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104 search results for "deploy"

What’s important in a programming language?

I started learning how to code as a teenager. Back then there weren’t very many programming languages. I remember BASIC, Pascal, Fortran, COBOL, C and a handful of others that were highly specialized. Why so few? Because in the 1970’s, computers just couldn’t do very much compared to today. The available languages were sufficient for the limited tasks computers had been assigned to manage.

Over the last several decades, computer technology has exploded. The smartphone I carry around in my pocket is far more powerful than the fastest computers of my youth. As a teenager, I rarely encountered anything where a computer had played a part. Today the rare encounter would be with things where computers had played no part.  Computers handle so many tasks now that, as a natural consequence, there are thousands of programming languages with more appearing every year.

With so many languages, it can be difficult to choose one. What is important in a programming language?

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IDE changes in Xojo 2018r3 and more

About three years ago, we added HiDPI/Retina support to our framework which was released to users as part of Xojo 2016r1 when we also shipped our first HiDPI IDE.

With Apple’s announcements at WWDC 2018 and the introduction of dark mode it was time to revisit our graphics and the overall appearance of the IDE again. Here are some things which contribute to the changes that have been made and ones that you will see in the coming months.

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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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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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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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Prepare Your Classes to Work in Simulated or Real Modes

In many of our development projects, if not all, we are confronted with situations when we need to test our classes before the final deployment of a project. I’m not talking about Unit Testing here, though I highly recommend the excellent session on that topic from XDC 2018.

For example, it would not be desirable to send hundreds of emails to all the entries in a database simply to test one of the workflow steps or to verify that emails are being delivered as expected. It would be a lot simpler, and less disruptive to those using your app, to test using a few email addresses that are under your control.

So let’s establish a mechanism that allows us tell our apps when to run in a “simulated” mode vs. a “real” mode for all or some of the components that we need to test along the development cycle.

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5 Questions to Ask When Choosing a Development Tool

These days everyone has a great idea for an app. Maybe you have an idea that would save you time at work, or maybe you’ve been thinking of an app that would automate something you do at home. Not sure where to start? One of your first steps is choosing a development tool that is right for you and for your project.

Here are five questions to guide your decision:

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Unlock the all in one, low-code, cross-platform solution

Like his father, my teenage son loves video games. The single player games where you take a character through some kind of adventure are the ones I like most. These usually have a fair number of AI-controlled enemies that must be defeated. My son, on the other hand, prefers to play against other human beings. When I asked him why, he said, “The AIs are so predictable.” To prove this to me, he took over when I was having trouble defeating a particularly difficult enemy and quickly dispatched him, narrating his strategy as he went and barely being scratched in the process. My son is an elite player compared to me partially because he puts a lot more time into it than I do but also because he loves video games far more than I do.

Just as people have varying levels of skill and interest in video games, the same is true of app development. There are those that are happy to devote enormous amounts of time to learning everything they possibly can. They don’t care how long it takes. They want to have control over everything and are willing to do whatever is necessary to make that happen. I’m so glad those people exist because there’s a lot of great software that might not otherwise have been created without them. I’m not one of those people. I really want to focus mostly on what makes my application unique, abstracted from the nitty-gritty of app development.

That’s why I have always been attracted to tools like Xojo. I am a citizen developer. Of all the job titles I have had over the years, all of them in tech,  none have ever included words like programmer or engineer. I do some software development but it’s just a part of my job. It’s something I do to help me in my work or to help my co-workers.

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PDF File Generation? There is an API for that!

I’ve heard it several times: how can I export to PDF from Xojo? Sure, there are lots of answers pointing to a bunch of resources, including excellent plug-ins from third parties. But can you accomplish the same thing using an already available API? Yes, there is a remote API for that! The requirement is that your Xojo app will need to have access to Internet … and, of course, you’ll need to do just a bit of coding.

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