Vaadin has been in the business of building UI components for the web since our start in 2000. Over the years, we’ve built up a big library of components and more importantly we’ve learned a lot about what developers and businesses need from their components. With the introduction of the Web Components standards, we saw an opportunity to use the knowledge we’ve built up over the years to create a modern component set that runs directly on the browser and can be used together with any front end framework.
Today we’re happy to announce that we’ve reached our first major milestone and are releasing Vaadin Core Elements 1.0. The first stable release of Vaadin Core Elements includes grid, combo-box, date-picker, upload and icons. Vaadin Elements is designed to complement Polymer Elements with components that are needed in more complex business applications. Together, Vaadin and Polymer Elements make up a comprehensive UI component library that contains most elements you need to build any application. Because Web Components are built on W3C standards, you can also mix and match Vaadin Elements with any of the thousands of other ready made Web Components out there.
One of the most exciting uses for Vaadin Elements is building Progressive Web Applications for mobile devices. Progressive Web Applications let users start using your application directly in their browser. The apps are connectivity independent, working reliably in low quality networks or offline and are able re-engage users through push notifications. If the user visits the app repeatedly, they browser will allow them to add the application to their home screen for convenient access and integration with the task switcher. We have built an example Progressive Business Application with Vaadin Elements that you can try out on your own device. To help you get started, we’ve also made the full source code for the sample available on GitHub.
With repeated use, the browser will prompt the user to add the Progressive Web App to their home screen.
Looking forward
With 1.0 released, we’re focusing our efforts on adding more elements to the set and improving integration with popular frontend frameworks. In fact, we just released a beta version including Angular 2 APIs for Vaadin Elements and Paper Elements, enabling you to use Angular data binding seamlessly with all web components.
Browse all Vaadin Elements and examples