SmartGWT features questions

[hr.stoyanov@gmail.com]

Hi all,
I am evaluating SmartGWT for a new project, and wanted to catch up with the latest features. Here are my questions:

1. Are there any plans to upgrade the current SmartGWT skins? Kind of hard to compete with the current skins against Polymer/Material/Flat/Boostrap design these days.

2. I see there has been some charting added now. However, are there any plans/examples for some modern spark lines/bullet charts composite dashboards (e.g. dense mini-charts embedded in tables)? Examples:
- https://www.recordedfuture.com/asset...rd-example.png
- http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/w...o-redesign.jpg
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_graph

3. How hard is to integrate the declarative security with Keycloak.org ?

4. What is the recommended way to font icons (such as font awesome) instead of image icons?

Thanks.

[Isomorphic]

2. You can use recordComponents to embed a FacetChart into a grid cell - just make sure to use recordComponentPoolingMode:"recycle" for a large grid. To create a "dashboard' style of Layout, use PortalLayout. If you have any kind of pre-existing implementation or specific chart you want to use, just render a <div> into the cell where you want the chart using the formatCellValue() API, then render your mini-charts into those DIVs.

3. The only requirement to use Declarative Security is that you tell the system whether the user is authenticated, and provide a list of roles (or looked at another way, capabilities). This may be completely plug and play if you have a Keycloak implementation that causes standard servlet APIs (eg userHasRole) to work. Otherwise, you can obtain the role information any way you like so long as you are able to provide it to the RPCManager class at the servlet entry point. Take a look at the QuickStart section on Declarative Security for more details.

4. We've looked at this, and it doesn't seem to offer large advantages over the existing approaches of data URLs (png or svg). Please do let us know if we've missed some major advantage here.

1. We have some changes we plan to make here, but we're carefully watching to see what parts of the current design trend actually stick vs are reversed over time. For example, the "flat" look has been taken so far in some cases that the end user loses important cues as to what is editable and/or interactive, degrading usability. There's also the question of whether oversize controls and a "printed materials" aesthetic really makes sense for functionally dense enterprise applications, or should really only apply to simpler web sites.

For now, we plan to take advantage of new fonts, and flatten certain elements (selectItem dropdown, scrollbar) but not all. We'd be curious to see a prioritized list of other changes that seem most important to you, if you have the time.

[hr.stoyanov@gmail.com]

Thanks you for the thoughtful responses! I will take a deeper look in SmartGWT.