Blog about the Xojo programming language and IDE
Are you ready to sell your app? Whether you have a web app, desktop or mobile app, it’s time to think about how to package and distribute that app, how get the word out and, of course, how to get paid for sales.
In this #longread blog post, we’ll walk you through preparing your app for distribution, offering your app on your website and in app marketplaces for sale, as well as first steps to marketing your app.
Comments closedSometimes the idea for a great little app comes down to solving a silly little problem.
Last month, the family went mini-golfing for my son’s birthday. It was a lovely course called Pirate’s Cove Adventure Golf right next to the ocean. But they didn’t have scoring stands and we had to use a tiny pencil on a little cardboard scorecard to keep score. So this week’s app is a simple iOS app track of mini-golf scores!
The iOS app has two screens. The main screen has a giant Table that lists all the 18 holes. You tab on the detail button for a row (it’s the “I” icon) to go to the scoring screen.
Comments closedIn the Mac world, 32-bit apps have been disappearing more and more as time goes on. This year already we’ve seen significant steps toward 64-bit.
In January 2018 Apple stopped accepting 32-bit app submissions to the Mac App Store.
In February 2018, starting with macOS 10.13.4, Apple added a warning that displays the first time you launch a 32-bit app.
In June 2018 Apple stopped accepting updates to 32-bit apps in the Mac App Store. All new apps and app updates must now be 64-bit.
At WWDC 2018 Apple announced that macOS 10.14 will be the final version that support 32-bit apps. Although they did not announce a release date, based on the timing from the past few years macOS 10.14 will probably be released around the end of September 2018.
Comments closedAfter 2 desktop apps in week 1 and week 2 of the Just Code challenge, my project this week is an iOS app. Its very important job is to display dog pictures. I call it Dogs Up!
Comments closedIn week 2 of the Just Code challenge I took inspiration from a feature in 1Password that can generate a password suggestion. This desktop app allows you to specify a desired password length and the number of digits and symbols to include in it.
Comments closedIn an ideal world there is a person responsible for every step in software development, from coding, UI design, distribution, documentation, marketing and support. All of this can seem really overwhelming for independent developers and small businesses. But if you break it down and take it one piece at a time, it’s manageable by even the smallest team of one. Right now, let’s look at software distribution.
For software, distribution usually means generating and validating unique serial numbers for each of your products and users. Serial numbers (or license keys) help you manage your users, unlock a free trial or demo version for full use and, of course, minimize illegal use of your apps.
Comments closedIt’s the first week of the Just Code challenge so I’m starting with something pretty simple. This app lets you choose a color using the system color picker and then shows you the color values in hexadecimal (useful for programming, HTML and CSS), RGB (red, green, blue), HSV (hue, saturation,value) and CMY (cyan, magenta, yellow).
Comments closedXojo is an Object Oriented Programming Language and, among other things, that means that it supports Methods Overloading. We have seen in other posts that some of these overloaded methods can be Class Constructors, but, there are others things you can do. For example, we can overload the operators. These are the methods in charge of adding two instances of the same class, subtracting, multiplying or dividing them. But we also have at our disposal another operator we can overload: Lookup. What advantages does this give us and how it does it work? Let’s explore it while building a Preferences class we can use in any of our projects.
Comments closedI’m often asked by kids and adults how they can start coding and learn to make apps? You could start with the usual books or videos.
But maybe you want to jump right in. When I started programming that is exactly how I learned. I tried things to see what worked and what didn’t work. I also looked at and modified other programs I found.
You can learn to code if you just code.
Comments closedEarlier this week, the FCC’s repeal of Net Neutrality officially when into effect. What does this mean? It means that the rules that were put into place to prevent ISPs from abusing their power are gone. You might be wondering what power they actually have? I’ve already written about this before but in summary, most people only have a single option for internet service. That means that for them, there is no competition. Their ISP has them by the proverbial short hairs and there’s no other place most of us can go for Internet access. Net Neutrality at least prevented those ISPs from really abusing their monopoly. That’s now gone.
As the Electronic Frontier Foundation said, you’re not going to see your Internet service suddenly slow to a crawl or block specific sites. It will be more of a steady decline. It’s like having terminal cancer. It won’t kill you tomorrow but it will eventually.
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