TIBCO has released General Interface 3.1, a rich client interface builder, under new licensing terms. With the professional edition, TIBCO General Interface is being made available to build and test AJAX-enabled applications for free, with restricted-access applications (i.e., applications that charge a fee for access, or that are not publicly-facing) requiring an investment (starting at $499 USD, although for precise pricing and licensing terms you should contact TIBCO).

TIBCO General Interface Professional Edition provides developers with faster drag and drop visual authoring tools for standard XML & XSD, SOAP and WSDL communications, as well as HTTP/S GET and POST operations. In addition, users will have access to the TIBCO General Interface Developer Community, an online resource used by thousands of developers. With its add-in architecture, TIBCO General Interface Professional Edition enables additional 3rd party packages to easily plug into TIBCO General Interface.

TIBCO General Interface works with existing capabilities of the browser, enabling users to get a full featured application instantly from a URL. The product offers a reduced development time and cost through use of familiar APIs, visual authoring tools, step-through debugging and extensible, reusable components. The visual tools are themselves a Web-based application powered by TIBCO General Interface – a full AJAX IDE running as an AJAX application in Internet Explorer, with future releases of the toolkit being targeted for Firefox.

I am better off with pure open source libs like ZK http://zk1.sourceforge.net/ for all my ajax needs!

A framework is too big for me. And it is still Internet Explorer only..<br />
I have a similar work on ajax widget which are quite small .<br />

AutoAssits 0.5 is a autocomplete widget written in pure JavaScript, 0.5 is not a public release, but screenshots and a short tutorial is available.

The philosophy of ZK is quick different from pure JavaScript solutions, such as dojo, prototype and sajax.

ZK takes so-called server-centric approach. While leveraging Ajax, it aimed to bring back the simplicity of event-driven, component-based component model, that we did for years in desktop programming, to Web development.

With ZK, Web developers see no more Ajax and JavaScript. Rather, it, as an open source project, encapsulates pure JavaScript solutions into Java components, such as dojo's Fisheye List and FCKeditor.

Regards,
tom / zk
http://zk1.sourceforge.net

A framework is too big for me. And it is still Internet Explorer only..

Only the toolkit is IE-only. The deployable results are supposed to be cross-browser.

That would be my number 1 peeve with this. I just downloaded it and it looks like a decent tool. But with all the competetion and again, FF support lacking. For emphasis, :-(
Gotta be cross browser.

Wow! Amazing!

http://www.tibco.com/software/business_optimization/gi_licenses_pricing.jsp

Anyone know why software companies are starting to sell insurance with their products(ie indemnity options)?

Could someone from Tibco give us an overview of what might cause the need for indemnity with their product? Is it a licensing issue or because of cross-site scripting exposures...etc, etc. Might be a good question for TSS to ask the vendor for clarification.

(I tried to get an answer but was forwarded to a sales rep who had no clue just that if you spent more on the Enterprise License I'd get it).

Anyone know why software companies are starting to sell insurance with their products(ie indemnity options)?

I can't speak for TIBCO on this, but I can talk about indemnification in general. IANAL but I've spent too much of my life reading end user license agreements (sad, but true).

For enterprise software offerings, indemnification is actually a very old thing that was/is included in end user license agreements that no one ever thought much about till the SCO Linux lawsuit. Indemnification, in short (IANAL), is saying that if you, the customer, get sued because of something in an indemnified product than that vendor will pick up the legal fees. The need for indemnification has become more visible as many software products now include open source software, and all open source licenses provide essentially no protection (indemnification) to the user from legal action around patent infringement, etc. One only has to read the latest woes of RIM to see the downside of this issue.

My sense of why you see it so prominently in pricing sheets, like TIBCO's, is that it is considered valuable to large enterprises (as you said insurance), and it also highlights that the lower end product offering do not include an indemnification clause that everyone just assumed was there.

Hope this helps

WATFS
Where Are The F*cking Screen Shots.

I can only find a video, and I'm not technologically advanced to watch a video.

Hope this helps. Here is a link with some good screenshots:
http://www.tibco.com/software/business_optimization/rich_internet_applications.jsp

Cheers

Ahh... excellent ! Thank you very much Scott :)

Yes, I have watched the 8 minutes slides. I also see the good-looking screen shots. But where can I find some documents, like "quick start guide", "developer's guide" ? Do I have to register before I can have access to such docs?

These guys have put such a massing effort into a great product. Is the small business pricing out the overworked, underestimated contributor to excellence? I wish to see both succeed.

These guys have put such a massive effort into a great product. Is the big business pricing out the overworked, underestimated contributor to excellence? I wish to see them both succeed.

We have established a pricing for companies that require enterprise support (even 24/7 phone) and all that typical stuff. We want to encourage usage and let individuals and companies grow into the usage they need (start at Free if they need to).

As for more docs, and quick start guides, they are all part of the GI Community. You do have to register for access to it (courtesy of our legal department). We've tried to make that as easy as possible. Actually even easier than registering for an account with TechTarget.

There are also sample AJAX apps there as well.

I'm experimenting with de TIBCO UI builder. I must say that it's a very nice tool to develop.. Everything is well documented and there are lot's of examples to study.