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Year: 2016

Introspection

Introspection is a very handy and useful part of the Xojo language.

You can use it to examine a lot of the objects that are in memory at runtime. You can access the properties in those objects, call methods on those objects and even create new instances (with some caveats here).

But there are limits to what you can do with it. You can’t use it to create things that do not exist at runtime because they’ve been stripped out when your app was built.

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Code Refactoring Tools

Wikipedia defines Code Refactoring as:

the process of restructuring existing computer code – changing the factoring – without changing its external behavior. Refactoring improves nonfunctional attributes of the software.

Did you know that Xojo has a bunch of refactoring features that can help make this process more efficient?

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Advanced Retina/HiDPI: BitmapForCaching and ScaleFactorChanged

The most direct way to support HiDPI* for custom controls is to draw into the Graphics object passed into the Paint event. That graphics object is already configured with the appropriate scale factor and double buffering- the entire control will be handled correctly by the framework if the DoubleBuffer property is set.

*As with other posts, we’ll use “HiDPI” to refer to both HiDPI on Windows and Retina on OS X.

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Xojo Retina/HiDPI: The journey of a thousand pixels…

“Retina” is the name for high resolution screens on Mac and iOS devices while “HiDPI” is the Windows equivalent. For simplicity, I’ll use HiDPI (which really is the universal technical term) for the rest of this blog post. Now that we have HiDPI support in Xojo, if you app doesn’t use any pictures, you can simply open your project, click on Shared under Build Settings and turn on the “Supports Retina/HiDPI” option. That’s all you need to do to have a HiDPI version of your app!

Having said that, if you are creating or using pictures in your project, there may be a few adjustments you’ll need to make to your code. A little over a year ago the process of making sure we had all of the necessary graphics together to build a Retina/HiDPI IDE was added to my to-do list. While 95% of the icons created for the Xojo IDE in 2013 already existed, most of the graphics that made up the IDE itself did not, and the IDE itself needed a bit of an overhaul to get it ready for the big change, both in graphics and in code…

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An Introspection Gotcha

Introspection is a very handy and useful part of the Xojo language.

You can use Introspection to examine many of the objects that are in memory at runtime. You can access the properties in those objects, call methods on those objects and even create new instances- with some caveats of course.

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Headless Pi: Using Xojo and Raspberry Pi Without a Display

You don’t need to hook up your Pi to a physical display, keyboard and mouse. You can set up VNC on the Pi so you can remotely connect to it.

My Raspberry Pi 2 sits on my desk next to one of my speakers. It’s not hooked up to any display. I use a combination of SSH, SFTP and VNC when I need to work with it.

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Houston, Here We Come: Things to Do, Eat and Visit in Space City

My family moved to Houston when I was 3 years old. Though my little sister cried for most of the cross-country road trip, my parents did not take my advice to leave her in Chicago and we all arrived in the Bayou City. I took up the cowgirl hat and any excuse I could to wear my boots with every outfit.

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Visitors to Houston will find the city is served by 2 large, international airports (IAH & HOU), the restaurant scene is diverse and extensive, the city’s museums range from the acclaimed Children’s Museum to the beautiful Rothko Chapel, and the attractions of the surrounding area.

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Let’s Talk Office Ergonomics

If you work at a desk all day, you should be thinking about your ergonomics.

Being comfortable while you work is important. It enables you to concentrate better, but more critically, it prevents you from injuring yourself. From Musculoskeletal to vision and hearing problems, yes, it is quite possible to injure yourself while working at a desk!

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