Chapter 1: Introduction

Overview

This tutorial presents you key concepts and suggested usage of ZK from the perspective of building a web application. We give a example application for each chapter's topic, and each application is built upon previous chapter's application to add some features. Then finally the example application is becoming closer to real application. The source code of the example application can be download through [github].

Chapter 1, we introduce the ZK itself including its strength, value, and architecture. Chapter 2, we describe the example application's project structure and it's

• purpose of the tutorial and summary of each chapter.

ZK's Value

• brief ZK's characteristic and feature
  • pure java
  • component-based, (fast composite UI)
  • event driven
  • server client fusion
  • handling AJAX communication details
  • support two design pattern

Architecture

500px

• widgets at client
• components at server
• widgets and components synchronize themselves automatically
• Server-centric
  • access full Java technology stack
  • control component to implement UI presentation logic
  • User interaction with widgets are abstracted as events sent to server with AJAX request, can be handled at the server side.
• Client-centric
  • customize visual effect
  • handle event