Announcing Pivot as a Top Level Project

[cl...@apache.org]

The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache Pivot as Top-Level Project
Version 1.4 of platform for building rich Internet applications in Java now available.

For Immediate Release

Contact:

Sally Khudairi 
The Apache Software Foundation
+1 617 921 8656
press@apache.org

Greg Brown
Apache Pivot Project Management Committee
gbrown@apache.org

FOREST HILL, MD  19 January, 2010  The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) today 
announced the graduation of Apache Pivot as a Top-Level Project (TLP), 
signifying that the Project's community and products have been well-governed 
under the ASF's meritocratic process and principles. In addition, the Project 
announced the release of Apache Pivot 1.4, the fourth update since joining the 
Apache Incubator in January 2009. Apache Pivot is a platform for building rich 
Internet applications (RIAs) in Java. It combines the enhanced productivity 
and usability features of a modern RIA toolkit with the robustness of the 
industry-standard Java platform. Pivot provides a foundation upon which 
sophisticated and engaging applications can be easily built and deployed 
over the Web. Because Pivot applications are written in Java, they can take 
full advantage of the comprehensive feature set and extensive industry 
support of the Java platform. "Users have much higher expectations for 
Web applications now than they did 10 years ago," said Greg Brown, Chair 
of the Apache Pivot Project Management Committee (PMC) and Principal 
Consultant at Cantina Consulting. "This is why we're seeing tools like Flex 
and Silverlight beginning to gain traction; however, both of these 
require developers who are otherwise happy using Java to switch technologies. 
Pivot is an attempt to create a modern, rich client development platform in 
Java."

Pivot provides a comprehensive set of standard user interface elements ranging 
from simple buttons to editable tree and table controls. It also includes a 
number of features that significantly simplify development of modern GUI 
applications, including an XML markup language for declaring the structure 
of a user interface, data binding, animated effects and transitions, and Web 
services integration.

"I've tried the demos and I was stunned," said Pivot user Trelieux Einagen. 
"The framework uses easy to understand markup for the applet front end while 
at the same time taking advantage of the power of Java for business logic 
and server side processing...I think the Java community in general is 
fortunate enough to have those guys at Pivot stand up and build something that 
can actually compete RIGHT NOW with the likes of Flash/Flex and Microsoft 
Silverlight/WPF without losing your sanity." Pivot user Scott Lanham said, 
"The current default theme has a nice clean look and feel...I am impressed 
with the good selection of widgets. They appear to cover just about every 
need of an application...Well done with Pivot!" "Thank you guys with coming up 
with Pivot," said Java developer and Pivot user N. Forbes. "Java really, 
really needs a smooth, coherent RIA next generation framework to 'seriously' 
compete with the likes of Flex and SilverLight/WPF...I saw someone comment 
on the Pivot Framework that it leverages existing Java skills to make the 
transition to the framework as seamless as possible. I looked at the source 
code and screamed out in joy: you guys may actually end up bailing out the 
Java RIA from pure academic obscurity and back into the more popular sphere 
of mind." Apache Pivot 1.4 is released under the Apache Software License v2.0 
and can be downloaded at http://pivot.apache.org/.

About The Apache Software Foundation (ASF)
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For more information, visit http://www.apache.org/.