The work Carsten does was brought to my attention when he replied to one of our posts on Facebook talking about Xojo’s SerialConnection. Carsten said he used SerialConnection to open and monitor cash drawers in his Xojo-written ERP, AWARD+. Read how Carsten has used Xojo alongside PostgreSQL, MBS DynaPDF, and other tools for the last 25 years.

Mac, Windows or Linux?

All of them.

How would you explain your most recent project to a new developer?

We often have to keep up to new legal requirements here in the EU, so the last part was the integration of electronic invoices. For doing this we had to gather information about the laws, do’s and dont’s and required tools. We had to build a parser and creator for the XML part (a colleague of mine did most of that job in Xojo) and to integrate that into our module for creating and mailing invoices (that is my job). To make things easier, we often accessed existing partial solutions like MBS DynaPDF and Ghostscript to build a required PDF/A.

What is something that has surprised you about coding in the last 5 years?

I am very surprised that still so many people insist on using C or C++. It’s like driving an old steam locomotive instead of a new truck. In our time, solutions have to be done very fast and they don’t last forever. So an IDE like Xojo is faster for prototyping or building. Especially for a small customer base or even individual development.

Xojo isn’t the only tool in your kit. What is a piece of software more people should know about?

The software we make heavy use of is PostgreSQL. And we use Git. Do not try to work in a team without having something like Git. Even a single developer benefits from versioning and backups when using a hub. We use every command-line program that may help us, to name a few: ImageMagick, SIPs, qlmanage, Ghostscript and curl.

Which three Xojo language features or framework capabilities do you find yourself relying/using on the most?

• PostgreSqlPlugin
• AutoComplete and other integrated help
• Navigation inside code editor like “Go to Function” using ContextualMenu

How did you find Xojo? And when did you start using Xojo?

I used GFA Basic on Amiga and was looking for something similar for Apple Macintosh. Maybe started with REALbasic using v3.

What did you first build with Xojo? And when was that?

My first job was importing foreign code from 4th Dimension into RealBasic. That started back in late 2000.

What do you build with it now?

ERP System AWARD+ including merchandise management, webshop, document database, cash register system, ticketing and much more.

Looking back, how long did it take for your app vision to evolve from a blank project into a working solution?

We moved from 4th Dimension to Xojo and SQL (including own PlugIn for PrimeBase) in about two years for the whole big main ERP module. Other tools took much less time.

What is something you worked on that you want to talk about?

As I mentioned it is of great help to have learned skills outside the world of IT. And don’t invent the wheel twice. Having tools like SIPs or ImageMagick i.e., there is no need to build up your own thumbnail generator.

Do you earn a living with Xojo?

I earned my living for the past 25 years with Xojo. Not every day because I also helped as sysadmin. But my main occupation will soon end.

Do you use it for any hobbies?

Writing small tools for Windows that I am used to having on my Mac and vice versa.

What’s your biggest Xojo success?

Every new app or module finished should be the biggest success. This is what I call motivation. Most proud moment? I remember installing “my” software in a German State Long-Term Archive. Running it started all those tape robots. What a feeling…

If you were introducing Xojo to a friend, which three words would you use to describe it?

• Cross Platform
• Easy to learn and use
• Start for free

Thank you to Carston Kobusch for answering questions and sharing his Xojo experience with the community. 

If you have an app, a project or a person you want to see featured in Spotlight On, tell us about it!

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In 2025, guest authors shared their expertise and real-world experience on the Xojo Blog. These posts bring fresh perspectives, practical solutions and deep technical insight that help other developers learn faster, solve problems more effectively and feel more connected to the Xojo community.

Guest posts in 2025 included:

• Martin T., Xojo MVP: Hide the Tabs in an Android MobileTabPanel Using Declares
• Martin T., Xojo MVP: Xojo for Android: A Two-Year Retrospective
• Martin T., Xojo MVP: It’s here – Android Design Extensions 4.0
• Anthony Cyphers, GraffitiSuite and Xojo MVP: Handling Feature Requests
• Kem Tekinay, Xojo MVP: MemoryBlocks For Speed: A Case Study
• Kem Tekinay, Xojo MVP: The Beauty of Binary Searches
• Jürg Otter: Build a Xojo Plugin with GitHub Actions
• Ezekiel Burke, Iron Elephant Solutions: Introduction to PocketBase: A Backend Alternative for Xojo Developers

We are always looking for users in the Xojo community who want to share a problem they’ve solved, a creative solution or an interesting project. If you’re interested in contributing a guest post or have an idea you’d like to explore, send it to me at alyssa@xojo.com.

In 2024, we introduced the Spotlight On series to highlight the work Xojo users do and their experiences using Xojo. Since many Xojo users don’t fit the mold of a traditional developer role, Spotlight On offers a fun and approachable way to learn how someone got started with Xojo and how they use it today. Spotlights can focus on an individual developer, a business or a specific Xojo-based project.

Spotlight On features in 2025:

• Spotlight On: GraffitiSuite
• Spotlight On: xDev Magazine
• Spotlight On: LX Aer
• Spotlight On: EKlectic Accounting
• Spotlight On: Raximus Studios
• Spotlight On: Richard Klingler
• Spotlight On: Enrique Contreras
• Spotlight On: Offroad Portal
• Spotlight On: Tim Dietrich
• Spotlight On: Sounds In Sync
• Spotlight On: Android Design Extensions
• Spotlight On: Aaron Andrew Hunt

If you’d like to be featured in a future Spotlight On or know someone in the Xojo community whose story would be great to share, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out with suggestions to me at alyssa@xojo.com.

The Xojo Blog is at its best when it reflects the voices, experiences and creativity of the community itself. Whether through guest posts, Spotlight On posts or shared ideas, we look forward to continuing to learn from and celebrate the people who make Xojo what it is.

Alyssa has been with Xojo for over 18 years. She loves solving problems and building community. You can reach her at alyssa@xojo.com or through any of Xojo’s social media channels. If you can’t reach her she’s probably out hiking the beautiful trails through her city of Portland, Oregon, or maybe enjoying a drink with friends by the river.

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Aaron Andrew Hunt has used Xojo for over 20 years. Recently, he and Geoff Perlman got into a conversation about their shared love of music and coding. Aaron is a composer who uses Xojo (along with MBS plugins) to develop desktop apps for music and publishing. He also creates bespoke music-related apps, in fact, he has been collaborating with a UK-based composer since 2012 on an intensive music database app.

Mac, Windows or Linux?

I’ve been a Mac user since the 90’s, and Xojo lets me write software on the Mac, then port that with minimal effort to Windows. Linux has never held enough incentive for me, but Xojo works on that too. There are obvious differences between the platforms, but Xojo minimises them. Porting code from Mac to Windows sometimes includes a bit of tweaking on Windows, but in many cases it’s a matter of minutes. There have been a few times I’ve developed on Windows and then ported to the Mac. It’s a big plus that Xojo lets us use whichever platform we prefer, and switch platforms easily.

How would you explain your most recent project to a new developer?

My most recent project is protected under a strict NDA, so I’m afraid I’m not allowed to explain it to anyone!

What’s on your “Learn Next” list?

A large part of coding is fairly simple logic, but a project of any complexity is going to present problems that will lead to learning something new, or sometimes re-learning something long forgotten. That learning aspect is one of the most attractive parts of the work for me. I make task lists, but “learn this or that” usually isn’t on the list; I write down the goal, and if I’m able to reach that, it means I’ve learned what I needed to know.

How did you find Xojo? And when did you start using Xojo?

By my count I’ve been using Xojo for 23 years. I had just started a new job teaching at a University, and my mentor, a senior colleague in the department, introduced me to REALBasic. He knew I had been looking for a tool to write music software for the Mac, and RB was relatively new and gaining notoriety. A few years before this I had been using the quirky graphical programming tool called Max (which later became Max/MSP, similar to PureData) on macOS 9. I had learned Max well enough to do some pretty impressive things with it, but I didn’t like because there was no code! Or precious little. Once I started with RB, it took me a while to adjust my antiquated linear thinking to an event-driven object-oriented model, but once enough light-bulbs went off, I was happily coding away (and I never went back to Max).

What did you first build with Xojo? And when was that?

My first projects were ports of the apps I had written in Max, for microtonal music. I also wrote several apps to demonstrate things in the classroom, for example a sprite-based app with a video-game-like feel called The Tonal Solar System, where triads and seventh chords appear as planets orbiting around a tonic sun, and chord progressions happen by “activating” planets in a particular order. It supported inversions and alterations and had some pretty advanced functions. The graphics were nothing spectacular, somewhat similar to the kinds of games I had made as a kid on the Commodore 64. The more serious tools for microtonal music were the beginnings of what later became my business, H-Pi Instruments (https://hpi.zentral.zone) where software works in combination with microtonal hardware I designed with my business partner Jordan Petkov in Bulgaria. There was a microtonal keyboard I designed called the Tonal Plexus, and a micro-tuning device called TBX1, which later became TBX2, and TBX2b. These all worked with apps built using Xojo and the MBS plugins for cross-platform MIDI and audio functions. The Xojo / MBS combination allowed me to develop these apps relatively quickly and easily without getting bogged down with the kinds of management tasks other tools require.

What do you build with it now?

I still maintain and occasionally expand the capabilities of apps that have long histories going back decades. Some more recent projects include PDF Bookmaker a self-publishing tool, MIDI Router a tool for managing and scripting MIDI traffic on desktop macOS, and MIDI Tapper an assisted performance tool for making realistic-sounding recordings by “tapping” through MIDI files using just one or two MIDI keys rather than having to play all the right notes in the conventional sense. These are all apps I developed for my own needs, which I also use on a regular basis. Features are added at customer request, and also whenever I need the app to do something it doesn’t do yet.

MIDI Router is essential for my work – it’s always running in the background, with scripts that solve specific quirky hardware problems in my setup. I use PDF Bookmaker every time I publish a new score, and MIDI Tapper to make quick recordings for myself and for my students. The latter is a really powerful app with a small but enthusiastic user base, which deserves to gain a wider audience (marketing is not really in my skillset). The concept is based on the graphical music animation work of Stephen Malinowski https://www.youtube.com/@smalin.

Do you earn a living with Xojo?

My focus at this point is on writing music and teaching private students, but software sales and hired coding work have definitely been an important part of my livelihood for a long time now, and Xojo is the essential tool for those things. It’s hard to imagine being where I am today without Xojo. I’ve stuck with it because of its consistency and reliability, its friendly management, and the forum, with its very helpful user-base. My licenses will continue to be renewed after retirement. I plan to keep on using it as long as I’m around.

Do you use it for any hobbies?

I use Xojo for all kinds of things for my own private use, not intended for sale (though sometimes such projects do develop into something I eventually offer for sale). Being able to try out ideas and solve practical problems by writing my own apps is a beautiful kind of private joy. An app for exploring Gematria? Prime numbers? Bit-shifted integer encodings? Why not? It’s all fun stuff.

I’ve written many apps to do specific things when I needed some problem solved. Others might search the app store to find a tool they need. Nerds write their own. I wrote my own password manager, for example (why worry about trusting anyone else’s tool with my passwords?) Xojo makes coding easier than any other tool I’ve tried, and for me that’s very important. I don’t want to be fighting with the tool I’m using to try to do something creative. I want to have a pleasant time working as quickly as possible, and that’s basically what I get with Xojo and the MBS plugins.

What’s your biggest Xojo success?

An app called Universal Tuning Editor (UTE) is part of the biggest success I’ve had with my business, because it works in combination with all the hardware devices I’ve developed over the years, the latest being a mini-synthesizer I was able to make with the help of mitxela, called FLASH. This is the world’s smallest polyphonic microtonal MIDI synth, and it communicates with UTE over UART, using the Serial object in Xojo. I can use the UART port to communicate with the bootloader of the chip containing the synth firmware, or I can run that firmware and open the port at MIDI baud rate to control the synth through UTE. This combination lets users program their own patches and upload tuning tables to the synth, which they can then plug into any standard MIDI controller – without a power supply! UTE uses Xojo’s Object2D for scalable, rotatable vector graphics, with XML-based scripting so users can design their own interfaces. Xojo does an amazing job keeping up with the rapid changes in the industry, so I know as long as I do my part, my existing apps will continue to work. If I work on my coding as hard as they do, who knows, some new success could be right around the corner.

Thank you to Aaron Andrew Hunt for answering questions and sharing his Xojo experience with the community. You can see all his programs at https://hpi.zentral.zone.

If you have an app, a project or a person you want to see featured in Spotlight On, tell us about it!

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Martin started using Xojo around the time he got his first MacBook. He was drawn to Xojo’s simplicity and flexibility. If you ask him, Martin will say designing clean, intuitive user interfaces is one of his favorite parts of development. Though he’s also a Xojo MVP, he’s probably best know as the developer behind Android Design Extensions.

Mac, Windows or Linux?

Mac.

How would you explain your most recent project to a new developer?

The Android Design Extensions are a collection of enhancements for Android projects in Xojo, aimed at polishing the UI of your apps. This is the primary focus of the project. It addresses aspects that Xojo does not natively provide.

We live in a visual world—design in advertising and product presentation shapes users’ impressions of a company or product. The same applies to software. Is the UI user-friendly and visually appealing? Is it enjoyable to use the app? These questions have always been the guiding principles behind the creation of the Android Design Extensions.

What do you think Martin from 2020 would think about what you do now?

Five years ago, I could never have imagined that I would be a Xojo MVP and be able to make my own project available to other users. Android Design Extensions is the result of many hundreds of hours of intensive collaboration with the Xojo team, which has resulted in Xojo Android becoming more stable and, above all, enormously powerful. For example, in terms of declares, it’s really easy and there’s hardly anything now that you can’t implement in Android projects, as long as you know how to read the Android API and handle declares.

That’s almost the best memory of the last five years, that Xojo has listened to feedback from Android users and responded very quickly. It’s amazing how fast Android support in Xojo has progressed over the past two years.

What is on your “Learn Next” list?

Definitely delve deeper into Android APIs to explore the possibilities of Xojo Android even more.

How did you find Xojo? And when did you start using Xojo?

I first came into contact with Xojo around 2008. At that time it was still called Real Studio and I had found it on a DVD that was enclosed with a computer magazine. I was an active Delphi developer at the time and immediately fell in love with the simplicity of the language.

What do you build with Xojo now?

Fortunately, I have greatly expanded my programming skills thanks to Xojo. My focus is on UI development, controls, especially the TextInputCanvas, Android and desktop programs.

What is something you worked on that you want to talk about?

I became very friendly with TextInputCanvas (a free plugin) and together with Björn Eiríksson from Einhugur, we created an updated API 2.0 version of the plugin, which we still maintain today.

I used to work as a developer for Bob Keeney and was responsible for the Formatted Text Control, which is based on TextInputCanvas. There are several programs on the market that make intensive use of this control and I am still involved in some of these projects today, making the WYSIWYG experience even more pleasant for customers when entering text.

Do you use Xojo for any hobbies?

I also use Xojo to write software for genealogical purposes. From a young age, I developed a curiosity and desire to learn more about the history of my family and its members. That is how I came to genealogy. It is a kind of detective work that can lead to surprising family connections, secrets, strokes of fate, and even unknown relatives. Since I enjoy reading, I prefer to have such information in book form and written out, rather than in tables. A book with text feels more tangible to me—something the reader can engage with more consciously.

None of the genealogy software available on the market has ever met my expectations. That is why I wrote my own software in Xojo, which can process the standard format for genealogical data known as Gedcom. You can think of it as a database in plain text format. From this data, I can then generate—depending on what is desired—full biographies, ancestor and descendant trees, and more. The finished result is a Word document, complete with indices at the end for all people, places, professions, and so on—just like in a real book.

Thank you to Martin T. for answering questions and sharing his Xojo experience with the community. Martin accepts donations for his work on Android Design Extensions. Download Android Design Extensions. Read more about Android Design Extensions on the Xojo Blog.

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We first met Mark Franken in 2016 at a Xojo Developer Conference in Houston, Texas. Today, Mark splits his time between writing software and caring for 40 acres of rainforest. But before he traded city life for the wild, he spent decades in film and television post-production. In 2003, while still working in post, he founded Sounds In Sync, a company born out of his desire to solve the problems he faced in the editing room. What started as a side project quickly grew in popularity, and eventually, Mark shifted his focus full-time to software development. As a sound editor, Mark worked on some iconic and award-winning films including The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Great Gatsby, Happy Feet Two, and Peter Rabbit.

Mac, Windows or Linux?

Develop on Mac, build for Mac & Windows

How would you explain your most recent project to a new developer?

I’ve been working on a major update for my app EdiCue, scheduled for release as EdiCue v5 in June 2025.

EdiCue is a tool used by sound editors to “cue” dialogue that needs to be re-recorded in film and TV projects. Typically, this involves working alongside the sound editing application Pro Tools to place clips on the timeline, each clip aligned with a section of dialogue and named with the exact text the actor needs to re-perform (e.g., due to background noise, unclear delivery, or script changes).

For this release, I wanted to streamline the manual cueing process by integrating AI-based speech-to-text. Specifically, I’ve added a new feature that allows users to load a WAV file, transcribe the dialogue using Whisper AI, and then export a Pro Tools session with timeline clips automatically named using the transcribed text and timing.

The integration required wrapping whisper.cpp for use in my Xojo-based application. I worked with Christian from Monkeybread Software (MBS) to build a custom plugin that bridges between Xojo and the compiled Whisper Dylib/DLL files, enabling support for macOS and Windows.

What is something that has surprised you about coding in the last 5 years?

The biggest surprise for me has been how far AI has come in understanding, writing, and explaining code. While it still makes mistakes and doesn’t always produce perfect output, for me it’s now an invaluable tool, working in languages I hadn’t formally learned like Python and C/C++.

Thanks to AI, I’ve been able to build and compile C/C++ libraries and create my own shared libraries (Dylibs/DLLs). This has let me expose C++ functionality through clean C-style APIs, making them accessible from within my Xojo applications. It’s dramatically expanded what my apps are capable of.

In the past, I’d reach out to Christian at Monkeybread Software to write me a  plugin or port specific code to Xojo, something I’ve always appreciated. But for my latest project, I needed to navigate this myself as I wasn’t exactly sure what was required from the start.

With AI’s help, I’ve successfully compiled third-party libraries that use gRPC for both macOS and Windows, built a shared library layer, and exposed the functions I needed to call from Xojo.

I learnt a lot in the process, and now I’m confident in rebuilding and maintaining these libraries as updates are released.

Xojo isn’t the only tool in your kit. What is a piece of software more people should know about?

One tool I highly recommend is Hex Fiend – a hex editor for macOS. I found it especially invaluable while updating my Xojo WAV file classes, where I needed to ensure that I was reading and writing metadata correctly.

Hex Fiend’s main window displays the raw hex data of the file, while a side panel interprets the data for various file formats, including support for WAV files. It decodes the fields, letting you see exactly how your code is affecting the underlying binary layout.

This allowed me to track down a number of bugs in my metadata handling code which would have been hard to track down otherwise.

How did you find Xojo? And when did you start using Xojo?

I first discovered Xojo back in 2002, when it was still known as RealBasic. At the time, I was working as a sound editor on The Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers in New Zealand. A fellow editor visiting from San Francisco introduced me to it, and I was immediately impressed.

I had been using Delphi/Kylix up to that point, but I was looking for a way to build cross-platform desktop apps for Mac and Windows. RealBasic’s ability to generate native applications for both platforms from a single codebase had me sold, and it fit perfectly with the kind of tools I wanted to create for audio post-production workflows.

What did you first build with Xojo? And when was that?

In December 2003, I built my first Xojo app ‘EdiTrace Auto’ for both Mac (OS9) and Windows. It was designed to load EDL (Edit Decision List) files generated by my online comparison tool at EdiTrace.com.

The app would parse the EDL events and convert them into keystroke commands that it could send to Pro Tools, automating the process of recutting sound edits to match the latest picture version delivered by the video editors. This saved sound editors a huge amount of time by eliminating the need to manually conform their sessions to match the new picture cut.

What do you build with it now?

My original app ‘EdiTrace Auto’ eventually evolved into a more powerful tool: EdiLoad. In January 2025, I released EdiLoad v6, which includes a major new feature: the ability to compare the waveforms of “assembled” WAV files against a guide track provided by the picture department.

This lets sound editors verify that WAV files recorded on set are assembling perfectly in-phase, down to the sample, with the guide audio, ensuring audio alignment is sample-accurate.

To implement this, I explored how Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) can be used to analyze the frequency content of complex waveforms. A helpful introduction for me was this YouTube video, which explained the core concepts.

After a fair amount of experimentation, I landed on a solution using an FFT function from an MBS plugin. I transform the two waveforms, sum them, and invert the result to obtain the sample-level offset.

In EdiLoad this processing is handled by a Xojo Worker, which was the first time I had used one. It was a great fit, as each alignment task just required two file paths, a time range, and a handful of user settings. The workers allow the app to access multiple cores while batch-processing all files in the assembly. You can see the feature in action in this EdiLoad v6 demo video.

What is something you worked on that you want to talk about?

One project I’m particularly proud of is writing a set of Xojo classes to read and write Pro Tools session (.ptx) files, despite having no formal software development training.

Pro Tools sessions store their data in a proprietary binary format, and there’s no public specification available. But to deliver key features my clients needed, I had to find a way to read and write these files directly from my Xojo apps.

To reverse-engineer the format, I built several test apps to see how the data was structured, and then modify known parts of the PTX files and compared results. By selectively changing binary data, I was able to track down how specific values were stored. It was a painstaking, months-long process, but it ultimately gave me the tools to read and write session data reliably.

These classes are now in used in three of my desktop apps. I also created a REST API that several online services use to convert marker data into PTX session files, allowing users to generate markers that can be imported directly into Pro Tools.

Do you earn a living with Xojo?

Yes. Xojo, and the supportive Xojo community gave me the opportunity to learn software development in my spare time while I was still working full-time as a sound editor. Over time, I was able to release my own apps through my website, gradually building up a sustainable software business.

After 20 years in post-production, I was able to transition full-time into software development. That shift also gave my family and me the freedom to leave the city (Sydney, Australia) and move to a quieter life in the bush, about six hours up the coast.

Now I work from home, doing what I love, and I’m incredibly grateful for the flexibility it gives me to be present while our kids grow up. It’s not just a career change, it’s been a lifestyle upgrade.

Do you use it for any hobbies?

Not really. When I’m not working, I try to step away from the screen. I spend my downtime in the garden, the bush, or looking after my bees. But I find quite often that I get my best code insights and ideas while I’m in nature.

What’s your biggest Xojo success?

Without a doubt, it’s been getting my applications established across the global film and TV industry, and using my background in sound editing to develop cutting-edge tools that directly support my peers.

The highlight has been receiving not one, but two Engineering Emmy Awards, one for EdiCue and another for EdiLoad. These awards recognized the impact of my apps in setting new standards for technological excellence in television post-production.

Thank you to Mark Franken for answering questions and sharing his Xojo experience with the community. Learn more about Sounds In Sync.

If you have an app, a project or a person you want to see featured in Spotlight On, tell us about it!

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I’ve had the pleasure of working with Tim multiple times over nearly 10 years now. Tim is one of those people who makes a community, he’s a connector, bringing people into a group and highlighting common ground for the benefit of us all. It’s not hard to find out what Tim is doing these days, you can read all about it on his blog, watch his videos and webinars and read his Xojo interview series in xDev Magazine. In this month’s Spotlight On feature, Tim answers questions about his latest, and biggest, project and his ongoing success using Xojo.

Mac, Windows or Linux?

All three.

I do all of my work on a MacBook Pro. That’s where I’m running the Xojo IDE, doing testing, and so on. But I’m developing apps that also run on Windows and Linux, too. When I’m developing a Windows app, I usually do my initial testing using a Windows VM running in Parallels. Over the past few years, the amount of Linux projects that I work on has increased significantly. I’m developing a lot of console apps that run on Linux.

Here’s something that I discovered about a year ago, and that your readers might find interesting. Xojo apps that are compiled for Linux (Linux x86 64-bit in particular) will run on servers that are running Oracle’s “Oracle Linux Server” operating system. Oracle’s cloud (which they call “Oracle Cloud Infrastructure” or “OCI” for short) run that version of Linux, which is similar to Fedora. A lot of companies that are running on NetSuite (which Oracle owns) are “all in” with OCI. So the fact that Xojo apps can be compiled to run on OCI servers is a pretty big deal. I think there’s a lot of opportunity for Xojo developers to meet the demand for custom software coming from companies that are in investing in OCI.

What do you wish more people would ask/talk to you about regarding programming?

I have a pretty popular blog, and I do get a lot of technical questions from readers. Occasionally, I get questions like “How can I break into the NetSuite space?” What they’re really asking about are strategies for finding opportunities, technical things that they should learn about, and so on.

But it’s the non-technical things that they don’t ask about that I think are really important. For example, learning about business in general. Learning about accounting. And if they’re looking to “go solo,” learning how to build authority, stay organized, and so on.

How would you explain your most recent project to a new developer?

One of the biggest challenges that companies face when they’re switching from one business system to another is migrating data between the two systems. Some companies think that this is the final step before “going live” with the new system – and it certainly is.

But the reality is that they’ll likely need to do this data migration several times, especially as they test the new system. In some cases, they’ll run the two systems in parallel and compare the results of the two systems, to make sure the new system is being implemented correctly.

I’m currently working on a very large, very complicated NetSuite implementation, and we ran into this need. Using Xojo, I developed an app called the “Data Bridge” which we’re using to sync data between their current system (which was developed using Progress – https://progress.com) and their NetSuite instance. It takes data that was exported from Progress as pipe-delimited files, parses and validates the data, and then makes API calls to push the data into NetSuite. This is helping us test NetSuite more thoroughly, using current, real data, so that there will be no surprises when we do go live.

What’s next on your “Learn Next” list?

For the longest time, I’ve felt that AI – and especially generative AI – is overhyped. So I mostly ignored it. Now that the excitement has settled down a bit, I’ve started to look at AI in a serious way. NetSuite recently made some generative AI APIs available to developers, so I’ve been experimenting with those. One of the projects that I’m currently working on involves developing a Xojo-based mobile app that integrates with NetSuite, leveraging the data stored in NetSuite as well as its AI functionality.

What is something that has surprised you about coding in the last 10 years?

I think that like a lot of developers that have been working professionally for awhile, I was surprised by the popularity of Javascript, and how widespread it’s used, especially for developing backend Web apps. The other thing that has surprised me is the increasing number of developers that really don’t want to write code. There seem to be a lot of people that pursue careers in software development simply because they think it’s a way to “make big money.” One of the things that
I love about the Xojo community is that most of the Xojo developers that I’ve talked to seem to find joy in writing code. (You can also see this on the Forum, too.)

Xojo isn’t the only tool in your kit. What is a piece of software more people should know about?

There are a couple of other development tools that I use and recommend, and that I encourage other Xojo developers to check out.

One is DataGrip by JetBrains, which I started using about a year ago. DataGrip is a cross- platform database tool that supports a very wide range of relational databases. I use it often in my NetSuite work, especially when I need to explore the schema of the Oracle database that a NetSuite instance is powered by.

Another tool that I recommend is RapidAPI (which was formerly known as “Paw”). I’ve been using RapidAPI since it was first released, and it’s my API tool of choice. There’s another API tool called “Postman”that is certainly much more popular, but I really prefer RapidAPI. It seems to me to be much more Mac-like.

One more tool that I want to mention – and this one is brand new – is called “Framous.” Framous makes it easy to add device frames around screenshots. So you can take a screenshot of an app – such as one running on your Mac or in a simulator – and then drop the screenshot into a device frame – such as a Mac or iPhone. It’s great for creating images to be used for marketing purposes. The app is available on the Mac App Store.

When did you start using Xojo?

I started using Xojo in August of 2015 – nearly 10 years ago!

How did you find Xojo?

Hal Gumbert encouraged me to check out Xojo, and I’m so glad that he did. At the time, we were both FileMaker developers. I had grown frustrated with the FileMaker platform and was looking for a new development tool to work with.

What did you first build with Xojo?

When I first started working with Xojo, I was interested in developing iOS apps – and Xojo’s support for the iOS framework had just been released. So the timing was perfect. In fact, then first Xojo license that I purchased was only for iOS. There were two iOS apps that I immediately developed with Xojo. One integrated with FileMaker and the other integrated with Airtable. (At the time, I was serving as Airtable’s “Developer Evangelist.”)

What do you build with it now? 

I now use Xojo to develop all kinds of apps – desktop, mobile, Web, and console apps – and for all of the platforms that Xojo supports too (macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android). When I first started using Xojo, I never would have guessed that someday I’d be developing so many different types of apps.

It surprises me that out of all of the types of apps that I develop with Xojo, these days it’s Linux console apps that I’m developing the most. These apps are primarily used to automate processes involving NetSuite, such as batch file processors, webhook listeners and senders, and more. So essentially I’m using Xojo – and console apps especially – to extend NetSuite’s capabilities.

What is something you worked on recently that you want to talk about?

I mentioned a few of my current projects earlier, but two of the more interesting projects that I’m working on are Suite.js (a JavaScript runtime that’s designed to make NetSuite integration easy) and SuiteBrowser (a Web browser designed specifically for use with NetSuite). Both of those projects might sound like crazy ideas. I mean, what kind of crazy person develops their own web browser?!? But I can tell you, based on the level of interest in them from the NetSuite community, that there’s a genuine need for both of them.

Do you earn a living with Xojo? 

Absolutely. So much of my work these days – including my NetSuite work – involves Xojo. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without it.

Also, I want to give a shout out to Christian Schmitz and MonkeyBread Software. His Xojo plug-ins have enabled me to work on Xojo projects that I never would have dreamed of working on, including projects that utilize things like MQTT, Phidgets, and more.

Do you use it for your hobbies? 

Yes, I do. My main hobby these days is developing apps that run on Raspberry Pi’s, and of course, I’m using Xojo to create them. As a side note, I recently purchased my fifth Raspberry Pi – a Raspberry Pi 500 – and I love working with it. It reminds me what it was like to use Macs and PCs “back in the day.”

What’s your biggest Xojo success?

Out of all of the apps that I’ve developed with Xojo, the one that I use every day is called SuiteTransmit. SuiteTransmit is a desktop app that monitors the files that I’m working on, detects changes to them, and automatically uploads them to NetSuite. It allows me to develop NetSuite “SuiteScript” apps using my preferred IDE (BBEdit). This simple app, which, thanks to Xojo, took only a few hours to develop, has saved me a lot of time. SuiteTransmit is one of my “secret weapons,” and I don’t think I could have, or would have ever even attempted to develop it, without Xojo.

But my biggest “Xojo success” doesn’t involve any one particular app that I’ve developed with it. Over the years, I’ve blogged about my Xojo work, and been a guest on several Xojo webinars. Last summer, a company that was looking for help implementing NetSuite stumbled upon my NetSuite / Xojo work, liked what they saw, and reached out to me for help. They’re now my biggest client, and the biggest client I’ve had throughout my entire career. And I owe that to Xojo.

Thank you to Tim Dietrich for answering questions and sharing his Xojo experience with the community. Learn more about Tim on his blog, find him on LinkedIn and read his interviews in xDev Magazine.

If you have an app, a project or a person you want to see featured in Spotlight On, tell us about it!

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When I started sharing Spotlight On posts last year, Alvaro Fontán was a Xojo developer that immediately came to mind as someone who should have a spotlight shone on their work. Alvaro has been to multiple Xojo Developer Conferences and is a great guy to get into a conversation with, whether about Xojo or a lot of other topics. His Offroad Portal project is a excellent example of an app that solves a problem and helps a community of people. This project continues to grow with 26 current administrators around the country distributing volunteers to all 50 states.

Mac, Windows or Linux?

I develop in a Mac environment but create applications for Windows, Mac, and Web using Xojo. I primarily use MySQL for all the apps I build and frequently integrate APIs into my projects. I also enjoy incorporating HTML and CSS into Xojo applications to enhance their functionality and user experience.

What do you wish more people would ask/talk to you about regarding programming?

I wish schools provided more opportunities for young minds to explore programming. Today, everyone carries a powerful computer in their pocket, yet most people have no idea how to create custom tools to truly harness its potential. I think Xojo would be an amazing starting point for them.

How would you explain your most recent project to a 5 year old?

Many people with little off-road experience end up getting stuck, facing technical difficulties, or breaking down. To address this, we’ve developed a web application that captures the incident location and allows users to share photos, notes, and contact information. Once a request is submitted, administrators verify the situation and forward it to local volunteers across all 50 states. Currently, we have 3 general administrators, over 26 regular administrators, and more than 13,000 dedicated volunteers. Additionally, we have the support of hundreds of thousands of extra volunteers from local off-road organizations we collaborate with. Our application enables real-time tracking of the recovery process, allowing all involved parties to communicate and coordinate effectively.

What’s next on your “Learn Next” list?

I’m exploring ways to integrate AI to streamline the work of our administrators, as much of their tasks are repetitive and time-consuming.

What is something that has surprised you about coding in the last 10 years?

Sometimes, after spending hours developing a solution and testing it for days, a user will discover a bug by doing something I never thought to try in my own app.

Xojo isn’t the only tool in your kit. What is a piece of software more people should know about?

MySQL, CSS, HTML, Python, AppleScript, JavaScript. 

What is something you worked on recently that you want to talk about?

I received a request from an elderly person who had never used a computer and wanted to learn how to use a simple word processor. After searching for an option that was easy enough to simplify saving, loading, printing, and emailing, I couldn’t find anything suitable. So, in just a few hours, I designed a simple interface using Xojo, integrated it with a MySQL back end, and made it extremely user-friendly—with autosaving, non-destructive editing, and buttons to navigate through different versions. There’s one click to print and one click to send a copy by email.

It may sound simple, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how overwhelming it must be for someone who’s never used a modern UI to complete even the most basic tasks. Xojo turned out to be the perfect tool for quickly developing solutions like this one.

When did you start using Xojo?

1998/99.

How did you find Xojo?

Can’t remember.

What did you first build with Xojo?

Small apps for helping with things around the office.

When was that?

The first apps I developed were in the early 2000s. In 2002, with my background in graphic design and while working for a sales magazine, I created the software we used to produce the magazines, utilizing Xojo and AppleScript with Quark. In 2004, I was hired as a full-time developer for the first time, where I automated the creation of brochures and booklets using Xojo and AppleScript.

By 2007, I advanced further and was hired by a large corporation that owned 25 newspapers. There, I developed a photo database that managed and shared about a million photos using Xojo and MySQL. Later, I built an editorial system that automated newspaper design and managed web content for over 200 editors, reporters, and photographers, integrating Xojo with Joomla and later with WordPress for smaller sub-sites.

When the company was sold, I continued maintaining dozens of systems I had developed, working as a contractor for the new owners.

What do you build with it now? 

Our application for Offroad Portal is what consumes most of my time.

Do you earn a living with Xojo? 

Yes, absolutely. 

Do you use it for your hobbies? 

It’s a tool I use, much like someone would use a ruler or a calculator. For me, thinking about implementing solutions with Xojo comes naturally.

What’s your biggest Xojo success?

The newspaper software was my proudest achievement. It was a massive undertaking with countless challenges, but also a lot of fun. I worked on that project for over 12 years, and I vividly remember the code reaching over 120,000 lines. I started as the sole developer, but eventually, I was able to build a small team. This allowed me to delegate parts of the code to other developers and get help with web integration.

Thank you to Alvaro Fontán for answering questions and sharing his Xojo experience with the community. Learn more about Offroad Portal.

If you have an app, a project or a person you want to see featured in Spotlight On, tell us about it!

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You don’t need to have “developer” in your job title to build apps with Xojo and this month’s Spotlight On highlights the work of Enrique Contreras, a high school teacher and Assistant Principal in Madrid, Spain who exemplifies this idea. Enrique is an educator first and foremost, he uses his enthusiasm for programming and Xojo to help his school, its professors and students succeed. With his Xojo educational license, Enrique created a planning and gradebook app for himself and other professors at his high school. His latest program builds upon that success, adding the ability to handle everything from documentation and printing to school management. When he’s not overseeing the studies of the students at his school or teaching French, he goes back to his favorite hobby: programming with Xojo.

Q&A with Enrique Contreras

Mac, Windows or Linux?

I’d rather say “Commodore Amiga” because I grew up with the Amiga computer. But soon after, my father bought my first PC, so my answer is Windows.

What do you wish more people would ask/talk to you about when it comes to what you do with Xojo?

I wish people ask me for Xojo itself: “How can you do this or that in Xojo?” Make it more known, because people who are not developers can create incredible things in very easy steps with Xojo.

How would you explain your most recent project to a 5 year old?

The same way I explain it to my secondary students; “Look, I am very proud of it: this is not an Excel spreadsheet. I’ve created my own app just for grading you in the better way!”

What’s next on your “Learn Next” list?

I would like to learn how to deploy my Xojo software in the administrative-secured server of “EducaMadrid”. This is specifically a closed-secured platform for teachers and students in the Spanish Madrid area.

What is something that has surprised you about coding in the last 10 years?

In the last 10 years, or the last 20 I’d say… the basics of programming remain the same. Nowadays, you can do incredible things with a bunch of robust programming languages, but at the bottom of every single language, you always have the same logical sentences, same things under different names: if, then, var, for, loop, etc.

Xojo isn’t the only tool in your kit. What is a piece of software more people should know about?

IMHO, everyone must know the basics of databases, mostly SQL (or mySQL). Data is very precious, so is the way you store it, you search for it, and mostly the way you manage and use it.

What is something you worked on recently that you want to talk about?

Nowadays, as Assistant Principal of a high school, I’m working in new software capable of managing everything related to documentation, papers, documents, printing. My goal is to write a program very specialized for my school that combines all the current programs in one app.

When did you start using Xojo?

Almost 10 years ago, under the name of RealBasic. At the time, I was looking for a language- easy to understand and easy to deploy. And this is how I discovered such a gem as Xojo.

How did you find Xojo?

By chance: First, I learnt by myself a bit of Basic/TurboBasic on my old PC; then VisualBasic. But I was looking for something more powerful and easy at the same time. The “logical” answer was RealBasic at that time.

What did you first build with Xojo?

Good question! In fact, my first program in Xojo was a random number picker. At that time, my brother was the manager of a computer shop and he asked me if I could make a simple program capable of randomly picking a number among a short delimited range of numbers. It was Christmastime 2015 and he wanted to giveaway a small computer to his employees in a raffle.

What’s your biggest Xojo success?

My best (and currently only) achievement with Xojo is my program “ACDP” (Agenda y Cuaderno del Profesor/Planner and Teacher Gradebook; PTGB in English) I have been using it since 2018!  And I’m very proud of it. Currently ACDP is a desktop Windows app that relies on the Excel interoperability provided by the Xojo classes in order to handle Excel documents. It relies on the provided SQLite class to store and retrieve all the information captured by the app.

What are you building with Xojo now?

Now, I have two projects in mind: one, easier and modest, which is a cooperative schedule program for my school. The second one, more complex and ambitious, consist of managing all the documentation of my high school.

Do you use Xojo for your hobbies? 

Xojo is ONE of my favourite hobbies, indeed! Many people like playing videogames … me, I love programming in Xojo. It is addictive, in the healthy sense of the word.

Thank you to Enrique Contreras for answering questions and sharing his Xojo projects with the community.

If you have an app, a project or a person you want to see featured in Spotlight On, tell us about it!

Born in Slovenia, at the age of 6 Richard Klingler moved to Switzerland where he lives today. Richard started coding around 16, though he jokes whether what he did could be called coding, typing on an 8-bit computer called the ZX Spectrum. His first job was as an electronic department leader at a die bonder factory. Soon after, he started developing web applications then moved on to working as an embedded Linux developer making applications and kernel drivers for radio modem communication. His last job was as an embedded IoT engineer where he started to use Xojo for in-house development of testing applications.

For the last few years Richard built up a tool shop in his basement where he has started welding, wood working and growing his collection of machinery. For him, this work is a great way to do something with his hands and he finds pleasure in seeing immediate results. It is an added bonus if the stuff he builds can be used in his garden or be sold through his girlfriend’s online shop! When he’s not coding or working with his machines, he’s cooking. Special projects include his famous lasagne made with homemade, fresh pasta and his chocolate Christmas cookies.

Q&A with Richard Klinger

Mac, Windows or Linux?

Mac and Linux.

When did you start using Xojo?

April 2012 when it was REAL Studio.

How did you find Xojo?

When I searched for an uncomplicated platform for developing macOS applications instead of using Xcode.

Since this Summer you have been pretty active on the Xojo Forums. What do you find yourself doing while on the forums?

At the beginning I was mainly active to get back into Xojo programming as I hadn’t it used for a while. Sometimes I was even able to help out other people. The forum is very good reading material to learn how people implement the same thing differently.

In fact, it was because of a thread (asking about a Dynamic 2-dimensional array) on the Forums that another user suggested you for Spotlight On. Can you tell us more about this project?

Unfortunately, not much as it was a company prototype project which might go in production one day. But basically I was looking for a solution for how to control a CNC GCode interpreter from within a desktop application to test marking on stainless steel pipes with a felt pen. I ended up using snippets of GCodes for each letter/number. So in Xojo I just loaded the corresponding GCode for each letter/number, scaled it so it would fit onto the pipe, and sent the final code out via USB serial port.

In my last weeks at that company I did a touchscreen application for Raspberry Pi, which should do in the end the pulling in of steel pipes, cutting to the right length and labeling it for sanitary installation. I wanted to do it first with PyQt6, but very soon decided that Xojo is a perfect fit for this.

What do you build with Xojo now?

An IDE for macOS to simplify FPGA electronics development based on open source tools which are console applications only therefore simplifying the development process. As I wanted to have a more native macOS look I acquired the great NSToolbar plugin which has also an outstanding support from the author.

The progress can be seen on its website https://www.fpga.ch

Mostly I use Xojo for hobbies now as it is just a breeze to quickly develop something to verify an idea. Also, in combination with embedded electronics, Xojo is a perfect match to communicate with it via serial interfaces or IP networking.

Xojo isn’t the only tool in your kit. What is a piece of software more people should know about?

As I deal a lot with databases and REST API I use RapidAPI and Navicat Premium Lite on macOS which are both free tools.

Then of course for graphics the Affinity suite. And just recently I bought an App Wrapper license for distributing macOS applications.

But also don’t forget SF Symbols. I quickly built my own image scaler application with Xojo to copy/paste macOS icons from SF Symbols and generate automatically icons at a desired resolution with @1x/@2x/@3x scaling.

If it’s one of many things you use, what do you tend to use Xojo for?

To develop helper applications for electronics development, like controlling power supplies and function generators, grabbing screenshots from oscilloscopes. An idea exists for doing a combination of instrumentation control and test automation, sort of a poor-mans LabView.

What’s your biggest Xojo success?

Personally, my FPGA IDE for macOS. Not sure if it will be a success out there when once published in 2025. But during this project I learned a lot about the power of DesktopCanvas and DesktopListbox.

Thank you to Richard Klinger for answering questions and sharing his Xojo projects with the community. You can, in the words of Bart Simpson “Absotively posalutely“, find Richard on the Xojo Forums.

If you have an app, a project or a person you want to see featured in Spotlight On, tell us about it!

Community and Resources

In order to succeed with Xojo whether you are an existing user or a new user, you need great resources. In 2024 there have been over 95 new posts on the blog. The latest addition to the Xojo team, Gabriel Ludosanu, has written some wonderful tutorials and explainers on the blog that can quickly get you up to speed with many useful Xojo features.

Speaking of Gabriel, he’s also been enhancing our YouTube channel with Shorts, which are short-form videos (in portrait-style) that quickly introduce or highlight topics.

For our many new users, the Xojo Textbook and Teacher’s Guide have been updated. In addition, we do our best to support Xojo for students, such as with the GitHub Student Developer Pack.

In the spring we made a change to Xojo Lite to allow it to use the text project file format, making it easier to share your projects using services such as GitHub. We also made Xojo for Linux available for free to better match the ethos of that platform.

We are pleased to share that 2024 was a year of tremendous growth in the Xojo community as our GitHub Student Developer Pack and changes to Xojo Lite have helped drive more new users to Xojo than we’ve seen in years!

New users help drive growth in Xojo, but its lifeblood is our dedicated user base. With four releases in 2024, we continue to improve and make Xojo better for everyone. One thing we’ve been working on for each release is ensuring there are blog posts highlighting major new features, often written by the engineer that worked on the feature.

And of course don’t forget about our long-standing resources such as the Xojo forum, YouTube channel, documentation and example projects all of which get new information through each year.

With all that said, another valuable part of the community is the Xojo MVPs. These dedicated Xojo users help us by providing design feedback, testing of new features while they are in early development and general advice. They truly do help point Xojo in the right direction!

New Features and Improvements

We introduced many shiny new features in 2024 but we also hit the bugs hard. We fixed 16% more bugs this year compared to 2023. We fixed 224% more “old” bugs (that’s bugs that are 2 or more years old) compared to 2023. Overall, we fixed over 900 bugs, closing more bugs in 2024 than were created. We have to give a special shout-out to Robin for his work with the Issues queue. He helps ensure we have reproducible projects for bugs, which makes fixing them much more realistic.

But it’s not just all bug smashing, of course. Here are some of the other great things we’ve worked on throughout 2024.

Let’s start with some things that are not actually part of a specific Xojo release. There have been several robust example projects that we’ve produced to help you use Xojo in fun and exciting new ways. Some include:

• In Using ChatGPT, Geoff shows you how to connect to the ChatGPT API.
• Log4Xojo by Gabriel adds some slick app logging features.
• Android Design Extensions by Xojo MVP Martin adds “910+ UI extensions for Xojo Android framework”.
• DBKit, although not new in 2024, has been continually improved by Geoff, our intrepid founder and CEO.

Moving on to new features, perhaps one of the biggest announcements was the addition of preemptive threads, spearheaded by William with lots of feedback and testing from Xojo MVP Kem. Preemptive threads allow Xojo apps to even more easily take advantage of the multiple CPU cores that are prevalent on today’s computers and devices, resulting in speed improvements that can be orders of magnitude better than using standard threads. William also added the highly useful ZIP capabilities, recently got XojoScript working with ARM on Windows, has improved the debugger and exposed our SSLSocket TLSv1.3 support.

Ricardo has been doing tremendous work on the web framework, making it much faster and adding new features such as Popovers, CSS classes, simplified & faster WebDataSource and Named Colors (Ricardo’s fav!). If you haven’t looked at Xojo Web in a while, you might want to take another peek.

We also did a major upgrade to Xojo Cloud’s Linux backend that kept Travis busy for a while.

Javier has led improvements in the Xojo framework and iOS, adding long-requested features such as Popovers and Barcodes/QR codes. In addition, iOS can now use the privacy manifest. Speaking of Javier, he also improved macOS app distribution with Sandboxing, Hardened Runtime and Notarization, one of your top feature requests. Charting and PDF have also continued to improve under Javier’s watchful eye.

Android has been getting lots of fixes and new features in 2024 with Paul adding such things as tablet support, localization, better Declare capabilities, TCPSocket, RegEx, ByRef and much more. When not working on Android, he’s also spent some time on the Code Editor by improving autocomplete and adding new capabilities such as row highlighting, syntax help area size settings, easier standardize format and selection matching.

Behind the Scenes

Although not as publicly visible, Jason (or JSON as we call him around here), handles the bulk of technical questions that come in through customer support. The personal touch and assistance customers get from him is often lauded by them as something you don’t see from other companies.

You may not have noticed many mentions of Travis above, but he’s been hard at work in Xojo’s kitchen, cooking up things you’ll likely see in 2025.

Matt and Geoff work diligently to keep the docs updated with Xojo’s many changes and improvements.

(This bit is from Paul, since Alyssa won’t write about herself.) Lastly, Xojo wouldn’t exist without Alyssa keeping things operational. From dealing with general customer support issues to social media, licensing, marketing, accounting and even more I can’t think of, Alyssa is the glue that holds Xojo together. The rest of us nerdy introverts really appreciate everything she does.

Thank You

This is all made possible because of the one-of-a-kind, amazing Xojo community. To those of you who have supported Xojo through the years, and to the new users out there finding and enjoying Xojo, we thank you! We wish everyone a lovely holiday season and we look forward to seeing you in 2025!

The Xojo Team

Geoff, Jason, William, Alyssa, Robin, Paul, Travis, Javier, Ricardo, Matt & Gabriel

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For Geoff Haynes, his work as a developer started at home with BASIC on a Commodore 64, that led him to PHP and Microsoft SQL Server for some web development, which then lead him to traveling the US amusement park circuit to install the hardware and software for point of sale (POS) systems. Today, he is settled and running Raximus Studios, using Xojo and enjoying doing what he knows best.

Q&A with Geoff Haynes of Raximus Studios

Mac, Windows or Linux?

Windows for anything requiring a UI. Linux for everything else. Sadly, I do not own a Mac but my iPhone is my daily driver for most tasks.

What’s next on your “Learn Next” list?

I spent a couple months early in 2023 learning about electrical engineering and designing circuits. I started building an EEPROM bios programming circuit but did not have time to finish it. I would like to learn more about electrical engineering and circuit design in the future.

What programming moments made you think “Wow, I love my job so much.”

• The first time I used the Xojo crypto module to send encrypted data back and forth to an Android app written in Java.
• The first time I compiled a class library in C# and used declares in Xojo to access the functions inside of it.

What is something that has surprised you about coding in the last 10 years?

The major shift to web-based cloud systems replacing software running locally on computers.

What is a cool piece of software more people should know about?

• I think SQLyog is a great tool for MariaDB. I tried many different tools used to manage MariaDB and SQLyog is my favorite.
• Voidtools Everything is a great program I use a lot to quickly find files on my development machine.
• By far, UnmanagedExports by Robert Giesecke is the most useful tool I use in every new software project.

What’s the most interesting thing you worked on recently?

Earlier this year I wrote a C# class library that can take image files and convert the binary data to work with ESCPOS commands to print perfect graphics using receipt printers in Xojo. That was really challenging and satisfying when I got it working perfectly.

Music or no music while coding?

The answer depends on what I am coding. If I am designing UI or server backend code then no music. If I am working on tedious tasks e.g. threading database queries then it’s usually Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool or the Tron: Legacy soundtrack playing in the background.

When did you start using Xojo?

In 2009 I was offered a position to develop different types of software for a local IT business that was interested in writing custom applications for their clients. This is how I started using Xojo (then Real Studio). For the next several years I wrote many different types of custom applications for local businesses in Real Studio. Some examples include an office check-in manager, a contest management system, I also developed a system that was designed to work with grocery store membership cards. In addition to Real Studio, I also wrote many different types of mobile Android applications in Java. In my spare time I worked on custom database report applications in Real Studio for clients that I met during my time working in the POS industry. 

What did you first build with Xojo?

In 2016 after I parted ways with the local IT company, I decided to start Raximus Studios when I had the idea to design an arcade debit card system in Xojo that could take advantage of the cheaper IoT circuit boards that had become available.
I integrated the arcade debit system with other existing POS systems that I knew from my years of subcontractor work in the POS amusement industry. A few other systems I have designed in Xojo that are currently in use at locations include:

•  An unattended gate access system that controls turnstile entry through barcode and QR scans as well as biometrics. 
• A media control system that uses IR scanning devices to control AV devices like the type of systems used to control multiple monitors in restaurants and bowling alleys. 
• A cloud-based gate security system used to design and create photo ID cards that are scanned and verified for gate entry. 

What are you building with Xojo today?

In 2023 I started work on my own amusement and entertainment POS system written in Xojo. This new POS system RAXPOS will be launching in early 2025 at the first location. 

Thank you to Geoff Haynes for answering questions and sharing his experience with Xojo with the community. You can contact Geoff at @raximusstudios and learn more about his projects at Raximus Studios. If you have an app, a project or a person you want to see featured in Spotlight On, tell us about it!

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EKlectic Accounting is a new, full-featured, professional accounting application made with Xojo by independent developer Edward Kidwell. EKlectic’s user interface is “QuickBooks-like” and will feel familiar to users of other accounting software. All the code for EKlectic Accounting is “pure Xojo”, and uses no plugins. The application is cross-platform and supported on macOS and Windows.

10 Questions with Edward Kidwell

You mentioned your projects are “pure Xojo” and don’t use any plugins. Can you tell us about that?

I was originally drawn to Xojo by an open-source project that turned out to be heavily dependent on third-party plugins. Even after I had purchased a Xojo Pro license, I couldn’t compile the project without additional purchases. Furthermore, as I dug deeper, I found the functionality provided by the plugins was easier to write in Xojo than it was to implement the plugin. I decided at that point that I would strive for all of my projects to be cross-platform compilable without any third-party purchases being necessary. Several projects later, I have not had to compromise that decision.

Although Xojo is a RAD environment (Rapid Access Development), I’ve observed (on the Xojo forum) that many developers overlook the power that is available in the core language and built-in objects. Anyone using the forum will notice that many answers basically say, “Use plugin ABC for that,” when Xojo itself could often solve the problem without any plugins. For developers who are packaging and reselling their software, I think the less third-party dependencies the package has, the easier it is to maintain, support, and debug.

For example, without using any third-party software, I’ve created reusable Xojo objects for PDF (with both print and preview), ID3 audio-tags-reader (for MP3 files), and custom controls (database-enabled auto-completing dropdown fields, GUI panels, etc). Xojo really can stand “on its own two feet”!

Mac, Windows or Linux?

All of the above! My primary machine is Mac, with a separate Windows machine on a different HDMI channel, and I use various Linux VMs as needed.

What do you wish more people would ask/talk to you about when it comes to the software you develop? 

I wish more people offered criticism of the user experience. Only through critical feedback can you improve a software package, and I’ve learned to appreciate it when people complain.

What’s next on your “Learn Next” list?

In the context of computers, the Rust language has piqued my interest. Besides that, I’m currently studying Greek.

When do you think of solutions for stubborn bugs?

*Always* first thing in the morning. The mind seems to solve them overnight.

What programming moments made you think “Wow, I love my job so much.”

I felt that way when, using Xojo’s ServerSocket and TCPSocket classes, I was able to implement a bonafide HTTP 1.1 server written from scratch in Xojo. I packaged that code as a reusable object that I can plop in to any of my projects. For example, one of my projects uses that server to allow users to control the app remotely from any device on the same network (e.g. iPhone, iPad, Android, and even Kindle tablets). So yeah … it is very satisfying to see my Xojo apps serving up their own HTML and JavaScript web apps, as well!

What is something that has surprised you about coding in the last 10 years?

Two things: 1) How fast certain new languages are adopted (e.g. Swift, Rust), and 2) How indispensable some of the older languages have become (e.g. C++, PHP … they’ll never die! ).

What’s the coolest thing you worked on recently?

There are actually two very “geeky” things that come to mind: The first is a shell script I created on TrueNAS (FreeBSD) using rsync to *pull* scheduled (cron) backups of a remote Linux web server over an authenticated SSH connection. The core functions from the script are also used on my Mac to *push* scheduled backups to the TrueNAS. That made my “geek sense tingle” a bit. Secondly, I created a web-based VOIP phone system (like the automated attendants in a PBX) using a RESTful API on the backend, and a home-grown web-app-GUI on the frontend. It allows people to setup a complete phone system in one or more languages and with different voices, all through a web interface. Again, “geek-sense=tingly.”

Music or no music while coding?

I’m a multi-instrument musician of over 4 decades, so yes, always!

In addition to accounting software, Ed offers additional apps built in Xojo. EKlecticSong is a presentation program for song services, church services, or business presentations. EKlectic Find Duplicates is a duplicate finder with a fast duplicate algorithm. Dock Media is a full-featured yet minimalistic media player.

Thank you to Ed Kidwell for answering our questions and sharing his experience with Xojo with us. If you have an app, a project or a person you want to see featured in Spotlight On, tell us about it!

LX Aer is an AI-powered educational platform developed by student-turned-entrepreneur Leo Medvinsky. In 2020 as the pandemic forced schools to begin using remote learning tools, Leo, a student at the time, saw the gaps and the flaws in the tools he was offered and did what so many Xojo developers do, he decided to build something better. A quick view of LX Aer demonstrates it’s the solution someone who actually uses such a system would create. LX Aer is a modern take on the LMS with a user interface that centers the student and teacher. Currently, LX Aer uses Xojo Web for the backend and the project has 30,000 lines of Xojo code and growing.

10 Questions with Leo Medvinsky of LX Aer

Using Xojo Web for just the backend (web services) is somewhat surprising, tell us about that?

The LX Aer web app is designed to be the digital hub for students, teachers, and soon, administrators. The original web app was written in between 2020 and 2021 and used Xojo Web for some web service work but was mainly used the conventional way for Xojo Web pages. To increase speed and reliability as well as to improve performance, the decision was made that our next product (a standalone attendance tracking system) would be written using Xojo Web as a backend, with a Xojo iOS app and a standard HTML/CSS/JS web app to accompany it. We found that Xojo Web was a great way for us to have business logic on the backend, with great performance and amazing ease of management with Tim Parnell’s Lifeboat. When, in 2022, we were unifying this attendance system into the LX Aer suite, it was decided that the LX Aer suite would be combined into the attendance technology stack, rather than the other way around. This was a large time investment as it involved rewriting and rethinking significant portions of the existing product offering but has brought our software to a much stronger position.

What is your experience with Xojo Web performance for larger scale apps like LX Aer?

Up until recently, when we began self-hosting most things, we had two instances of the LX Aer Backend running on a Debian server in AWS with just 2 GB of RAM and performance was very good. We are actively developing solutions to allow for much greater scalability and distribution of load across not just instances (with Lifeboat), but across several different servers. Our database server runs CubeSQL, and Marco and I have been discussing ways to implement database sharding into CubeSQL to allow for greater scalability. While we are a startup without too many users right now, LX Aer needs to be able to support the thousands of users each school brings, along with all of their data requirements.

Can you tell us why Xojo was chosen as the backend and what other options were ruled out?

My first programming language was Visual Basic .NET. The original software I had was a simple quizzing application designed to help the user study for tests, but it could only run on Windows. This was a significant limitation. I (mostly) loved the syntax of VB compared to other languages I’ve worked with (Python, C++, Swift…), so I decided to try Xojo when I came across it in 2020. It was an amazing feeling to be able to write with the syntax I already knew to and make an iOS app, albeit a limited one, the same day I downloaded Xojo. Having experimented with Xojo, I started working on major projects in it very soon, and when a web development need came up, it was my go-to. Over the years, I have considered many alternatives, and many in the developer community (not Xojo’s) have discouraged me from relying on a proprietary language for such critical software, but I have never had any interest in switching. Every step of the way, Xojo has scaled with our needs.

Mac, Windows or Linux?

I flip-flop constantly between my dev machine, a Mac, and my business machine, a Surface. I tried many Linux distros on several occasions and have never been much of a fan of it as a consumer operating system.

What do you wish more people would ask/talk to you about when it comes to LX Aer?

Security. LX Aer’s tagline is “Security, Reliability, Innovation.” Notice how “security” comes first. While the Aer Intelligence platform offers incredible AI tools built into LX Aer to improve educational outcomes, and this is one of the largest attention grabbers, I would argue that security is our most interesting innovation. Having graduated from high school just over a year ago, I recall when I found my student data leaked online after a massive breach of PupilPath, a learning management system that my school used at the time. I also recall the school I transferred to for my senior year and the software they used, Genesis, which allows a user to view their own password in plaintext after logging on. This, among other things, motivated me to always put security first. In 2023, we launched LX SecurShield, which provides encryption for student data WITHOUT storing keys on the server, while still allowing a user to seamlessly log on from any device, without any of the hassle typically associated with client-side encryption. LX SecurShield is truly unique and is something I wish more people took an interest in.

How would you explain your most recent project to a 5-year-old?

LX Aer is creating an AI chatbot that will help teachers teach and students learn!

What’s next on your “Learn Next” list?

Tough question… maybe French?

What programming moments made you think “Wow, I love my job so much”?

I’ve always been technically minded, but I have seen it as a means to an end, rather than the end itself. I never wrote code for the sake of writing code. I always had a long-term project in mind. LX Aer has been a project of mine for over 4.5 years, and has changed immensely from March 2020, when it first began. Consequently, the programming moments that made me think how much I love my job were when I was able to finally push an innovation over the edge into a working state. When I was developing LX SecurShield, it required significant portions of LX Aer to be rewritten to support the new encryption. After developing a proof of concept, I worked almost nonstop for close to a week to develop it into a usable and stable state, with several all-nighters along the way. At the end of it all, I thought, “wow, I love my job so much, even with all the craziness associated with it!”

What is something that has surprised you about coding in the last 10 5 years?

10 years ago, I was 8 and had no experience writing code (though I was still the go-to tech support for my friends/family). This is a tough question, but if I had to pick it would be the difference in writing code for someone else vs. writing code for your own company. Writing code for someone else is 1,000x more difficult than writing code when you’re your own boss. As for something in the industry itself, I am always surprised by the tendency of web developers to jump around from platform to platform… Angular, React, etc. It just fascinates me.

What is a piece of software more people should know about?

To those in the Xojo community writing a web service, I cannot recommend Tim Parnell’s Lifeboat and Marco Bambini’s CubeSQL enough. To anyone working with cryptography, Björn Eiriksson’s Einhugur plugins are just incredible! 

To people in general, I think it would be great if more people knew about Proton. They’re a Swiss company that develops mail, cloud storage, calendar, VPN, and password storage software, all of which uses client-side encryption and is easy-to-use. They were my inspiration for LX SecurShield. 

What’s something you worked on recently that you are excited about?

It would be somewhat cliché to say that I am excited about AI (Aer Intelligence), but I am. Especially in the EdTech industry, I see so much potential for it to improve educational outcomes and make lives easier for overworked teachers.  With our software having won the Pitchfest award at the prestigious Future of Education Technology Conference this year, I believe, largely because of our AI capabilities, I think it isn’t just the LX Aer team that’s excited about AI in education.

Thank you to Leo Medvinsky for answering our questions. If you want to learn more about LX Aer visit https://www.lxaer.com/. To all those in the Xojo community, as a token of gratitude, Leo is offering a free license until December 31^st, 2024. Email sales@lxaer.com and say that you’re part of the Xojo community! “Although I have not been very active in the Xojo community in terms of engagement,” Leo says, “without the exceptionally great resource that is the Xojo Programming Forum, as well as the software and plugins made by those in the community, such as Tim Parnell, Marco Bambini, Christian Schmitz, Björn Eiriksson, and Sam Rowlands, none of this would have been possible.” See the full LX Aer Xojo community credits at https://www.lxaer.com/credits.

Monkeybread Software and Christian Schmitz have organized an exceptional event in Germany taking place in just 2 months – April 22nd to 27th. Take this opportunity to meet and network with members of the global Xojo Community. Meet Geoff Perlman, Xojo’s Founder & CEO and Xojo Engineers, Javier Menendez and Ricardo Cruz.

This event includes:

• Keynotes from Geoff Perlman and Christian Schmitz
• Educational, Feedback and Q&A Sessions
• Web Lab with Xojo’s Ricardo Cruz
• Performance Lab with MBS’s Christian Schmitz
• Dinners, Networking and Sightseeing

Training, Sessions & Events

6 Day Schedule

Monday          22nd April        Welcome Event
Tuesday         23rd April         Sight Seeing Tour & Dinner
Wednesday    24th April         Training Day & Reception in Hotel
Thursday        25th April         Conference & Dinner at Baggerado
Friday             26th April         Conference & Farewell Dinner
Saturday         27th April         Geyser Tour

Einstein Hotel Am Römerpark

The event will be hosted at the Einstein Hotel Am Römerpark, a modern business and conference hotel with unique ambiance and modern facilities. Located in Andernach across from the river Rhine, the hotel features a garden, lounge, terrace and the Sky Bar & Restaurant.

Visit, Attend & Network

Location: Andernach

Networking is not limited to the event hotel! Enjoy the evenings with other Xojo users at casual get-togethers. Arrive a day or two before the conference or stay over the weekend and schedule time to enjoy the area. Join the group for sightseeing and a Geyser Tour. Andernach has much to offer visitors including the “Runde Turm” (round tower), Mariendom (Cathedral of Mary), the old crane on the Rhine River front, the Mikveh or the well preserved town wall.

Learn everything else you need to know and Register Today at Monkeybread Software.

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In the 13+ years since then, working from home has become more common and the line between work and home has become increasingly blurred. The “always-on” work culture can sneak up on you. At first it’s just an email in the evening and then it’s replying to a tweet on a Saturday and helping a customer on the Forum during Thanksgiving. Every member of the Xojo team is passionate about Xojo. But a study by Deloitte found that 64% of professionals who consider themselves “passionate” about their jobs are frequently stressed, dispelling the myth that passionate employees are immune to stress or burnout. And we all know stressed and burned-out employees cannot do their best. Of course Xojo encourages team members to take days off and vacations; plus our company policy doesn’t limit the amount of days we can take off. But we acknowledge with a tight and close-knit team like ours, it’s hard to take a break when your colleagues are working.

In light of all this, Xojo has decided to close for the week of July 3rd. After all, Xojo is running a marathon, not a sprint. We’ve been around for over 25 years and we plan on being around for many more. In order to do this, we need to keep our team in good shape. We will return on July 10th, refreshed and ready to get back to work on Xojo 2023r2 and all that comes with it (Android, DesktopXAMLContainer and more!). We appreciate your understanding and look forward working on what’s coming in Xojo.

Now, please don’t worry, the Xojo Developer Conference in London is going to be an excellent event. Check out the growing list of sessions. And to keep XDC excitement high, we are releasing session videos from XDC 2022 over the coming weeks, watch them and get a feel for what a cool event a XDC is! That said, we don’t have plans for a XDC 2024. And that is why I am writing this. More than a few people have mentioned they plan to skip this event. But when attendee numbers aren’t growing like they used to, and the costs and logistics are increasing, XDC and many events like it may not be around next year. In the US, conference costs have gotten astronomically higher as hotels struggle to recover from the pandemic; this is in addition to general inflation and an increased costs of goods. Previous XDC hotels have seen more than 150% increase in cost per night. One hotel that previously hosted a XDC has seen a 300% increase in cost per night. XDC hasn’t ever been profitable, but we have always recognized its importance to the Xojo Community, and we also like it a lot ourselves. Dana works hard to keep the event big and cost low, but that isn’t feasible in a world where hotel costs are up 300%.

I’m not saying XDC is over. After all, we’ve taken breaks from XDC before. I’m saying things change and if you want to come to XDC, you should come to London. If you are thinking perhaps you will come to XDC in 2024, I highly recommend you come to London.

And for those of you who cannot be there, we are keeping an eye on all things conference related and we are listening to what the Xojo Community tells us. Currently, there is a huge demand for live webinars, Xojo has 2 planned for March, and training videos. And we may host more meetups like the one Dana hosted in London in November and the one Geoff hosted last month in California.

Xojo’s team was all vaxxed-up and so happy to get together in Nashville for #XDC2022. Tennessee’s Music City was a delightful backdrop for the first in-person Xojo event since 2019. Check out the short highlights video from Nashville and then join us for #XDC2023 in London, UK. You can register here.

This year the Xojo team and community welcomed a new Xojo engineer, Ricardo Cruz. Ricardo has applied his expertise to advance and improve Xojo Web. To quote one of Xojo’s engineers, “Ricardo coming in has been awesome,” a sentiment echoed on the Forum and the community in Nashville.

Xojo Web has come so far this year. Control reliability has improved, IDE previews have improved and reconnections have really improved. The web framework can now more often reconnect back to the same web session if it still exists. This is one of the things Ricardo is really happy about, “You can switch to your email app in your mobile, copy something to the clipboard, come back to the web app and it is still there, ready to continue.” Under the hood, some dependencies received updates, like jQuery. As a user, you don’t have to do anything, just use the new Xojo version! Try to tell that to another web developer, that’s sci-fi outside of Xojo. Also, thanks to the community, the memory and CPU usage continues to be improved release after release. “Honestly from my perspective it is just fun to play with little projects in it because it has really matured,” says Xojo’s Director of Engineering, Travis Hill.

Speaking of technical achievements, this year we added two new targets to Xojo: Windows on ARM 64 and Linux on ARM 64. On Windows, you can natively deploy to ARM-based tablets and laptops that run Windows. On Linux, you can deploy to 64-bit Raspberry Pi which can address significantly more RAM than 32-bit versions.

We built the Xojo Cloud Control Panel with an updated version of Xojo, and thanks to some Web framework improvements the controls now stay more responsive under load. Plus we’ve added Xojo Cloud servers in Sydney, Australia for web developers in Australia and New Zealand. We also continued improving and testing our upcoming support for Android, which is now feature complete and awaiting some remaining bug fixes before we make it available to everyone.

In addition, we want to brag about a few technical improvements, including the numerous PDF updates implemented by Xojo Engineer and now PDF expert, Javier Menéndez. Also there is the option to generate Program Database (PDB) files on Windows and improved multi-monitor support shepherded by Xojo Engineer William Yu. The list goes on: Code Assistants, on-device debugging in iOS, new Xojo Documentation site, adding Controls at runtime, loading speed faster for big projects, and the time team-Lefebvre built a web app to Calculate Combat Rolls in Twilight Imperium…

Inside Xojo we improved a lot too. Besides welcoming Ricardo and his beard to the team, we migrated Xojo’s bug and feature reporting platform from the internally managed Feedback tool to the much loved Issues. This has increased productivity, streamlined work flow, made it easier to search and find, comment, edit. The team couldn’t be happier!

This year also included Xojo’s first Bug Bash in a long time! During the Bug Bash, Xojo’s Code Editor got some much needed improvements resulting in noticeably faster updates. Plus updates to the Syntax Help Area thanks to Xojo Engineer and retro-computing expert, Paul Lefebvre. Besides the very real smashing of 100 bugs, the bash had the unintended consequence of giving the engineers an opportunity to work on things they don’t normally work on, giving engineers opportunities to collaborate and better solve things.

All in all, 2022 was a year of forward movement for Xojo. Which has us leaning into 2023 with a lot of excitement and expectation. Our team is committed to continuing to make Xojo the best cross-platform development tool and we thank you for being part of Xojo’s continued success!

Xojo will donate 10% of total revenue for the week of March 21st to Global Giving’s Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund (Charity Navigator Score). History proves that humanity’s greatest strength comes from supporting each other and standing together. Xojo stands in solidarity with Ukraine with the goal of peace, safety and freedom.

If you don’t purchase Xojo this week, you can help Ukraine in many other ways. Charity Navigator offers a rated review of charities so you can be confident your donation will go directly to people in the Ukraine. Our friends over at Paradigma Software have started a GoFundMe for their team members in the Ukraine.

Leisurely scroll through the alphabetically listed apps in the Showcase to see what can be made with Xojo. From AcaStat, an easy to use data analysis tool for Windows and Mac, to VersionTracker, a tool to help developers maintain and create version history logs, the Showcase includes apps of all kinds. Search by Category or Platform for something specific. Spend some time in Galactic Quizmaster, pack for your next trip with Packr, perfect your next project with Joint Angle or learn to surf with Sally’s Surf School, all Xojo-made Mobile apps you can find in the Showcase. It’s no surprise the largest group is Desktop apps- from ClaroRead, a simple, flexible and easy to use text-to-speech app for dyslexia, to Lifeboat, to help you deploy and manage Xojo Web apps on Linux servers, to UHMMM, which will auto-play elevator music when online meetings go silent, there are too many to list – good thing there’s a Showcase for them!

The purpose of the Showcase is twofold, to exhibit what can be done with Xojo and to promote what you have done with Xojo! We regularly share apps from the Showcase on Xojo’s Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn pages as well as in occasional Xojo Newsletters. There isn’t a quicker way to introduce your app to a new audience!

I look forward to seeing your newest Xojo-made app in the Xojo Showcase!

Xojo Pro includes support for every platform:

• Desktop – Cross-compile for Windows, macOS X & Linux.
• Web – Deploy web apps as standalone apps or to Xojo Cloud.
• Mobile – Make apps for iPhone and iPads (iOS) and Android.
• Pi – Make apps for Raspberry Pi and other single-board computers.
• Console – Make apps with no graphical user interface that run from the terminal, command line or as background processes.

In addition, Xojo Pro developers enjoy the following benefits:

• Technical Email & Phone Support
• Access to Xojo pre-releases
• License activation on 3 machines
• First access to Consulting Leads

Xojo Pro is $799 and a new license includes build access to new Xojo releases for 12 months. Your Xojo license is perpetual, but access to building apps with new Xojo releases is limited. After 12 months you can renew your access to build apps with new releases or continue building apps with the older releases, indefinitely. You are never required to renew and can do so anytime to access new features and supported platforms. Your apps built with Xojo are yours forever.

Already have a Xojo license? Upgrading it to Xojo Pro will earn you a discount. We’ve made it easy to Upgrade to Xojo Pro, just log in to your account, go to your licenses page and select the license(s) you wish to upgrade. The more licenses you select, the greater your discount. After you have selected the licenses to upgrade, choose “Upgrade to Xojo Pro” to see your personal upgrade discount in the store.

Questions about Xojo Pro or upgrading your existing Xojo licenses to Xojo Pro? Email me anytime at hello@xojo.com.

Think you need more? Look into Xojo Pro Plus, developed for businesses that depend on Xojo.

Xojo is free to download and free for development and learning, for everyone. Teachers and students can download Xojo to as many computers as they want. Teachers can activate their license on 3 computers in order to build apps, while students can use the free Xojo IDE to develop, run and debug their projects. Whether you teach on Windows, Mac or Linux, the Xojo IDE is cross-platform so you can code on your platform of choice, and so can your students. If you are teaching Desktop development, your students can stretch their skills and use Xojo to learn to make Web, Mobile or Raspberry Pi apps. Xojo is all about making developing for different platforms and devices easier with one cross-platform, object-oriented language, in fact, that’s how Xojo got its name.

A Xojo Educational license makes apps for all supported platforms (Desktop, Web, Mobile, Console & RPi). Students can create native user interfaces quickly and intuitively with drag and drop from Xojo’s library of built-in controls. Xojo includes modern support for inheritance, interfaces, polymorphism, graphics, internet protocols and more. Xojo comes bundled with SQLite and works with databases like PostgreSQL, MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server. Free technical support via email is included with the Educational license and access to the Xojo Forum is free for everyone. Apps compiled with Xojo are native, stand-alone and yours forever.

The More You Know

• Xojo documentation, example projects, tutorials, YouTube channel and Intro to Xojo Programming Textbook and Teacher’s Guide are all free.
• Video: Success With Xojo In Improving Student Retention In Intro to Programming Classes, Dr Ed Lindoo, Regis University
• Xojo Pi for building Raspberry Pi apps (Linux 32-bit ARM apps) is free.
• Students can get Xojo and tons of other free programming tools in the GitHub Student Developer Pack.
• Xojo is celebrating 25 years as a development tool and programming language in 2021!
• Still not sure Xojo is right for your classroom? Email Xojo directly with any questions at hello@xojo.com.

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First, let’s be very clear about what a troll (or trolling) is. Every business will hear from unhappy customers, receive criticism and complaints, and sometimes these won’t be friendly or even constructive, but these things are not trolling. These customers have an issue but they want a solution. Trolls and trolling do not aim to solve a problem. A troll is combative and their intentions are not constructive.

Haters of small businesses and organizations are a strange breed of trolls. They don’t move on from your business or brand, often despite professing not to use it or pay for it. They stick around online to downvote, harass your customers and mock your sincere attempts to engage. They are not there to help anyone. Unfortunately, as is common with trolls, they can be loud and destructive enough to appear like they are more than the single individual or the small minority they are. This is especially true in the community surrounding a small business where, unlike hate directed at a large corporation, the impact one troll can make can be disproportionately disruptive.

1. Kill Them with Kindness – This is the first step, always. Make sure their issues are heard. It’s important to acknowledge your critics and thank them for their feedback. Next, do what you can; let them know how to find a solution, report a problem or submit a request through the designated channels. If this doesn’t apply or work, I use an open-ended question such as “what do you suggest?” or “how can I make this right?”. Responses to these questions can really highlight the person’s intention. If you have done these things, your sincere customers will see your good-faith effort even when the trolls refuse to acknowledge it.
2. Let it Chill & Find Your Voice – Sometimes the best thing is to walk away for an hour or a day. It’s tempting to jump right in and defend your small business. I’ve certainly done it and I bet you have too. Keep in mind it takes a certain temperament to respond online and not everyone is designed for it. So take your time to craft a reply as well as to choose who should post that reply. The poster will likely be the “face” of the reply and will need to be able to handle follow-ups without feeding the trolls or sinking to their level. A well thought out reply that states facts is the best counter to a troll trying to goad you into a fight. Plus, you come out looking calm and professional in contrast to the troll.
3. Never Feed the Trolls – We’ve all heard this mantra and we all know how difficult it can be to follow. Perhaps the most difficult step in all this is deciding when to respond and when not to respond. You believe in your business and you have devoted yourself to growing and improving it and you naturally want to defend your product. But it’s very important to remember that not every online comment needs a response. Ideally, you have already tried the first two suggestions and if those haven’t worked, now you need to take the high road. You can agree to disagree, even if the troll can’t.
4. Look to the Helpers – Sometimes the best response doesn’t come from you. Your customers shooting down a troll and defending your business can be such a benefit for a small business. Not to mention, it’s so nice to not have to worry about at least this one response! It’s important to reply to and focus on the community members that add positively to the community, the people who support others online. Do not let trolls ruin the community experience for everyone else. If the negative actions of a troll outweighs the positive, if the helpers are expressing to you the negative impact of a troll, small businesses must consider the impact on the whole community. Listen to the helpers in your community when they complain about the trolls and take decisive action.
5. Self Care – I can say “don’t take it home” and “leave it at the office” until the cows come home; but it’s 2021 and the line between home and office is so very, very distorted, disproportionately so for small businesses. Plus, for some of us it’s just not that easy. If you are part of a team, lean on them when you feel overwhelmed. In small businesses we often wear many hats, so there is no reason you should bear the trauma of a troll alone. I read about a group that shares the most bizarre hate message and crazy reviews they receive each year, they select the worst and have a comedian announce the winners! One participant said, “We figure it means we’ve arrived, so why not celebrate it!” Finally, remind yourself of the positives. Take a step back and be proud! Be proud of the effort you have put in, the small business you have worked to build and the people who support you. Also, a cold, local beer does wonders.

I hope these tips have offered you some possible paths forward. In the very least, know that you are not alone. In 2017 the Pew Research Center said four-in-ten Americans have experienced harassment online and though I cannot find hard numbers, I don’t think I’m out of line to assume the global pandemic hasn’t improved this trend.

There is no silver bullet for trolls. Trolling is multi-leveled, complex and varies in intensity. And when you are part of a small business trolling can have a significant impact on your mental health as well as job performance. If I can leave you with one bit of advice it would be, no matter what steps you take professionally, know a troll’s anger and hate is their problem, not yours.

Unlike VB and VB.NET, Xojo allows you to develop on your platform of choice- Windows, Mac or Linux. But being able to develop wherever you like isn’t the only reason Xojo is a great alternative to Visual Basic. Xojo is fully object-oriented, supported and regularly updated. It allows you to cross-compile desktop apps for Windows, Mac and Linux and Raspberry Pi. Currently, a Mac is required to compile projects for macOS and for iOS development and compilation; learn why. In additional to all this, Xojo allows you to compile apps for mobile and the web with that same powerful language and IDE.

Evaluating Xojo as a Visual Basic Alternative

Xojo is free for learning and development so you can take all the time you need to evaluate. Download Xojo and start learning while you develop, run and debug your projects in Xojo’s free IDE. Going through the QuickStarts and Tutorials, you’ll recognize how your knowledge of VB leads you to quickly embrace Xojo. Purchase a license only when you are ready to compile your projects.

To help make your transition from Visual Basic to Xojo easier, download this open-source Xojo.VB library that maps many Visual Basic commands to their Xojo equivalents. Watch this Migrating from VB video to see a simple VB app get migrated to Xojo. Visit our Migrating from Visual Basic page at the Xojo Docs for more details about Data Types, Commands and Controls.

Modernize Visual Basic Apps for Web and Mobile

Xojo it is a great way to modernize legacy Visual Basic desktop apps to web and mobile platforms.

Web Development – With Xojo’s programming language and IDE, web apps are as simple to develop as desktop apps. Instead of HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, and AJAX, you’ll save tons of development time using the Xojo programming language. Xojo web apps are compiled to binary code and can be deployed to any server (Linux, macOS or Windows) as standalone web apps. For simple, secure one-click deployment of web apps plus built-in SSL and database support, use Xojo Cloud.

Mobile Development – With Xojo iOS you can design your apps using drag and drop in the layout editor, add your code and build. Access the iOS-features you’d expect, like sharing panel and your photo library, and also the iPhone’s hardware-based features, like motion, location and camera. Xojo makes iOS development familiar and fast. Xojo Android is currently in development.

Similarities Between Xojo and Visual Basic

As a Visual Basic developer, you will find Xojo very familiar. VB and Visual Basic.NET use a language similar to the Xojo programming language. You will notice that many of the commands are nearly the same. The default UI controls included with VB are, for the most part, also included with Xojo. You’ll also find that Xojo has several controls that are not included by default with VB like HTMLViewer/WebHTMLViewer, MoviePlayer/WebMoviePlayer and SearchField. 

Language – The Xojo programming language has commands like If..Then..Else, For..Next, and While..Loop. You will also find the object-oriented capabilities of Xojo are quite similar to VB.NET.

Data Types – Xojo shares many of the same data types with VB6 and VB.NET, including: Integer, Double, String/Text, Currency, Boolean, Variant.

Controls – Xojo has many common controls including: Buttons, Labels, TextFields, TextAreas, ListBoxes (grids), PopupMenus, ProgressBars, toolbars and more.

Differences Between Xojo and Visual Basic

Xojo definitely feels similar to Visual Basic, but you’ll find there are differences too. Many of these differences stem from Xojo’s focus on being cross-platform.

Shared Libraries – Xojo cannot create DLLs, ActiveX controls, .NET assemblies or any kind of shared libraries. Since these are all Windows-specific technologies, that is somewhat understandable for a cross-platform tool. If you’re depending on a DLL and are planning to deploy on Mac or Linux, you’ll need another solution for those operating systems. Fortunately, Xojo supports conditional compilation which makes it easy for your code to use DLLs only when compiling for Windows. If you find another library that provides a solution for MacOS and/or Linux, you can use conditional compilation there as well.

Compiler and Run-time – Xojo apps are compiled to native code. They do not contain byte-code that is run by a virtual machine (as with .NET). The run-time library is included with your applications so there is nothing additional that needs to be installed on users’ computers.

Language and Framework – Xojo is fully object-oriented. Unlike VB6, you can have classes that use inheritance and other object-oriented features. The Xojo framework is designed to be simple to use and support cross-platform applications; it provides access to many things you’ve come to expect such as file handling, databases, graphics and more.

File I/O – One of the biggest differences between VB6 and Xojo is file I/O. Xojo consolidates all its file processing into a few classes: FolderItem, TextInputStream, TextOutputStream and BinaryStream. VB6 uses hard-coded file paths and less flexible file access methods, primarily because it only needs to work with Windows-specific file paths.

Data Types – Xojo is strongly typed, just like VB.NET. VB6 allows you to do some things the old-school, BASIC way, the most significant of which is using variables without declaring them (the type is inferred by a suffix on the name). Xojo does not allow this. Use the OPTION EXPLICIT command in all your Visual Basic code to have VB enforce explicit variable declarations.

Improved Error Handling – Xojo has modern exception handling using Try/Catch, Exception and App.UnhandledException.

Enjoy Coding Again

Whether you need VB for Mac, or VB for Linux or just an updated, rapid-application development tool for Windows, Xojo is that alternative! If you find yourself frustrated with VB.NET or you’re still looking for something to replace VB6, test out Xojo. If saving time and money is a concern, Xojo is a development tool you should consider. Go ahead and download Xojo and see how much you have missed coding like this!

Like all development tools we know Xojo isn’t a fit for every project, so all Xojo licenses come with a 90 day money-back guarantee. We’ve been around for more than 25 years now, and we’ll be here when your next project is looking for a quick way to get off the ground and into development! Questions? I’m here for that, email me, a human being and Xojo fan, anytime at hello@xojo.com.

Join Xojo on Zoom today at 1pm to 3pm Eastern (10am to 12pm Pacific).

See you online!

The 2020 Xojo Design Award Winners are:

Best Consumer App – HDRtist NX

Ohanaware: A detail-oriented High Dynamic Range Imaging app for MacOS X.

Best iOS App – PropertyMe Manager

PropertyMe: The PropertyMe Manager app gives property managers access to their portfolio wherever they are.

Best Lifestyle App – Crossword Wizard

Rush Software: Create and play crossword games.

Best Developer Tool – RegExRX

MacTechnologies Consulting: A cross-platform Regular Expression development tool.

Best Vertical Market App – qwireCast

qWire: Desktop app to help Hollywood casting director make cast lists.

Best Vertical Market App – bMD Medical Software*

bMD biomedical Developments SRL: Medical practice management software.

Best Plugin – MBS Plugins

MonkeyBread Software: This huge toolbox for Xojo developers includes thousands of classes, controls and examples to extend Xojo.

*Yes, there are two Best Vertical Market Apps, they were both so good we had no choice but to award them both!