On my next visits to Berlin and Hamburg, we plan Xojo developer meetings:
Wer hat Interesse an einem Xojo Entwicklertreffen in Hamburg oder Berlin für kommenden Mai/Juni?
Zeitlich ca. 18 bis 21 Uhr. Für Hamburg der 20. Juni und für Berlin der 30. Mai 2022.
Einfach gemütlich zusammen sitzen in einem Restaurant oder Biergarten und über Xojo plaudern.
Gerne zeige ich auch neue Pluginfunktionen oder helfe bei Problemen mit Xojo Projekten. Einfach Computer mitbringen und was zeigen.
Wer dabei sein möchte, bitte bei
uns melden!
In this article I want to introduce you to the new functionalities from the MBS Xojo Plugins in version 22.1.
Phidget
We added Phidget classes around 2010 to our
MBS Xojo Plugins.
We kept that running and various clients used all the existing classes for various projects.
To keep compatibility we renamed the old classes with a prefix Old,
e.g. OldPhidgetMBS.
and made new classes for for the new Phidget library with Apple Silicon support.
We can put in all the knowledge we got about C++ and Xojo and improve the classes to current standards.
We wrap the C API from Phidgets library and so you can always look on their documentation, too.
If you use a humidity, magnetic, light, gyroscope, PH, sound, temperature,
capacitive touch or pressure sensor for a Xojo project, you can try the new classes.
You can recognize input from analog and digital sources and output signals.
You can control various motors including steppers.
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Just one month left until the virtual
Xojo conference 2022 starts.
Sadly the Xojo conferences got cancelled last year. But beside the social get-together, we really miss the keynote presentations and that may come next month. What has Xojo Inc. been working on? What is the vision for the team on what to deliver later this year and next year? We'd love to know and so we look forward to the presentation.
For MBS we will add our own presentation about what is new in the MBS Plugins. You may have missed some new cool features in the last two years, so we can sum them up for you.
If you are interested, please use the
register form to get notified about the details.
From time to time clients run into trouble with placing orders. Sorry for that, but let us take the time to explain a bit.
The order process goes into multiple steps with several parties. Each step may fail and then the customer is frustrated.
In the order process MBS website sends you to the store website. If that website loads, you can enter your details. Then you get directed to the payment processor website (adyen or PayPal for example). These pages need to load and then loads itself the bank website for the second factor. Most banks ask you some additional thing like a token sent via SMS, a code generated in an app or a transaction password. Once that step is done, the bank redirects back to the shop and once you completed there, we get redirected to our website.
On that way of redirects, all content filters in the browser may decide to block something. But bigger problems seem to be that older browsers are in use and the latest TLS v1.2 is not used or not used with stronger cryptography.
If you run into those problems, please switch to a different browser, e.g. try a recently updated copy of Safari, Google Chrome or Firefox. You may disable ad blockers and make sure they are up to date including your operation system.
Let us introduce you the Scintilla control for Xojo. A professional source code editor for your Xojo projects.
See also ScintillaControlMBS and DesktopScintillaControlMBS controls and the MBS Xojo Scintilla Plugin page.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have questions.
Nickenich, Germany - (March 15th, 2022) -- MonkeyBread Software today is pleased to announce
MBS Xojo Plugins 22.1 for macOS, Linux and Windows, the latest update to their product that is easily the most powerful plugin collection currently available for Xojo.
MBS Xojo Plugins have been updated and now includes over 3000 classes and 79,000 documented features, and the versatile plugins have gained more new functions:
For over ten years we had classes to work with Phidget devices. Check out the
Phidgets website for a list of sensors, motors and I/O boards available. We rewrote the
classes to use the newer Phidgets libraries and integrate newer APIs. Your Xojo app can use sensors for light or temperature, react on them with running a motor to move the solar arrays. The
old Phidget classes got an Old prefix, so you can continue to use them until you moved to the
new classes.
Our
Scintilla control to host a professional text editor got a lot of Xojo developers excited. We enhanced it with a few new functions and bug fixes. The updated example shows you how to implement search and replace as well as HTML syntax colorizing. The LexerNames functions can list the over 100 available lexers to pick one for syntax coloring.
For macOS we added
NSSwitchControlMBS and
DesktopNSSwitchControlMBS controls to host a switch control. The
NSSwitchMBS class can configure the control appearance. The controlSize property for
NSControlMBS class allows you to pick between small, normal and big button styles. If you load symbol images for
NSImageMBS class, you can now use
NSImageSymbolConfigurationMBS class to configure the options for it.
The
DynaPDFMBS class got new support for PDF/A 2u and 3u. The new SpaceWidthFactor property allows you to control how the ExtractText function adds spaces. And you can pass empty text for RenameSpotColor to make a no name spot color.
For Windows we updated our
Chromium classes to a newer version of CEF. Whatever Xojo version you use, our plugin can detect the version of Chromium and use the right interface.
We changed the MenuAction events for our controls to be named ContextualMenuAction or ContextualMenuItemSelected to match Xojo. Our ConstructContextualMenu events are now matching Xojo's controls. You may have to adjust your code if you use those.
We got a CoverArt property for
TagLibFileRefMBS class to read cover art for MP3, MP4 or FLAC music files, the CheckCertificates and Verify methods for
X509MBS class, a quick and handy
ContainsWholeWordMBS function, and a SetTextAlignment method to change text alignment for
NSAlertMBS class.
Finally we updated CURL library to version 7.82.0, DynaPDF to 4.0.66.172, LCMS to 2.13.1, SQLAPI to 5.1.9, SQLite to 3.38.1 and Xcode to 13.2.1.
See
release notes for a complete list of changes.
New in this prerelease of the 22.1 plugins:
- Updated SQLAPI to version 5.1.9.
- Fixed potential problem that SetCharacteristicValue method could crash in WindowsBlueToothLEMBS class on low memory situation.
- Fixed buffer passing in SetCharacteristicValue method for WindowsBlueToothLEMBS class.
Download:
monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or
from DropBox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.
New in this prerelease of the 22.1 plugins:
- Added SetTextAlignment method to NSAlertMBS class to use left text alignment for dialogs on macOS.
- Fixed a problem in SSH2TunnelMBS class, where cancel didn't end the tunnel quickly in some cases.
- Renamed Close event to DidClose in WKWebViewControlMBS and WKWebViewIOSControlMBS.
- Updated CURL to version 7.82.0.
- Changed ConstructContextualMenu and ContextualMenuItemSelected/ContextualMenuAction events to not declare them in the plugin, but let Xojo just add them.
- Renamed MenuAction events to ContextualMenuAction or ContextualMenuItemSelected to match Xojo.
Download:
monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or
from DropBox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.
The ScintillaControlMBS control in MBS Xojo Plugins comes with a standard contextual menu and you may not have any need to change it. Here you see screenshots from Mac and Windows:
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Since Big Sur the text alignment for standard dialogs on macOS is centered, but we found a way to adjust that if needed:
For
FileMaker, you can use the new
Dialog.SetTextAlignment function to change alignment.
For
Xojo, you can use the new
SetTextAlignment method in
NSAlertMBS class to configure this.
In both cases you can pass left, center and right as desired wish. You can also ask for natural alignment, which may do right or left depending on the locale. Also defined is the justified value, but not sure if the dialog honors it.
You can try those in pr6 of our plugins.
The March/April (20.2) issue of
xDev Magazine is now available. Here's a quick preview of what's inside:
A Rad Way for RAD by David Duke
Xojo is an awesome RAD -- Rapid Application Development -- platform, but there are still features missing for a finished, polished application. Now David Duke is introducing his new Cryptic RADPACK, an add-on for Xojo that includes tons of widgets, controls, and other bits of code to make creating your next app even faster!
Stuck in Quarantine by Marc Zeedar
As Apple makes macOS more secure, it also complicates app installation. Here Marc writes about getting bitten by Apple's "quarantine" feature when he installed Xojo.
Cipher Part 6 -- DES by Eugene Dakin
Eugene culminates his "ciphere" series by exploring the DES encryption standard, which builds upon everything we've learned so far.
Colorominoes by Marc Zeedar
Marc tries to get a game written in REALbasic in the 1990s up and running with the latest Xojo.
Plus: Debugging basics, desktop user interfaces, how to make Wifi QR codes, SQL triggers, and much more!
New in this prerelease of the 22.1 plugins:
- Added search and replace window to Scintilla example project.
- Updated SQLite to version 3.38.0.
- Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.66.172.
- Deprecated DuckDatabaseMBS and related classes since MBS Xojo SQL Plugin handles this.
- Added Add method for StringHandleMBS class to add another StringHandleMBS object.
- Fixed a problem with SQLPreparedStatementMBS class, where an invalid parameter name would crash the app as clang optimized the NULL check away.
- Disabled debug logging for WordFile class. Sorry for leaving that on.
Download:
monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/ or
from DropBox.
Or ask us to be added to our shared DropBox folder.
On my next visits to Berlin and Hamburg, we plan Xojo developer meetings:
