WebComponents 3.0 for IBM i

Green Screens Web Terminal for IBM i contains modernization engine to transform classic 5250 terminal screens into Web UI interface with the help of WebComponents, a standard web technology supported in major browsers.

With the current Modernization Engine 2.0 we learned a lot in the process, and it was time for an upgrade. New WebComponents 3.0 for IBM i brings completely new rendering engine, light, powerful, generic, decoupled, highly extendable, based on meta language. It is here to stay in a long term support.

The new Modernization Engine 3.0, even based on very similar concept from its current version 2.0, is a complete rewrite of engine internals. The main accent is on a meta language - a web based descriptive 5250 terminal screens in meta structure. It can be considered as web version of classic DDS sources describing screen meta-data.

Meta language elements are also WebComponents itself, meaning they can self render. In case of our WebComponents, almost every component is derived from generic GSElement JavaScript class supporting templating system and is able to inject any kind of HTML template based on any kind of 3rd party UI framework.

Compared to the current version which is integrated with Bootstrap, a new version is completely UI independent. Even so, our base model comes with Bootstrap 5.0 UI templates as individual files, easily replaceable with anything else without the need to change WebComponents source code. But that's just part of the story...

To get the feeling what is coming, basic introduction how all will work can be found on this link, Modernization 3.0.

V3.0 documentation is not complete, only the basics. However, most of the functionality is there. How small and light new engine is, one can compare above documentation with v2.0 version here Modernization 2.0 API.

GS WebComponents core will be our basis not only for 5250 terminal screens modernization but also for all our UI interfaces in the future. For example, we plan to replace the currently used web admin console UI with a new UI based on our WebComponent model and many more...