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AppStudio 8 Released!

We’re thrilled to announce AppStudio 8 is ready.

The new release concentrates on making your workflow better. PhoneGap and Electron are both much easier to use. There are lot of smaller improvements as well.

We also updated many of the underlying libraries and paid off a lot of technical debt. This gets rid of a number of bugs and increases the stability of the product.

Here are some of the main new features. The complete list is here. We will be adding articles to our Blog and Wiki explaining how to use these features.

  1. PhoneGap: Auto generation of images makes it much easier to deploy to all the different device sizes. More than over a dozen other changes streamline and simplify.
  2. Electron: New menu items make Electron builds for Windows and MacOS completely automatic.
  3. Hot Reload: Restarting your app in the Chrome reuses the current tab instead of opening a new one.
  4. Better GitHub Integration: Go directly to your project in GitHub.com or GitHub Desktop.
  5. Python 3: AppStudio used to be in Python 2. Now we’re up to date.
  6. wxPython 4: The UI AppStudio uses is now also up to to date.
  7. Important! Windows 64 is now required. (MacOS already required 64 bit)
  8. Over 75 improvements in all!

Download Links

Use the link on our Downloads page.

To go back to Version 7:

Mac: Download for MacOS
Win: Download for Windows

Please open new topics on our Web Board for any questions you have – it will make it easier to keep track of the discussions.

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The Future of SQLite (Updated)

Apple has announced that the next version of Safari will no longer support SQLite. This has been confirmed in the beta of iOS 13 – it’s gone. Update: It can be turned back on. See “Update” below.

There’s no need to panic. There are workarounds, which I’ll get to later in this post. Also, there are no indications that Google will do the same with Chrome.

Some History

SQLite was introduced into browsers many years ago as WebSQL. It was a great idea: SQLite is small, powerful and solid. You can make great apps with it. The problem came from the standards committee. W3C prefers a clear standard with alternative implementations: saying “Just use SQLite” isn’t good enough. They decided, in 2009, to deprecate WebSQL and replace it with IndexedDB.

(Behind the scenes, I hear there were some heavy politics going on. Microsoft and Oracle were both very unhappy with WebSQL using SQLite – they each had their own established database software and did not want an upstart competitor to become standard.)

Regardless, Safari and Google continued to include WebSQL in their browsers. FireFox and IE did not. https://caniuse.com/#search=websql

The suggested replacement, IndexedDB, is not an SQL database. It’s more of an indexed file system. It’s been criticized for being slow, clumsy and inconsistently implemented. For more information, see this article: https://developers.google.com/web/ilt/pwa/working-with-indexeddb

Alternatives
Continue reading “The Future of SQLite (Updated)”

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AppStudio 7.4.2 released!

We’re pleased to announce that 7.4.2 has been released.

Late on July 29th, PhoneGap Build announced that version cli-9.0.0 is available. This is good news: As of August 1, the Google Play Store will require that all new apps are built using cli-9.0.0. Existing apps have till Nov 1, 2019.

This release updates AppStudio to handle the changes to PhoneGap Build. See this blog post for more info:
https://blog.appstudio.dev/2019/07/phonegap-build-updates-to-cli-9-0-0/

Here’s what is new and fixed in the new release:

  1. PhoneGap: If phoneGapVersion not specified, defaults to cli-9.0.0
  2. PhoneGap Samples: All samples are now compatible with cli-9.0.0

The easiest way to get the update is on the Help menu – “Check for Updates…”

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PhoneGap Build Updates to cli-9.0.0

Late on July 29th, PhoneGap Build announced that version cli-9.0.0 is available. This is good news: As of August 1, the Google Play Store will require that all new apps are built using cli-9.0.0. Existing apps have till Nov 1, 2019.

The PhoneGap Build Version tells PGB which libraries use when building apps. cli-9.0.0 includes Android API Level 28, which is required for Android 9.0, so it makes sense to build apps using this new version.

What it means for you
Continue reading “PhoneGap Build Updates to cli-9.0.0”

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AppStudio 7.4.1 released!

We’re pleased to announce that 7.4.1 has been released.

The biggest change is that the Samples now use Bootstrap 4 controls instead of jQuery Mobile. As mentioned before, it’s been 5 years since jQuery Mobile has been updated. If you’re still using it in your projects, please consider updating.

Here’s what is new and fixed in the new release:

  1. BS4 Navs: Fix what happens when clicked
  2. BS4: Input and Textarea can also be set using .value
  3. BS4: Textarea sizes to actual size of control
  4. BS4: Radiobutton: Inputmode property not needed
  5. BS4: Checkbox gives better message when index is out of range
  6. Deploy: Electron 5 is now supported
  7. Installer: Restore registry settings for Internet Explorer
  8. jqWidgets Grid: Clean up usage of ready property (was causing errors)
  9. jqWidgets: New jqWidgetsLicence property
  10. PWA: Some versions of IE do not support Let
  11. PWA: Allow for blank icon name
  12. PWA: Don’t put double quotes in the description
  13. PWA: Phase out some of the logging
  14. Run menu: Fix Run Electron menu item
  15. Samples: Use Bootstrap 4 controls instead of jQuery Mobile
  16. Samples: Compass now handles multiple ondeviceorientation events
  17. Samples: Fix old bug in GridNorthwind which caused error on split()
  18. Samples: GridWithScrolling did not have BASIC version
  19. Samples: jqWidgets Grid sample did not have JavaScript version
  20. Samples: New WebShare sample
  21. Wiki: Use JavaScript/BASIC tabbed control to show sample code more clearly.
  22. Wiki: Update offline edition

The easiest way to get the update is on the Help menu – “Check for Updates…”

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Web Sharing

On your mobile device, sharing something is usually as simple as clicking the Share button, choosing which app you want to send it to, and then who you to share it with. Now you can add this capability to your own apps.

Here’s what the share button looks like on iOS:

Click on it, and you’ll see something like this:

Use the navigator.share() function in your app to bring up the Web Share picker. Not all browsers have this function, so check if it exists before calling.

You’ll need to put the data you want to pass to the app share in the argument to the share() function. For more details, see this Tech Note: https://wiki.appstudio.dev/Web_Sharing

Setting your app as a Web Share Target

On Android, you can add your app to the Web Share picker, so other apps can call yours. Your app has to be a PWA (which AppStudio now makes automatically) and needs to register itself.

It will now appear on the Web Share picker:

You can see the code to do this in this Tech Note: https://wiki.appstudio.dev/Web_Sharing.

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AppStudio and jqWidgets

We’re happy to announce a partnership agreement with jqWidgets. It’s in the form of additional documentation, extra support and discounts for using one product with the other.

jqWidgets Ltd. provides controls for building professional web sites and mobile apps. It is built entirely on open standards and technologies like HTML5, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery. jQWidgets enables responsive web development and helps you create apps and websites that look beautiful on desktops, tablets and smart phones.

These controls work well with AppStudio. More that 2 dozen of them are built into AppStudio’s ToolBox.

The two companies have a similar approach to looking after their customers. Quick support on web boards, near instant bug fixes and regular new releases. The initial release of each product was at about the same time: 2011 and 2010, with major updates every year or so.

Both products are constantly updated to the latest web standards, so you will be able to keep your apps up to date.

For more information, see https://www.nsbasic.com/app/jqWidgets.php

As part of the agreement, AppStudio users can get jqWidgets licenses for 20% off. Contact sales@jqwidgets.com.

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2019 Contest Results!

We’re pleased to announce the results of our 2019 programming contest.

We had three categories: Business, Non Commercial and Education. All registered NSB/AppStudio users were welcome to participate in the contest. Prizes were $100 USD in each category.

Judging was by NSB’s experts. All judging was arbitrary and final. We looked for quality, performance, ease of use, sophistication and overall coolness. Apps could be anything: Enterprise, business, commercial, education, games or even something whimsical.

All programs had to be created using NSB/AppStudio. Entries could be commercial, shareware or freeware, and for iPhone, iPad, Android or multiple platforms. Code could be written in JavaScript or Basic, HTML5 and css.

Without further ado, here are our winners: (full results are here)

Continue reading “2019 Contest Results!”