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WebExpress 2.0.0‑alpha – The Halloween Release 🎃

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The Ghosts of Legacy Code Are Gone With the release of WebExpress 2.0.0-alpha, the project reaches a major milestone. This version marks the completion of a comprehensive modernization effort and provides the technical foundation for modern cloud, containerized, and enterprise applications. The primary focus was not the introduction of individual features, but the modernization of the platform as a whole. Over recent development cycles, numerous components have been revised, technical debt has been reduced, and the architecture has been systematically unified. At the same time, security standards have been strengthened and key areas of the framework have been prepared for future requirements. The result is a modern, robust, and future-ready platform that provides developers and administrators with a reliable foundation for demanding applications. A major focus of the work was the user interface. Existing dependencies on Bootstrap and Popper have been removed entirely. Instead, WebExpr...
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WebExpress – New Creative Energy

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WebExpress thrives on innovation, community, and the passion to create something special. Alongside modern software development, it is also about creativity, personality, and the ability to bring ideas to life. That is why we are excited to welcome the artist Raivoli as a creative contributor who will help shape the artwork and visual identity of our blog in the future. With remarkable talent, a strong sense of aesthetics, and impressive creativity, Raivoli brings fresh inspiration to the WebExpress universe. Her work combines imagination, expression, and attention to detail in a way that captivates and inspires. Going forward, her illustrations and creative ideas will help give our articles an even stronger visual identity while presenting technical topics from a unique and engaging perspective. If you have not yet discovered her work, we highly encourage you to visit her TikTok profile. Under @raivoli , she shares her artwork, creative projects, and insights into her creative pro...
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Location: Cottbus, Deutschland
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WebExpress 2.0.0‑alpha – Why execCommand is Dead

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The development of modern rich-text editors on the web has undergone a fundamental paradigm shift. The native browser API document.execCommand() is obsolete, generates inconsistent HTML, and prevents precise control over the document flow. Frameworks like Tiptap, ProseMirror, or Lexical demonstrate that the future lies in a strict separation of data and representation. WebExpress is now undergoing a complete migration from error-prone DOM manipulation to a deterministic, state-based approach combined with a modern, block-based layout system. The core of this new architecture is a central JavaScript object in JSON format that defines the document as a tree structure known as an Abstract Syntax Tree. A document consists of a root node whose children are either structural layout blocks or content-based text elements. Each node has a type, optional attributes like formatting, and an array of child nodes. A text section is declared as a paragraph node whose children in turn are text nodes w...
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Location: Cottbus, Deutschland
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WebExpress 2.0.0‑alpha – The Countdown to Halloween Has Begun

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The development of WebExpress 2.0.0-alpha continues to progress according to plan. Based on the current status, all major milestones remain on track, and the release is scheduled for Halloween. This would mark a return to a release date that was already chosen for a significant version last year. Over time, this consistency could evolve into a tradition, with major WebExpress releases arriving each Halloween. Current efforts are focused on completing new features, advancing core framework components, and delivering numerous improvements across the architecture, user interfaces, and development tools. Many of the planned enhancements have already been implemented and are currently undergoing integration and testing. As a result, the new version is steadily moving toward completion. Several bug fixes and smaller refinements are still in progress and are expected to be completed before release. As is typical for an alpha version, the current priority is to further improve stability, res...
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Location: Cottbus, Deutschland
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WebExpress 2.0.0‑alpha – The End of Server Sessions

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WebExpress currently uses a stateful session model in which a server side session is created for each client. The session ID is stored in a cookie and transmitted with every request. Initially, the session is used solely to recognize the client and is only associated with an identity after successful authentication. User, role, and permission information then becomes available within the session context. As a result, the identity is bound to the session rather than the other way around. This architectural model clearly separates the technical client context from the user identity and has proven itself in numerous applications. However, as requirements for scalability, containerization, and distributed cloud infrastructures continue to grow, this approach increasingly reaches its limits. Because authentication information is tied to the server side session context, session state must be maintained persistently and synchronized across multiple instances. This increases infrastructure co...
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Location: Cottbus, Deutschland
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WebExpress 2.0.0‑alpha – Native Certificate Management

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One of the strengths of WebExpress has always been its ability to operate efficiently across a wide range of environments, from small Raspberry Pi installations to larger server deployments. HTTPS support based on Kestrel has been part of the framework for years, and certificates can already be configured directly on endpoints using PFX files. This simple and reliable approach has served WebExpress well, particularly in lightweight and self hosted environments. As the platform continues to evolve, certificate management is becoming increasingly important. Today, HTTPS endpoints are directly coupled to certificate files defined in configuration. While this works perfectly for smaller deployments, it limits future scenarios such as automated certificate management, centralized certificate stores, cloud integrations, and dynamic multi domain hosting. To address these challenges, WebExpress is introducing a native certificate management infrastructure. The objective is to treat X.509 ce...
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Location: Cottbus, Deutschland
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WebExpress 2.0.0‑alpha – Removal of Bootstrap and Popper.js

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The release of WebExpress 2.0.0-alpha initiates a radical architectural shift that finally casts off the legacy burdens of past years. The declared goal of this transformation is a drastic reduction in external dependencies, a noticeable performance optimization, and a consistent alignment with modern, native web standards. To achieve this milestone, both Bootstrap and Popper.js are being completely removed from the framework. What seems like a major cut at first glance actually frees WebExpress from unused CSS and external JavaScript dependencies that have simply become redundant in today's browser landscape thanks to modern standards. However, this deep restructuring brings significant technical challenges, particularly affecting the migration of familiar interactive components. One of the biggest undertakings is the complete transition of modals to the native HTML5 dialog element. Previously, dialog windows had to be painstakingly controlled via nested div structures, Aria attri...
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Location: Cottbus, Deutschland
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