Last week Curl released a public beta of version 6.0 of the RIA platform. This version is a significant step forward for Curl and introduces a lot of things that may have been deal breakers for people in previous versions. The biggest in my mind is support for new, more attractive interfaces. But version 6 also introduces a few key features like the ability to make calls to JavaScript from your Curl application and a new server piece which allows any Java server to send messages using the Curl serialization format.
As I mentioned, the biggest thing for me is the new skinning support. Curl now has a skinning application that lets developers make the interfaces look a lot more polished. The new skinning support uses style-sheets so that most designers will be at home in the environment. Because of the enterprise focus, Curl has always been great performance-wise, but the aesthetics left a lot to be desired. With the new support for skinning, people using Curl will be able to make applications that look good as well as run well. Another piece of this is the new rendering APIs. In addition to skinning, Curl now supports alpha blending and antialiasing. This should really help developers create engaging and interesting interfaces.
The ability to call JavaScript from a Curl application is also welcome. Most of the other major RIA platforms supported this feature, and it will go a long way towards helping Curl developers take advantage of a wider ecosystem. I'm not sure it will get JavaScript developers looking at the platform more, because they still have to learn the Curl language, but it does mean you can start building Curl applications that tie into more Web 2.0 services. This may actually help Curl in the consumer space.
This is a big release for Curl and I'm glad to see they're chugging away and adding polish. They've been working to beef up their developer community and also have an RIA knowledge center with information on how rich Internet applications apply to business. This is still very much a company to keep an eye on.
