Vaadin’s 2020 highlights and plans for next year

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Although 2020 has been a trying year, it hasn’t been all bad. Let’s have a look at some of the Vaadin highlights for the year, along with a sneak peek at our plans for 2021.

100+ new Vaadin releases

The Vaadin framework was busy this year: there were 4 new major releases, 3 LTS (long term support) version updates, 60 maintenance patches and 54 prereleases. You can find comprehensive release notes for each version, including the Vaadin 19 pre-release, on GitHub.

Introduction of Vaadin Flow and Vaadin Fusion

The addition of TypeScript views in Vaadin 15 generated a lot of user feedback, questions, and excitement, but also some concern regarding the Java API. To clarify the difference between the different ways you can build a Vaadin app, we introduced two new terms for our products: Say hello to Vaadin Flow and Vaadin Fusion!

Vaadin 18 brought new features for both Flow and Fusion

Our latest release, Vaadin 18, brought new components and enhancements to both APIs. Get started with the latest Vaadin version at: start.vaadin.com.

Collaboration Engine launched

Collaboration Engine is an exciting new feature that allows the users of your web app to collaborate in real time. It increases your productivity and reduces effort. You can try it now for free, and every commercial subscription tier includes a monthly quota of free users!

Try the collaborative demo app or read the technical documentation to get started with Collaboration Engine.

Vaadin DevDay was held online

Due to the ongoing global pandemic, Vaadin opted to move this year’s DevDay events online. The events were free and the upside of the travel restrictions was that we were able to reach an even broader audience. Two online DevDay events were held in 2020: one focusing on our Java API and the other on the new TypeScript API. You can watch the recordings from each event on Youtube. Here are the links to the playlists:

Prime price reduced, Component Factory open-sourced

We made changes to our commercial subscription tiers to better accommodate smaller development teams. We lowered the price for Prime and made it available without a minimum seat count (previously 3 seats required).

Find the full details at vaadin.com/pricing.

In addition, custom components commissioned through the Component Factory service are becoming available for free under the Apache 2.0 license!
Some previously-commercial components are already free to use, including Autocomplete and Popup.

Vaadin Chat launched on Discord

We launched a Discord server to increase communication between Vaadin Community members and the Vaadin Team. Users can now give and receive help, showcase their projects and generally discuss all things Vaadin. You can join the community of 250+ members at vaad.in/chat.

Vaadin full-stack web app tutorial released

Our 15-part tutorial series shows you how to build a Vaadin web app from setup to production. The series starts from scratch and covers everything from installing a development environment to deploying the finished app onto a cloud service provider. Read the text version, watch the videos or even download it as a free ebook!

Vaadin cookbook of recipes introduced

The Vaadin Cookbook is filled with common snippets of code to build functionality for your Vaadin web apps. Learn how to automatically apply a dark theme based on the OS setting, how to avoid double clicks on a button, or submit your own recipe to the mix.

Read the Cookbook at cookbook.vaadin.com/.

What’s coming in 2021?

In 2021, you can expect new product releases, live discussion and notification features for Collaboration Engine, a customizable design system, a “Live View” extension for VSCode and a lot more.

We’ve planned more online events and webinars, starting off with a webinar on January 14th featuring Tracy Lee, CEO at This Dot Labs, on how to become an expert in web performance. Sign up now!

The Vaadin forum will receive an overhaul to improve the user experience and to bring the discussions up-to-date. Changes include new discussion categories for easier navigation, and we’re also allocating more resources to help questions find their answers more easily. Meanwhile, you can join the Vaadin Discord server to have a chat with the Vaadin Team or other Vaadin Community members.

We’re also building a new and updated technical documentation site for our users. You can find details, code examples and other reference material for every Vaadin product there. The new docs site is open for Beta testing. Check it out and give us your feedback!

See our roadmap for a detailed list of planned releases and upcoming features. And as always, let us know if there’s something you’d like to see from us!

2020 has been tough. Coincidentally, it was also my first year at Vaadin.
I wish you all the best for the rest of the year. Stay safe.