Wakanda Beta is here!

It's so close we can almost taste it. Wakanda is now in its first beta, which means an official, production release is just around the corner.

As of today, with Wakanda Beta, the release is now feature frozen, which means you can start testing Wakanda in the same manner it will be functioning as a full release. Now you can start planning your projects, playing with your ideas, and making the most out of this all-JavaScript platform.



Here are some highlights of the beta release:

• Wakanda Server
  • WakandaDB: a NoSQL object datastore with native HTTP & server-side JavaScript APIs
  • HTTP 1.1 server with event-based thread pool and session management
  • standards-based SSJS APIs using WebKit Nitro
     
• Wakanda Studio
  • a full solution and project manager with an embedded media library
  • a graphical datastore model designer with permissions management
  • a graphical Users & Groups manager
  • a WYSIWYG GUI Designer with direct access to Datastore model resources and rich CSS3 support
  • an advanced code editor with smart support for JavaScript and WakandaDB
  • a graphical & multi-context server-side JavaScript debugger
     
• Wakanda Client Framework (WAF)
  
  • an Ajax-optimized data provider with automatic caching, paging, and lazy loading management
  • data sources that easily bind server and local data to widgets
  • a rich collection of business-oriented widgets like grids, forms, sliders, components, progress bars and matrices
  • native scripts and stylesheets loader, a JSON-RPC client, Google Web font support... and much more!
  • Runs on all modern browsers

For a quick overview of what you get, check out the Top 10 Reasons To Use Wakanda Now. 

And to get you going, check out this video of what you can do right away with the beta:



Even more features and ideas are being worked on in the development branch – which enthusiasts are invited to follow – but in the meantime, download the beta and start getting ready to put Wakanda into use.  And don't forget to report any issues or bugs you find in the Wakanda Forum, which is your direct line to the Wakanda development team.

Also, be sure to check out the "Wakanda Today" tab in the Studio to keep you in touch with what's going on in the community. You'll have direct access to the latest information from the blog, the forum, Twitter, and also a list of the events that people from Wakanda will attend, speak at, or participate in any way We hope to see you out there!