If you have time to stop by in Atlanta, be sure to come to our meeting there.
The Xojo Atlanta group is meeting 25th July.
Usually the meeting is in the Las Palmas Mexican Restaurant, 2210 Holly Springs Parkway, Canton, GA 30115.
And I am happy to join the meeting myself this time. Also good to visit Atlanta once again. I still have great memories about the visit 2011 for the REALsummit.
Be sure to ask me all your plugin questions and learn what is new in Xojo and MBS Plugins this year.
PS: If you need training, consulting or help with Xojo and/or our plugins, we can arrange private meetings for Las Vegas and Atlanta area. See you!
Peter Bially und Carsten Kümritz haben einen Xojo Stammtisch organisiert für kommende Woche:
Termin: 29. Juni 2016
Zeit: ca. 18.00 - 22.00 Uhr
Fürstenbahnhof Hanau-Wilhelmsbad
Burgallee 127
63454 Hanau
siehe
fuerstenbahnhof-hanau.de
Diskussion im Xojo Forum:
forum.xojo.com/31685-xojo-stammtisch-rhein-main-29-6-2016
Wer kommen möchte, möge sich doch bitte per Forum/Email vorher beim Peter Bially melden, damit da genügend Plätze reserviert sind.
New in this prerelease of the 16.3 plugins:
- Updated to DynaPDF 4.0.1.3
- Turned PPC back on for most plugins.
- Added JSONMBS.IsValid property.
- Added ColorTolerance parameter for DynaPDFMBS.ShowDifference.
- Added WordFile properties and method to change markers.
- Updated LibArchive to version 3.2.1.
- Changed IORegistryMBS.Path to work for entries longer than 511 characters.
- Added PortMidiMBS.Initialize which you can call to initialize now. Or the plugin calls it internally on the first use of PortMidi.
Download:
macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease. Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.
We are checking options for another Xojo related conference in 2017.
Again we look for a place in Germany, but this time we consider whether we go to Berlin instead of Koblenz. Berlin could be a city where people may go for additional days for some sight seeing and entertainment. Berlin will definitive be more expensive as the hotels have higher rates, unless we stay far outside. But if we go there, we need to make that decision soon to reserve the space in advance to get good rates.
Date could be somewhere in May/June 2017 as fall is taken by Xojo Inc. for their
Xojo Developer Conference. And I would expect the next XDC in 2018. (@Xojo: If you do something in Spring 2017, please tell me soon!)
If you have time, please fill
this survey with just 10 questions. Please leave name/email for further questions. For additional comments, please email us or comment here. Please don't do the survey twice. Thanks.
Only a few months left for the
2016 Xojo Developer Conference. If you plan to go, be sure to reserve your flight for a good rate now. And also make a hotel reservation in advance. Xojo Inc. just added another session where Greg O'Lone will talk about
supporting Retina and HiDPI in your apps.
XDC will take place in Houston, TX October 5-7, 2016. It features sessions on best practices, special interests and other technical topics, with content for every level of Xojo developer. Educational sessions will cover topics like Xojo iOS, Raspberry Pi, database design, user interface design, debugging techniques, writing secure apps, and much more! Want to know what XDC is like? Watch our highlights
video!
XDC Pricing:
Register now!
Advanced Registration: till August 22, 2016: $899
Late Registration: August 23 - Conference: $999
XDC will take place at the lovely boutique Hotel Derek in the Galleria area of Houston. It's right in the middle of two airports, giving you plenty of options (and time) to find a great flight! We have negotiated a hotel room rate of $164 a night. Rooms can be reserved
here.
If you have any questions about XDC, feel free to email Dana Brown.
New in this prerelease of the 16.3 plugins:
- Added more properties to DirectShowVideoInfoHeaderMBS class.
- Improved string access for all plugins.
- Added HTMLViewer.IEGetTextArea and HTMLViewer.IESetTextArea.
- Fixed a problem with handling alpha channel pictures (Broken in 16.2)
- Changed LDAPMBS.Connect to not raise exception on Mac/Linux and simply return no error.
- Added SmartCard plugin.
Download:
macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease. Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.
We have a central C++ class in our Xojo plugins to access string content. Recently I discovered that one of the apps here is really slow working on strings with plugin functions. And I discovered most time is spend on text converting.
The string passed to plugin has some encoding and internally we need some encoding to do what we need to do, e.g. a function needs UTF16, but the Xojo string is UTF-8 or Windows ANSI or whatever. So we use ConvertString to convert the encoding. In the plugins we actually call REALGetStringData function from the plugin-sdk.
But most strings are in UTF-8 in Xojo and in fact most times also just ASCII strings. So we can optimize this.
So for converting from ASCII string to Windows ANSI, MacRoman and UTF-8, we don't need to convert at all.
For ASCII string to UTF32 or UTF16 we can omit the convert and just do it ourselves. This saves a lot of time in our tests here.
So by not using the Text Converter here we can save over 90% of the CPU time to get the content of a string in a given encoding.
Of course not for all strings, but for most. Please try in 16.3pr3 soon.
New in this prerelease of the 16.3 plugins:
- Fixed bug in DynaPDFPageLabelMBS class.
- Updated to DynaPDF 4.0.1.2
- Added SSH2SessionMBS.UserAuthPublicKeyFromMemory.
- Added SQLSelectMT and SQLExecuteMT methods to SQLPreparedStatementMBS class.
Download:
macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease. Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.
June 8, 2016 -- xDev Magazine is delighted to announce the re-launch of RBLibrary as
xDevLibrary, following the purchase of the classic à la carte article site in April. To celebrate the grand re-opening, for the first week everything on the site is 10% off the normal price!
xDevLibrary gives Xojo developers a way to instantly purchase terrific books, tutorials, how-tos, and other programming articles from top Xojo writers. Currently the site contains mainly the same content as the former RBLibrary, but xDev is committed to enhancing existing products, as well as regularly adding new content, including articles from past issues of xDev Magazine.
With that in mind, the site is launching with with a brand new book from Eugene Dakin: "I Wish I Knew How to... Program Raspberry Pi 2 B Electronics with Xojo." This fantastic 380+ page book will guide you in using Xojo to program your Raspberry Pi motherboard and includes examples such as ultrasonic distance, LCD words, graphics, and custom glyphs, infrared sensors, photo and video recording, servos, LEDs, infrared receivers, and more.
Interested readers can find out more and save 10% on their purchase of the book (through June 15th) at
xDevLibrary.
Marc Zeedar, the publisher of
xDev Magazine, feels that xDevLibrary is a great complement to the resources already offered by his publication. "Now we can offer the best of both worlds: the value of a subscription-based service and the instant purchasing of individual articles and books."
Former RBLibrary owner Norman Palardy is also excited about the transition to the new site. "xDev has been providing REALbasic users with learning resources for over 14 years and we're pleased to see them continue their commitment to the Xojo community."
xDevLibrary is re-launching with a simple one-page design, but a more elaborate design is planned for the long-term. Feedback and suggestions as to what readers would like to see is encouraged!
(more)
Just 4 months left for the
2016 Xojo Developer Conference. If you plan to go, be sure to reserve your flight for a good rate now. And also make a hotel reservation in advance. There are no more rooms for 3rd October available!
Update: Dana informed me that hotel has rooms for all days and they will increase those for 3rd October soon. If you need one there you can contact her.
XDC will take place in Houston, TX October 5-7, 2016. It features sessions on best practices, special interests and other technical topics, with content for every level of Xojo developer. Educational sessions will cover topics like Xojo iOS, Raspberry Pi, database design, user interface design, debugging techniques, writing secure apps, and much more! Want to know what XDC is like? Watch our highlights
video!
Register now!
XDC Pricing:
Advanced Registration:
till August 22, 2016: $899
Late Registration:
August 23 - Conference: $999
XDC will take place at the lovely boutique Hotel Derek in the Galleria area of Houston. It's right in the middle of two airports, giving you plenty of options (and time) to find a great flight! We have negotiated a hotel room rate of $164 a night. Rooms can be reserved
here.
If you have any questions about XDC, feel free to email Dana Brown.
The
Xojo licensing is quite easy compared to other tools. You start with downloading and installing Xojo and develop your apps without a license. Later when you need to build something, you can order the license you need: Desktop, Web, iOS or Pro.
If you work in a team, you certainly want to use the some kind of version control, so you need the Xojo text based project format. This requires a valid license of Xojo, so with a company you buy your license keys earlier for that feature. And this feature makes sure you buy a license for every developer.
For the team one can have a team account and add the other accounts for your employees. Than you can buy licenses for everyone and assign them. This way all the license payments go through one person (Accountant or CEO of company) and individual developers don't notice changes. The IDE will automatically find the new key when updating the next time.
On the other side a typical school installation can go without a license. Or maybe just one for one computer which does all the builds. That makes Xojo an excellent tool for learning programming.
A new license currently is $699 for Pro. The others are cheaper, but on the long run most professional developers get the Pro as they use several targets. And with Pro you get the benefit of joining the beta program, so you can test newer version before release. At least you should open your projects in a beta and try if things still work. Would be bad if a new release breaks your project only because you did not report a problem in beta cycle.
Purchasing Xojo usually goes through their
website. In the past Xojo was/is also available through various resellers or local distributors. And they participated in some bundle offers in the past.
From time to time Xojo does sales like on
programmers day (256th day of the year) or
Black Friday. You can find old announcements for those sales and try to predict future sales. With a typical discount of 20 or 30%, you can just buy a new license if your existing one expires within 2 months and you still save money.
You can have your license auto renew. We normally turn this off and see what we do when we come closer to the renewal day. If there is a sale for updates, you can add a year or two to your license plan. Or if your license expires, you can skip a few months and continue with old license before you buy a new license. You save more than the 10% for auto renew if you skip 2 month before buying a new license. Clever planning can save money!
I also keep an eye here for licensing and post regular about sales. If you look for a discount,
feel free to email me, so I can remind you when something is available. For conferences or local meetings we had in the past discount coupons to raffle away.
PS: And if you like to support Xojo Inc. even more, you can of course just buy a second license. My account has currently 3 licenses listed. Or you join
XDC to meet Xojo Inc. employers in person.
New in this prerelease of the 16.3 plugins:
- Fixed bug for OverlayMBS class not creating a window on Windows 10.
- Added DynaPDFOptimizeParamsMBS class for optimize command.
- Updated to DynaPDF 4.0.1.1
- Fixed issue in Archive classes with text encoding.
- Added userInterfaceLayoutDirection for NSMenu, NSApplication and NSCell.
Download:
macsw.de/plugin/Prerelease. Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.
