Xojo Blog – Page 2

Canvas: How to Create Custom UI Controls

Canvas: How to Create Custom UI Controls

Published April 15, 2019 by Javier Menendez

Xojo includes a good amount of UI controls available from the Library for Desktop, Web, iOS and Raspberry Pi targets. These are the pieces that allow you to layout the user interface of your apps: properties, methods and events that, when combined, define the specific behavior of the project at hand.

Sometimes, subclassing the available controls is the answer to add specific behaviors you need. But what happen when none of the controls offer what you need, whether visually or functionally? The answer is the Canvas class (for Desktop projects), WebCanvas class (for Web projects) and iOSCanvas class for iPhone and iPad devices. But how do you create your own UI controls from scratch? Read on to learn…

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Speeding up the Layout Editor

Published April 9, 2019 by Geoff Perlman

For more years than I’d like to admit, the Layout Editor has been slow in terms of dragging controls around. As you add more controls, it gets worse. For web layouts, it’s been even worse. That’s primarily because we have to draw everything for a web layout whereas for a desktop layout, the OS draws the controls for us.

In an engineering meeting, I mentioned a discussion I had with a user about the speed of the Layout Editor and Travis said he had recently been reminded of how slow it was too. While most of the time issues in Xojo are carefully calculated and prioritized for maximum bang for the buck (as we say around here), that’s not always how it happens. After the meeting, Travis decided to dive into the Layout Editor code and see what could be done to speed it up.

The results are pretty remarkable.

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Guest Post: Process and Structure to Control Clutter

Guest Post: Process and Structure to Control Clutter

Published April 3, 2019 by Xojo

Ever been unable to find that document you need for your next meeting?

Have you lost focus while working on one thing because you can’t stop thinking about something else? Feeling overwhelmed? There are several types of clutter: physical, technology, and mental. And that clutter is likely affecting you negatively.

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Automating Application Loader for iOS

Published March 29, 2019 by Greg O'Lone

Did you know that Apple provides a command-line interface for the Application Loader? With a Post-Build IDE build script, you can automatically submit your iOS apps to the iTunesConnect for processing!

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Tip: How To Deal with A Lot of Columns in Database Tables

Published March 28, 2019 by Javier Menendez

Most of the time, the access to our databases tables involves a small amount of columns (fields), so the use of the Field method of the RecordSet class is the most practical approach to retrieve the selected columns values. But what can we do when the query returns, for example, dozens of columns we need to get values from?

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What is Xojo Pro Plus…and what it is not

What is Xojo Pro Plus…and what it is not

Published March 26, 2019 by Dana Brown

Recently we changed the name of Xojo Enterprise to Xojo Pro Plus. This brought about a lot of questions. For users whose businesses rely on Xojo, upgrading to Xojo Pro Plus can be very beneficial. For everyone else in the community, this change doesn’t effect you or your Xojo license.

We offer a range of license types as well as ways for users to get additional help from us. But our help comes at an opportunity cost for us because if we are helping someone with their issue, we aren’t helping others at that time. Xojo Pro users get higher priority support than Xojo Desktop users, who get higher priority support than Xojo Lite users, who get higher priority support than those using Xojo for free. Xojo Pro Plus users get the highest priority support of all.

Here is what Xojo Pro Plus is, what it isn’t and what that means for you.

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Revisiting SQL Injections on the Final Frontier

Published March 20, 2019 by Paul Lefebvre

In a recent Star Trek Discovery episode, the crew was investigating how a probe (from the future!) was attempting to hack into their systems. This is what was said about it:

“The probe used multiple SQL injections”

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How To Speed Timers in Windows

Published March 18, 2019 by Javier Menendez

The Timer and Xojo.Core.Timer classes gives us a resolution that is more than enough for most of the cases where we need to use them. In fact, under macOS we don’t find any kind of limitation when using the classes provided by the Xojo Framework: we can achieve a maximum resolution of 1 ms on any of the most recent computers.

But when working with Windows OS this is not so straightforward . It doesn’t matter if we try to set the Timer Period property to a minimum value of 1 ms; Windows imposes a minimum resolution of 16 ms, insufficient when we demand the maximum precision for a critical task (period interval between Timer firings).

Of course Xojo has a solution for this, you can resort to a third-party plug-in that works extremely well … or you might find the following technique useful for all kinds of projects.

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Guest Post: Achieving Success As A Xojo Developer

Guest Post: Achieving Success As A Xojo Developer

Published March 14, 2019 by Xojo

I’ve spent most of my career developing custom software. I’ve worked as an in-house developer creating custom “line of business” solutions. I’ve worked for software development firms that provide custom software for clients. And I’ve primarily been a self-employed custom software developer since first going out on my own in early 2000. Today, a lot of the work that I’m doing involves developing custom software solutions using Xojo.

I’m often asked by other developers – some who are already using Xojo and some who are not – where the opportunities for Xojo developers are, and how to find them. I also occasionally see these types of questions posted on the Xojo forum by developers who want to use their knowledge of and passion for Xojo to start their own business. So I thought I’d share some of my experiences and observations.

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