Author: George Henne

AppStudio 7.0.4 introduces the FlexBox control. It makes it much easier to design a flexible responsive layout structure without using float or positioning.

Start by putting all the controls you want to position into a container. The new Flexbox properties allow you to control how the contents of the container are positioned.

These properties are part of the new FlexBox control. They have also been added to Container, Header, GridColumn and GridRow. To use them in these controls, you also need to set the display property to ‘flex’.

Here’s what each of the new properties does. Complete information is in the Wiki page about FlexBox.
Continue reading “Introducing the new FlexBox control”

AppStudio 7 brings Validation to your projects. Now it’s easy to check the validity of fields on your form.

If a field is invalid, a message in red appears next to the field.

Validation doesn’t kick in until you ask it to validate the form. This lets the operator input data undisturbed. As fields are corrected, the error messages disappear.

Validation should work on controls from all frameworks.

Here is the link to a new Tech Note to get you started using the Validation library, plus some additional reading:

• Tech Note: https://wiki.nsbasic.com/Validation
• Official jQuery Validation site: https://jqueryvalidation.org/
• The Most Indispensable jQuery Form Validation Reference Guide: http://javascript-coder.com/form-validation/jquery-form-validation-guide.phtml

Want to get a wider audience for your app? Make it work in multiple languages!

AppStudio 7 introduces a library to make this much easier. You write your code once. You supply some translation tables. Your app then runs in multiple languages using the same version of the code.

(Aside: this is often called i18n, because there are 18 letters in “Internationalization”, and who wants to type that out?)

Controls

AppStudio Common and Bootstrap 4 controls already have translation built in. Any text which is in the Translation Table will be automatically converted. You don’t have to do anything except include the i18n library and the table in your project.

Text values at Runtime

If you’re setting a text value at runtime which needs to be translated, use the $.i18n() function:

Input1.placeholder = $.i18n("Monday")

The $.i18n() function looks up what the app’s language is set to. If it is “en”, nothing happens and “Monday” is assigned. If it is set to “de”, the function returns “Montag”.

Translation Table
You’ll need to set up a translation table and include it in your project. Here’s a sample with German days of the week:

{
  "Monday": "Montag",
  "Tuesday": "Dienstag",
  "Wednesday": "Mittwoch",
  "Thursday": "Donnerstag",
  "Friday": "Freitag",
  "Saturday": "Samstag",
  "Sunday": "Sontag",
  "Day": "Tag"
}

You can add as many strings as you like.

More Info

Each set of controls seems have its own method of handing i18n. For example, jqxWidgets has its own scheme. We go into the detail in this and other information in this Tech Note on Internationalization.

There is also a sample included in AppStudio called i18n. It shows the effect on lots of controls.

With AppStudio 7, it is much easier to move controls around on your form. If you right click in the Project Explorer, you’ll see new options to Cut, Copy and Paste controls.

You can use them to move controls from one container to another, or to paste multiple copies of a control into a specific container.

They also work between projects: you can copy a control from one project and paste it into another.

They even work on containers: you can cut, copy and paste entire groups of controls.

Complex projects are now much easier to manipulate!

We are getting reports of Kaspersky blocking installations of AppStudio. Users get a message like this:

It’s a False Detection: there is no problem with AppStudio. Kaspersky is misinterpreting something in our installer as a threat.

The procedure when this happens is for us to upload a copy of our software to their site so they can examine it. I’m not sure why it has to be our problem to fix, but we have done so a couple of times. There has been no response from Kaspersky.

This is complicated by the fact that we update AppStudio frequently, especially after a new release. They may mark a build as good, but we issue a new one a few days later.

Until we hear something, we recommend you turn off Kaspersky when installing AppStudio, or use another anti virus app.

Update: William Robinson suggests the following workaround:

Open Kaspersky
Click on the settings cog (Bottom left hand corner)
Click on protection (Second listing on left)
Click on Firewall
Click on Configure Application Rules (Bottom left corner)
Scroll down to any NSB logo’s and Right Click and set to Allow

All should be good after this.

Update 2: There are reports of similar messages from Microsoft Security, AVG and Norton.

Update 3: There are reports of problems with Quick Heal Total Security as well. Whitelisting AppStudio solves the problem.

Update 4: Avast as well.

Update 5: You might think before you install AV software. These companies sometimes collect and sell your data, which is pretty much the opposite of you would expect. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qjdkq7/avast-antivirus-sells-user-browsing-data-investigation