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Category: Learning

Adventures in Regular Expressions

As you probably know, every version of Xojo includes an extensive list of release notes that is included in the Documentation folder as an HTML file called ReleaseNotes.htm.

To make these even easier to access, I needed a way to get these into the wiki. It would be easiest if I could just copy and paste the HTML contents onto a wiki page, but MediaWiki can’t quite process all the HTML in that file so I needed a way to clean it up a bit.

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Tutorial: Saving WebCanvas Images to Disk

The WebCanvas control is used for drawing graphics in web apps. It takes advantage of the HTML5 Canvas making it fast and powerful. Sometimes is can be useful to be able to save the graphics drawn in the WebCanvas to an image file, but unfortunately there is no built-in Xojo method to do this.

However, by using a little JavaScript you can easily add this capability to Xojo.

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Web Services: Xojo Web, at your service

Using Xojo Web to create complete web apps and solutions means not having to learn a bunch of interpreted languages and dozens of ever-changing frameworks. I’m looking at you: HTML, CSS (is that even a language?), JavaScript, PHP, et al. Of course, Xojo Web not only makes it possible to create your own web apps, but it also acts as the perfect middleware that your desktop and iOS apps can communicate with. Learn about APIs and web services with Xojo in the tutorial blog post.

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Localize Your Edit Menu on Mac

On macOS you may have noticed two special menu items that appear at the bottom of the Edit menu: “Start Dictation” and “Emoji & Symbols”. These menu items are added automatically by macOS provided your Xojo app follows a few simple rules.

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Quick Control Library Tips

When you start using Xojo one of the first things you’ll see is that there are many, many types of built-in controls. The area where you see all the controls is called the Library and each project type (desktop, web or iOS) has its own set of controls.

No matter the what type of project you are creating, learn these tips to make using the Library and finding controls fast and easy.

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Formatting Your XML

Although Xojo does not have a built-in method to format XML text, you can use XSLT to do this for you. XSLT stands for eXtensible Stylesheet Language. This XSLT can be used to format XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:transform version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" />
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:copy-of select="/" />
</xsl:template>
</xsl:transform>

To use this with Xojo, add a module to your project (name it XMLExtensions), add a String constant to the module (call it kXSLTFormat) and copy the above XSLT into the constant.

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Tutorial: Active Words

Follow this tutorial to learn how to create active (clickable) words in a text of a TextArea control using the OOP Delegate design pattern, which allows you to dynamically change how your app will react when the user clicks on any of these active words. Best of all, this is cross-platform, so you can use it for macOS, Windows and Linux deployments!

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Name Your App

Naming your app may seem like the last step and the easiest part of the process, but it actually should involve some careful thought and consideration. A name needs to set the right tone for your app, should relate to it in some way, and should be searchable, meaning something that can be found easily in search engines. For example, you don’t want to name your app TravelTips – there are thousands of google searches that will come up before your app. You want a name you can own.

When we changed our name from Real Studio to Xojo, we wanted to make sure we could find a name that we could own. Not only was Xojo a pretty wide open space in terms of search, but it also stands for something that describes what Xojo is – X is for Cross-platform and “OJO” is for Object-Oriented.

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App How To: Packaging, Selling & Marketing

Are you ready to sell your app? Whether you have a web app, desktop or mobile app, it’s time to think about how to package and distribute that app, how get the word out and, of course, how to get paid for sales.

In this #longread blog post, we’ll walk you through preparing your app for distribution, offering your app on your website and in app marketplaces for sale, as well as first steps to marketing your app.

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