Recently, the development team for Application Express has released the Early Adopter edition of the next big APEX release. APEX 4.2 can be tested and evaluated on the Early Adopter website.
What you can notice immediately is that APEX has been completely revamped. The whole interface is now HTML5 and CSS3 compliant. This can also be seen when building applications. Many HTML5 features are natively supported now.
The main keyword for this next APEX release is “Mobile”. Many new features have been introduced to support mobile applications. When a developer creates a new application, there is an option on the second page of the wizard to create a Desktop application or a jQuery Mobile Smartphone application.
This will hide options that cannot be used in smartphone applications and show other options that will facilitate smartphone development.
Another great addition to APEX 4.2 are packaged applications. Oracle now offers several standard applications that can be installed by clicking a few buttons. Examples are a Bug tracker, Group Calendar, Issue tracker and many others.
Other changes include improvements to Interactive Reports, Plug-ins, Websheets and Dynamic Actions.
There are many other great new features and enhancements. A list can be found here.
It is still unsure when the production release of APEX 4.2 is planned, but rumours are ‘Open World’. But it’s certain that APEX 4.2, especially combined with the APEX Listener 2.0, will be a very powerful tool for modern web development.
APEX 4.2: It's coming soon!,
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