Oracle Application Express 4.2 - New Features

The top 3 biggest things for me are arround:
Mobile development
HTML5 (themes, items, charts)
Packaged applications

• 

  Application Builder for Mobile

  Release 4.2 provides declarative support for building mobile Web applications. Mobile pages use jQuery Mobile to render content on the vast majority of mobile devices. Each application can include both desktop and mobile user interfaces.

• Mobile and Responsive Themes

  To support the development of mobile pages, a new theme has been introduced which is based on jQuery Mobile. This theme supports mobile page transitions and gestures such as swipe, tap, and pinch. You can also declaratively specify JavaScript and CSS files for use within the mobile templates and pages.
  Another new theme introduced, Theme 25, incorporates reponsive design principles. Reponsive design automatically adjusts to the screen dimensions. Such themes work well on desktop, tablet and mobile devices.
  
• 

  HTML5 Charts

  Release 4.2 now includes HTML5 charts. Charts can now be rendered as either HTML5 or Flash, where Flash charts have automatic fallback to HTML5 when Flash is not detected.

• HTML5 Item Types

  New item types have been introduced including Slider, HTML5 Date Picker, and Yes/No Flip Toggle Switch. Incorporating such HTML5 attributes as sub-types for Email, Phone, and URL together with Placeholders will allow you to improve your end user experience.
  
• 

  Mobile Calendars

  A new "mobile-friendly" calendar template has been introduced along with a new List View calendar option.

• Packaged Applications

  Release 4.2 includes a suite of business productivity applications, easily installed with only a few clicks. These solutions can be readily used as production applications to improve business processes and are fully supported by Oracle. Packaged Applications also include a collection of sample applications which demonstrate some of the major features of Oracle Application Express.
  
• 

  RESTful Web Services*

  RESTful Services in Release 4.2 provides stateless access to data and logic, through the use of SQL and PL/SQL. RESTful Services are accessed through the use of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), defined within Oracle Application Express. Data can be easily served in JSON or CSV format, or additional formats by choosing PL/SQL as the source.
  * This feature requires APEX Listener 2.0 or later.