Netzke gems were updated to 0.2.0. Along with that, a live-demo application has been setup on http://netzke-demo.writelesscode.com. At the moment it contains an extensive demo of Netzke::GridPanel widget. Each example on the page is accompanied with the source code, which makes it look like a tutorial.

Netzke framework is not only about lonely widgets. 0.2.0 release brings in an even more elegant way of combining/nesting widgets, which now can also be done right from within the controller. You want a Panel with layout ‘border’ and two GridPanels inside? Use BorderLayoutPanel widget:

class WelcomeController < ApplicationController
  netzke :compound, :widget_class_name => "BorderLayoutPanel",
    :regions => {
      :center => {:widget_class_name => "GridPanel", :data_class_name => "Genre"},
      :east => {:widget_class_name => "GridPanel", :data_class_name => "Book", 
        :region_config => {:width => 400, :split => true}
      }
    }
end

The BorderLayoutPanel widget also provides persistent storage of the region sizes: resize the regions to you taste, reload the page - and you’ll find the layout exactly how you made it.

More of the 0.2.0 release will be covered soon in this blog, so, stay tuned.