Smart Mobile Studio 2.0 (Hotfix 2)

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The next version of Smart Mobile Studio (v2.1) is right around the corner.

We do, however, need a bit more time than first anticipated on testing and quality assurance for this release.
Thus we decided to release another hotfix for v2.0 to support the users who needs these fixes.

You can download Smart Mobile Studio 2.0.2 from the downloads section, which includes this ‘hotfix 2’.

Changelog

Fixes

  • Fixed compiler bugs.
  • Improved command-line compiler (more independent now).
  • Source code highlighter for bg color of active line.
  • Underscores allowed in component names.
  • ShowMessage bug under Chromium.
  • Update of Top/Left properties when dragging components.
  • Update component color properly.
  • Improved CTRL+Click in source code.
  • Save “whole word” option in search dialog.

Download

You can download Smart Mobile Studio 2.0.2 from the downloads section.

—
Sincerely,
The Smart Mobile Studio Team

Smart Mobile Studio 2.0 (Hotfix 1)

Posted on by Posted in Announcements, Developers log, News

While we are hard working on the next release of Smart Mobile Studio (few hints: docking, debugging, HTML projects) we also want to support existing 2.0 users. We have fixed bugs that were reported since version 2.0 and even added few improvements which didn’t make it into the original release.

You can download Smart Mobile Studio 2.0.1 from the downloads section.

Changelog

Fixes

  • Fixed compiler bugs.
  • Fixed command-line compiler.
  • Project, Show application unit could be executed when no project was open which resulted in access violation error.
  • Expand classes and Expand all actions in the Unit structure window were disabled for external forms.
  • Alignment problems of the component palette when program is not started maximized.
  • In-memory state was not refreshed after RTL reindex.
  • If the RTL database cannot be loaded during startup (even if index file exists), it is automatically reindexed.
  • Access violation in Options if no project is selected.
  • Program terminated instead of asking for license when not running maximized and valid license was not found.
  • Fixed implementation of the Focused property.
  • Fixed TPointF.Displace function. Better implementation of TPoint.AngleTo and TPointF.AngleTo.
  • Fixed project loading code. Project files referring to missing files can now be opened.
  • Fixed links on Welcome page.

Changes

  • Disabled Project.Export project, which was not implemented.
  • Disabled Build Documentation menu which was not fully implemented.
  • Exception logging is built into product.
  • Updated CSS for the grid component.
  • Class Browser is temporarily disabled (it was not working properly). We’ll fix it in the next “normal” release.

New Features

  • Added grid methods TW3Grid.AddCells, TW3Columns.Clear, TW3Columns.Delete and properties TW3Column.Alignment, TW3Column.Color.
  • Added grid demo.

Known issues

  • [CTRL] + Click on a unit might open the wrong file if Source Maps are/were used for debugging and the directory ..\www\debug is still present.

Download

You can download Smart Mobile Studio 2.0.1 from the downloads section.

—
Sincerely,
The Smart Mobile Studio Team

Working with the grid component (part 3)

Posted on by Posted in Developers log, Documentation

Working with footer

Beside Column’s headers, you may show footer cell for each column. In footer you may place simple text, or you may show result of formula.

Footers are not visible by default. To show footers set ShowFooter property of W3Grid to True.

To access Column’s footer object, use Footer property of Column. Header and Footer both share same ancestor and properties such as Caption can be found in Footer too.

Continue reading→

Working with the grid component (part 1)

Posted on by Posted in Developers log, Documentation 2 Comments

Smart Mobile Studio 2.0 introduced an important visual component – a grid. As its use is not obvious, we have prepared a series of articles which will introduce the component and demonstrate the usage. Articles are written by the author of the grid component, Bojan Nikolic (Berg Soft).

In this article we’ll cover the most basic steps in grid usage.

  1. Placing W3Grid on a form
  2. Adding columns and setting column properties
  3. Adding rows and filling cells with data

Continue reading→

Smart Mobile Studio 2.0

Posted on by Posted in Announcements

Version 2.0We are very proud to release Smart Mobile Studio 2.0!

With version 2.0 a new visual designer is available that finally offers support for event handling right from the designer. Also a package manager allows to extend Smart Mobile Studio with 3rd party components (new chart and grid components are already shipped as packages).

To increase our market we have not only created 4 different editions (see below) tailored around the most popular demands, but also included a new command-line compiler, which is free of any charge! This allows building your projects on non-licensed machines (such as build servers).

Beside this, dozens of smaller changes has been made since the last release. A full change log can be found below.

Oh, this is really a great release 🙂
Continue reading→

node.js on a Raspberry Pi

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Raspberry Pi node.jsWith the Raspberry Pi a low cost computer is available that can be used for a great variety of different purposes.  The credit-card-sized single-board computer is capable to run Linux, which is available in form of different, custom tailored distributions. Most of them can be extended easily to run node.js, which was presented in-depth in the recent posts.

This article will shed a light on how to install node.js on a Raspberry Pi. It will present some nice ideas about how to get the best out of your Raspberry Pi (& alike). Last but not least the article concludes with some benchmarks to show some limits.

Continue reading→

Server-side Node.js (part 1): Introduction

Posted on by Posted in Documentation, News

Node.js Logo

In the new version 2 of Smart Mobile Studio you can now create server side projects! This is possible by using node.js, which is “the next big thing”: It’s an event based server side JavaScript application using the open source and very fast Google’s V8 engine. It was initially developed to be used as a HTTP server in the cloud, but nowadays you can also use it on your own PC or on a business server. It is powered by a small executable (6 MB)V8_JavaScript_engine_logo which doesn’t need an installation. Still, it can be extended easily via the package manager npm to fulfill any desired purpose and make it versatile in a lot different situations. For example, it is used by LinkedIn, WalMart and even Microsoft(!) in the Azure cloud. Also, PayPal has recently switched from Java to Node.js…

When you start using node.js, be aware that it is very different to web browser programming: it is a server with no GUI, so no ‘document’ and ‘window’ globals and no ‘alert’ function. It doesn’t run in a sandbox so you access all files, databases etc like you can with a normal application. It has it’s own API for this, which cannot be compared to “JavaScript for HTML”: it is just JavaScript and has nothing to do with web browsers.

But be aware: it is fun and addictive! 🙂

Continue reading→

Smart Mobile Studio 2.0 beta 2

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We have received lots of useful feedback from the first beta version of v.2.0. Though, there were more issues than expected, which is why we decided to add another beta version that fixes several critical issues. The current beta should now work quite smooth, despite several minor issues that need some fixing until we have a final release (see ‘Known Issues’).

Licensing

With the new beta version, we also updated the license system, which means that new license files are required. For testing/demoing a beta license is included in the installer. Keep this in mind when you try to run the beta with your old license file (will not work) and use the license file provided by the installer.

The beta is open for everyone, so no registration is required to demo our product.

Changelog

For a full list of changes for Version 2.0, please see the dedicated post “What’s new in Smart Mobile Studio 2.0”

In addition to that here’s a changelog from the previous beta version.

Fixes

  • No AV for event “building” (on component/event doubleclick) anymore
  • Copy, Cut & Paste were not working (properly) in Visual Designer
  • RTL indexing (but still not properly used)
  • Better [CTRL]+[DOWN] (goto implementation), sometimes navigated to a slightly wrong position
  • Removed some memory leaks
  • Fixed unicode issue in visual designer (see ‘Known Issues’)
  • Some preferences were not saved properly
  • Commandline compiler now works with missing templates

Changes

  • Command line compiler is purely command line now (smaller size)
  • Faster loading of visual designer (delayed loading of ‘Live Preview’
  • Improved ‘File’ menu structure
  • Menu item ‘Preferences’ moved to ‘Tools’
  • Improved ‘Options’ dialog (compiler tab)

New Features

  • Added package for Grid
  • Added ‘Save As…’
  • [ALT] + [DOWN] will cycle through components in visual designer
  • Added some wordstart editor commands, but yet partly occluded by IDE shortcuts

Download

Download the beta 2 installer [89 MB].

Known issues

Compiler/Codegen

  • Application title is typically not transported to HTML file (case #931)

RTL

  • Packages can not yet contain CSS code for styling

IDE

  • Minor glitches in source code proposal dialogs (items missing, in particular in .spr file) (case #930)
  • Some available Wordstar shortcuts conflict with other shortcuts (case #723)
  • Source scanning update interval internally fixed to 1000 ms, regardless of the settings (case #926)
  • [CTRL]+Click does not work for scoped unit (case #641)
  • Microcontroller (Espruino) support still experimental (will be official available in mid-January, cases #797, #819)
  • Unicode issues for some non-common, foreign characters (case #913)
  • New Visual Designer issues
    • Components might get invisible (use instance select combobox, case #875)
      • Opacity = 0
      • Beyond boundaries / off screen
      • one dimension is zero
    • Multi-select not yet working (while it appears to be, case #903)
    • Bring to front / send to back might not work properly (case #917)
    • Non-Nudgeblock feature not yet available (case #888)
    • Live Preview is only working in legacy mode (will be updated in v2.1)
  • Welcome Page outdated and not customizable (case #899)

—
Sincerely,
The Smart Mobile Studio Team

New Package Manager

Posted on by Posted in Developers log

PackageWith version 2.0 we have spent some precious development time into a new package manager. Similar to other solutions it allows to separate components into packages  that can be independently installed in the IDE. Although there is no imminent need for it right now, it opens the IDE for 3rd party and user components that can be integrated into the RAD environment easily.

Steema BergWhile there is still some work ahead to iron out some teething problems in the upcoming beta version, it is already used in combination with the new visual designer and its basic set of components, called the “Smart Component Library” (SCL). In addition to the basic set of components, two additional 3rd party packages are shipped with the product TeeChart.spk (by Steema Software) and Grid.spk (by Berg Software). The packages are built to integrate neat-less into the IDE’s component palette.

Furthermore we added an example package called W3Slider.spk with embedded source code. It is designed according to the all-in-one-file approach, that can also be used for the project. With packages designed like this, installation can be as easy as dropping the spk file to the ‘Packages’ folder. In the future we will also add support for encrypted package source code, so that it is possible to build closed source packages.

Implementation Details

While the amount of changes (compared to Version 1.x) in this regards seem to be very little, it meant infact to rewrite the entire chain of handling components (in the component palette, visual designer & property inspector) from scratch. Previously all components were “hard coded” in Delphi, which means for every new component we added, we needed to update the component palette, add a dedicated Delphi component for the visual designer & property inspector, convert from Delphi to DWS at compile time and handle property storage in form file. All this code was convoluted in several manners and one couldn’t change one part without affecting other parts in the IDE.

Since we wanted to rewrite the visual designer, we had to rewrite the entire package system as well. Despite the fact that the development of version 2.0 took longer than expected, we now have a system that is perfectly decoupled in the aspects of package manager, visual designer, component palette, property inspector and form handling. It will allow us to maintain and improve each aspect separately. Also it will be possible for us in the future to switch to a JavaScript powered designer, which might allow you to create your layout on the destination device (e.g. iPhone) directly. This allows you to let a designer or even the management redesign the GUI remotely while you can focus on the code…

XMLBut let’s stick on what we have now, let’s stay on topic! The packages are basically in a similar XML format as your projects, which means you can – in case of emergencies – edit (and eventually fix) the packages at any time. This can be quite useful, since at the moment the GUI part of the package manager is limited to the essentials. For example it’s not possible at the moment to specify different categories for different components in one package. So far you may only specify one category per package, while the packages would allow an even more detailed specification of categories (per component). Also it’s not yet possible to change/specify icons for a component other than by editing the package files.

But of course you don’t need to know all the details if you only want to work with the packages, so let’s move on to the next chapter.

Package installation / usage

PackagesThe installation of packages is very easy. All you need to do is to drop the package to the ‘Packages’ subdirectory.

Note that it might also be necessary to add glyphs for the component palette to the glyphs directory, but that depends whether the icons are specified internally or externally. At the moment a basic set of (external) glyphs is shipped with the product. We decided to make them available externally, so you can change them anytime to your favorite set of icons (the current icons are not always as clear as possible).

Once you have added/removed a package to the package subdirectory you have to restart the IDE in order to get the packages enumerated and listed in the component palette. If you have deleted a package, it will remain in the IDE’s cache until you restart the IDE.

After the packages have been installed, you can use the components in the same manner as you used the components in version 1.x.

Continue reading→