If you are a Mac or Linux web or cross-platform developer, one of the easiest ways to test your apps on Windows is to use a virtual machine. And you can test Windows in a VM completely for free by using the test VMs provided by Microsoft.
Comments closedCategory: Cross-Platform
At the recent Build conference, Microsoft released the final version of Visual Studio for Mac. As a former Visual Studio developer who left that world for the fun, fast development that is Xojo, I had to check it out to see how it compares to Xojo.
First, if you’ve ever used Visual Studio on Windows before, be aware that Visual Studio for Mac is not the same thing. Essentially Visual Studio for Mac is new branding for Xamarin Studio (Microsoft bought Xamarin in 2016), so Visual Studio for Mac looks and works nothing like Visual Studio for Windows.
Comments closedWikipedia says:
In computer programming, a constant is a value that cannot be altered by the program during normal execution, i.e., the value is constant.
In Xojo we have constants that can be defined in code or added to modules, classes, etc. What you’ll notice about Wikipedia’s definition of “constant” is that it’s a behavior, not a specific type.
There is another way to define a “constant” or “a value that doesn’t change throughout the run of your application”.
Comments closedFor XDC 2016 I needed a way to demonstrate a Raspberry Pi app that used the GPIO and updated an LCD character display. But I didn’t really have access to a screen that I could use to show the desktop so that I could run the app. And I could not remotely connect to the Pi because I did not have a good way to get it on the wifi network in the first place.
Comments closedYou can develop and build console and desktop apps for the Raspberry Pi using Xojo 2019r1 or later for free.
Download Xojo today and get started with this simple music player app for your Raspberry Pi that can play mp3 and aac (m4a) files from a folder.
Comments closedWorld Password Day brings attention to some simple steps everyone can take to secure their digital life: 1. Create Strong Passwords, 2. Use a different password for each account, and 3. Get a password manager, no, not a post-it note in your desk drawer!
The best password is one that is diffcult to guess. But difficult to guess takes on a new meaning when hackers use computers to do the guessing. Hence, the best password becomes one that would take a computer so long to guess that it’s not practical to do so. That means a long series of random characters and the longer and more random, the better, and a different password for every site you use.
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A few years ago it was reported that Russian hackers had stolen 1.2 billion usernames and passwords from a variety of websites. This was only possible because those websites were storing the actual password. Because it’s World Password Day and because this is web security 101, let’s discuss why there’s really no excuse for a website to store your password – ever.
Comments closedThe ContainerControl is one of the most versatile control classes included in the Xojo framework both for Desktop and Web apps. In fact, it paves the way to complex UI controls creation with the same simplicity you are used to while designing your window layouts. Even better, once you create your complex UI controls using the ContainerControl, you will be able to add them to your Window layouts as if they were regular controls. Plus, you will enjoy the fruits of better OOP encapsulation and the fact that you can create and use the controls dynamically at run time. Want to see this in action? Follow this tutorial and video to create the basis of a multiplatform search field based on the ContainerControl class.
Comments closedServer Ranger started life as a small in-house Xojo console project that I used to monitor servers for several clients. Rather than getting paged (in the very early days) or getting angry phonecalls from clients, it was much more pleasant to have my app play an alert on my Mac and send me an email to notify me of a server issue. With this heads-up, it was often possible to have the issue resolved before a client even realised there had been an issue.
Like many in-house solutions, the demand on Server Ranger increased over time and it became a more vital part of my business.
Comments closedIn Xojo 2016 Release 4 we switched our main graphics rendering engine on Windows from GDI and GDI+ to Direct2D/DirectWrite. Direct2D/DirectWrite was first introduced by Microsoft in Windows 7, with support in Vista via a Platform Update. It is (or was at the time) Microsoft’s new high-performance 2D vector Graphics API.
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