The ThinWire team has announced ThinWire RIA AJAX Framework v1.2 RC1. ThinWire is an RIA AJAX framework for building zero footprint AJAX browser applications that feel like desktop GUI applications. Program AJAX on the server, using an event driven GUI model that reconnects program logic. RC1 includes more significant features than any prior release of the framework. Additionally, the team has corrected over 65+ issues that were logged in the public bug tracker and many more that they found internally.

ThinWire focuses exclusively on a server-side programming approach, rather than the blended client-side & server-side approach taken by many frameworks. One of many benefits of this approach is that developer code base is typically written entirely in a single language on the server and therefore traditional development, debugging and unit testing methods work without modification. Further, this allows developers to spend their efforts focusing on implementing the actual business needs rather than tackling many of the complexities associated with client-side development. Currently, a number of large financial applications are built on ThinWire and in use at a production level, one with over a 1000 users.

A quick run down of the top features are:

* Familiar event-driven GUI programming model

* Reconnects the flow of logic, no request / response
* Maintains state naturally via variables, not via session
* Develop exclusively in a server-side language only
* Rich set of complex widget components: GridBox, DropDownGridBox, Tree, TabFolder, Menu, Real-Time Edit Masking, etc.
* Full keyboard navigation supported by all components.
* Zero footprint client, no applets, activeX controls or browser plug-ins of any kind.
* ThinWire is fast! The entire client-side part of the framework downloads once (just over 100K) and no further HTML, CSS or JS files are downloaded after that. The same client-side framework is used no matter how complex the application is that developers build.
* Highly secure because no application logic executes in the browser and no service end-points are used like with other Ajax approaches. Only data developers make visible through a component is sent over the wire, everything else stays on the server.
* All major browsers supported: Firefox 1 or greater, Opera 8 or greater, Safari 2 or greater, IE6 or greater

For more information go to http://www.thinwire.com