.2 include:
- Built-in Ajax support without the need to write any Javascript. Runs cross browser and cross platform.
- The ability to render multiple components in one AJAX call, where each component can occupy any part of the page
- Out of the box default resource bundles for many languages.
- Multiple form component validation allowing the validation of two or more fields that are related
- URL mounting
- Inline panels / Markup fragments
- OGNL replaced with their object graph language parser to improve performance
- Response filter support, added ServerTime and ServerClientTime filters
- Out-of-the-box AJAX components: paging navigator, link with fallback, auto-updater, AJAX form, AJAX submit buttons, etc.
- Component level authorization support; a sample project featuring a role based, annotation framework is now part of the standard distribution.
- Spring dependency injection support while maintaining Wicket (Java new operator) idioms
- Improved settings system: settings are now partitioned into logical groupings to make them easier to find