Xojo 2020r1 available

Today Xojo Inc. released the new version of Xojo 2020r1. It brings a lot of new features like Web 2.x, PDFDocument and more.

With Web 2.0 Xojo Inc. navigated itself in a corner as they promised 2020r1 to ship with Web 2, but that was not ready in spring for a release. Now we have August and Web 2 is in an usable state and Xojo Inc. decided it is time to release and for you time to try! If you ever run a big project, you know the 80/20 split. The first 80% of a project often take 20% of the time, but the last 20% take 80% of the time. As expected the fine tuning of Web 2 took longer than expected.

For Web 2, this is the new shinny and cool Web development framework. Supporting responsive designs, modern looks, a lot of new controls, themes and it comes with a much improved file uploader. Please try it. Maybe do a test project to learn how it works and what you can do. It's brand new, so you may want to report bugs quickly and hope for a fix in r2 later this year.

But Web 2.0 not yet complete. Major things like a WebToolbar and WebStyle editors are not yet there. A few things are missing like sheet and palette dialogs, web animator and control sets. Some controls like the WebCanvas, WebMapView and WebLocation may need a refreshment. Before you consider to convert any project from Web 1 to 2 APIs, be aware that you have to change a lot of names for the new API 2.x naming as well as events and there is no way back. If you have a project to be delivered this year, please keep using Web 1 in Xojo 2019. For any project starting now for delivery later next year, you can try and start with Web 2 right away, report bugs and then deliver in spring with using 2021r1, because until then, a lot of bug fixes and enhancements will come for Web 2.

For desktop and console apps, there are a ton of enhancements and bug fixes. The linux folks will enjoy building Windows 64-bit apps on Linux. Or when debugging Windows 64-bit, the debugger now better finds the right line to show for a break on exception.

Let us look on bigger news like the HTMLViewer using WebKit 2 on macOS. If you use MBS Plugin with the HTMLViewer, please change code to use WKWebViewMBS class for enhancements to it. Older WebViewMBS class is now gone for Xojo 2020r1 as it won't be of any use. For some projects, please stay with Xojo 2019 if you need some specific feature not available on WebKit 2!

There is a new PDFDocument class. Written in pure Xojo code, it can generate PDF Files with using graphics class to draw. It has a lot of limits, but may be good as a starting point for the average Xojo developer. If you need more, you can use our classes in the MBS Xojo DynaPDF Plugin, where we also have graphics class support, too. And DynaPDF Starter is included with OmegaBundle 2020, so get it now. If you need importing PDF pages and place them, please consider an upgrade to DynaPDF Lite (for import) or Pro (for rendering or placement).

What is gone in Xojo 2020? I hardly expect anyone to miss the 32-bit macOS support and that is now gone. As Xojo runs on macOS 10.10 and newer only and 64-bit macOS was introduced in 10.7 there is no use for building 32-bit anymore.

Please try the new version, report all the issues you see via Feedback app and we look forward to one of the next releases to come with the bug fixes you need.

Recommended MBS Plugin version for Xojo 2020r1 is 20.2 or newer as in that version we applied the newer plugin SDK for our plugins.

See also blog entry from Bob Keeney: Xojo 2020 Release 1 @ BKeeney Briefs