Blog about the Xojo programming language and IDE
I’ve been working with JSON in the new Xojo framework quite a bit lately and wanted the ability to format the JSON text so it is more readable.
A little Internet research turned up a set of classes for .NET (in C#) that can do this. I took a few minutes to port these three classes over to a single Xojo class that can format JSON for you.
Comments closedEric Gibbon has been using Xojo to develop bespoke cross-platform applications for Mac and PC and for the web for 15 years. He lives in Stamford, England, and is an active member of the Xojo UK User Group.
There’s an old programmer’s saying: If it works, leave it alone. But sometimes we have to go back to code that works to make it go faster, because it’s too slow.
Over time I have picked up some tips on how to get better performance from Xojo code. I have used these tips to improve old code running on all platforms and have seen big improvements. They are quick and easy to do.
Comments closed
If you work with computers, having backups of your data is essential. This particularly came to light recently with people testing out Apple Music and discovering that it could make a mess of your iTunes library. In fact, this happened to me!
But “luck favors the prepared” and I had backups, so this Apple Music glitch only proved to be an annoyance and not a catastrophe.
In my case, I just restored my iTunes library from my Time Machine backup. But I know far too many people that don’t even have any type of backup system in place. I’m here to help.
Comments closedAnyone who is developing software, even if they are the only person working on the project, should be using source control (aka as version control). As you can see, this comes up a lot:
Comments closedSpeaking at one of their conferences, Gartner principal research analyst Adrian Leow said last week that enterprises are increasingly finding it difficult to build all the mobile apps they need. The demand for mobile apps is increasing far faster than the supply of mobile developers can create them and it’s only going to get worse. This is clearly a problem.
There are three possible solutions to this problem:
Solutions 2 and 3 are not mutually exclusive. You could potentially do both. Adrian Leow even points to the solution when he suggests that developers use rapid mobile app development tools. These tools can provide solution 3, but they don’t create necessarily create more developers.
Comments closedThe code editor tries to help you see what code groups together. For instance, it draws small lines between matching block beginning statements like IF, SELECT CASE and their closers (END, END IF or END SELCT):
Comments closedCan I learn to code in Xojo for free? Yes, Xojo is free for development and testing!
Do you have a free book so I can learn to code? Yes, Intro to Programming with Xojo is free!
Can I ask my beginner questions? Yes, the Xojo forum is a gateway to the friendly and helpful Xojo community.
The Xojo language is Object-Oriented. Object-Oriented programming is an excellent way to learn the fundamentals of computer programming. Xojo is also cross-platform, which means you can build apps for all kinds of platforms using a single code base. Xojo is a Rapid Application Development tool, which means it’s developed to make building apps simple and quick.
Comments closedThough increasingly rare, we do still hear from Xojo users who get false positives from their anti-virus software when downloading Xojo or running Xojo applications. We’ve even heard of this occurring when users are debugging apps from the IDE. To get around this, you can refer to the documentation for your anti-virus software on how to exclude Xojo from scans. To fix these issues for yourself and future Xojo users, we ask that you report these occurrences to your anti-virus software makers.
If you are on Windows, you may also be interested in Avoiding False-Positive Virus Detection in Windows Apps
We’ve occasionally heard from Xojo users that their anti-virus software gives them a warning about Xojo. All of these have been false positives and we ask that you report these to your virus software makers if it happens to you.
Consider the following code:
dim i64 as Int64 = 1234567 dim i32 as int32 = 7654321 i32 = Int32(i64) // cast i64 = Int64(i32) // cast i32 = Ctype(i64, Int32) // convert i64 = Ctype(i32, Int64) // convert
It all seems reasonable enough. Not useful, but seems reasonable. Only one problem. It won’t compile. Why not? The two casts to int32 and int64 will fail. Now why is that?
Comments closedOperator_Lookup and ParamArray are two language features that have been in Xojo for a while now, but most probably don’t know why they were originally added. The need grew out from having to support COM on Windows.
