Highlights and New Features in Android Design Extensions 2.0.

Buttons can now have borders in different thicknesses and colors. Use the SetStrokeColorXC and SetStrokeWidthXC extension methods for this. You can also use the same properties for the Android MobileDateTimePicker. You can also set the color of the button when it is clicked: SetRippleColorXC .

The colors of sliders and progress bars can now be set dynamically via the extension methods  SetProgressBackgroundTintListXC and SetProgressTintListXC.

Would you like to display the top bar of an app, where the time and battery status are displayed, in a dark color instead of white? No problem. The MobileScreen method SetSystemBarsAppearanceXC will help you. The Android Design Extensions sample app shows you how to use it.

The background color of individual segments of a MobileSegmentedButton can now also be set dynamically with SetBackgroundColorAtXC.

MobileTabPanel now supports the display of badges. You can set the color, position, and number of a badge individually.

Would you like a little more for the MobileTextArea? With the SetTextFromHtmlXC method, you can output formatted HTML content in the MobileTextArea.

MobileTextFields also experience a push forward with the latest Android Design Extensions. You can now show a clear button or, if it is a password field, show and hide the password. The name of the helper here is SetEndIconModeXC. You can also set the border color and border thickness of text fields. SetBoxStrokeWidthXC, SetBoxStrokeColorXC, and SetBoxBackgroundColorXC are the methods to be used.

Feel free to take a look at the developer repository, create feature requests, and provide feedback on extending this extension library.

I’m happy to receive any voluntary financial support for the work I’ve done so far, which you are welcome to share here. You can download the project with many examples here.

Happy Coding.

Martin T. is a Xojo MVP and has been very involved in testing Android support.

Although Xojo for Android does not yet have full dark mode support, things continue to head in that direction. Previously your app would adjust its UI for light/dark if the Support Dark Mode property was turned on in the Android Build Settings. Starting in Xojo 2023r3, Color.TextColor and Color.FillColor also adjust their values when run in light mode or dark mode, making it easier for your custom drawing to also adapt.

MobileTextField gets a couple new additions. The ReturnPressed event is now called when, as the name suggests, return is pressed. The AllowSpellChecking property is now also available for MobileTextField and MobileTextArea.

In the Shared Build Settings Inspector there is now a Destination property as there is with other platforms.

Many Android devices have physical back buttons and all let you turn on global software controls that have a back button, but sometimes you want to have the back button clearly shown on the navigation toolbar. With Xojo 2023r3, the new HasBackButton property of MobileScreen can show a back button on the navigation toolbar.

To make it easier to write code that is applicable to both iOS and Android, but not other platforms, there is a new TargetMobile constant available for conditional compilation.

MobilePopupMenu is an all-new control for Android that makes it possible to simplify some of your user interfaces. It works similarly to a PopupMenu on Desktop or Web: when the user taps this control a list of items appears and they can choose one.

On the Advanced tab of the Android Build Settings there is a new Manifest section with a Permissions property. Here you can specify the names of Android permission constants that are needed by Declares or libraries. They are added to the AndroidManifest.xml file when the app is run/built.

MobileHTMLViewer got several enhancements. It now has various processing events, including: DocumentBegin, DocumentComplete, CancelLoad, Error, NewWindow, DocumentProgressChanged and TitleChanged.

And there is now support for running JavaScript using the ExecuteJavaScript method along with the JavaScriptResult and JavaScriptRequest events. ExecuteJavaScript is asynchronous and results appear in the JavaScriptResult event. To call the JavaScriptRequest event, use xojo.execute() in the JavaScript code. A method name and up to 5 parameters can be passed back to Xojo. Learn more in the Xojo Programming Documentation.

The last thing I want to highlight is the new Kotlin Declare. For advanced users, this adds the ability to create Android declares that can pass untouched calls via Alias (with the exception of required type/object handling) to the Kotlin compilation step. This is done by specifying Lib “Kotlin” or adding “:Kotlin” to the end of Lib. Here are a couple examples of what this can look like:

Declare Function AndroidVersion Lib "Kotlin" Alias "android.os.Build.VERSION.RELEASE" As CString

Declare Sub findAllAsync Lib "Object:ctrl:MobileHTMLViewer:Kotlin" Alias "findAllAsync(myfind.toString())" (myFind As CString)

Of course there were many bug fixes as well. Be sure to check out the full release notes for all the details.

Paul learned to program in BASIC at age 13 and has programmed in more languages than he remembers, with Xojo being an obvious favorite. When not working on Xojo, you can find him talking about retrocomputing at Goto 10 and on Mastodon @lefebvre@hachyderm.io.

What is New?

Xojo 2023r3 adds new FolderItem.Zip and FolderItem.Unzip methods with support for the most widely used DEFLATE compression format.

• Zip(destination As FolderItem, contentsOnly As Boolean = False, compression As ZipCompressions = ZipCompressions.Normal) As FolderItem
• Zip(contentsOnly As Boolean = False, compression As ZipCompressions = ZipCompressions.Normal) As FolderItem
• Unzip()
• Unzip(destinationFolder As FolderItem)

How to Zip

Here’s an example of zipping SomeFolder on your Desktop:

Var someFolder As FolderItem = SpecialFolder.Desktop.Child("SomeFolder")
Var outputFile As FolderItem = someFolder.Zip

The outputFile will be created on your Desktop with the name “SomeFolder.zip”.
This zip file will contain a single folder called SomeFolder, along with the contents of that folder.

+- SomeFolder.zip
  +- SomeFolder
    +- File1.ext
    +- File2.ext
    +- etc.

If you’d rather just zip up the contents of SomeFolder then you can pass True to the contentsOnly parameter.

Var outputFile As FolderItem = myFolder.Zip(True)

Now the zip file only contains the contents of the SomeFolder folder.

+- SomeFolder.zip
  +- File1.ext
  +- File2.ext
  +- etc.

Note: on macOS, when the OS unzips this kind of zip folder hierarchy, it will automatically create a folder with the contents, regardless of what the actual zip hierarchy looks like. However, this does not affect our own FolderItem.Unzip method.

With the overloaded Zip method that takes a destination FolderItem, you can use this to specify where the zip file is created.

Var destinationFolder As FolderItem = SpecialFolder.Documents
Var outputFile As FolderItem = myFolder.Zip(destinationFolder)

In this case the outputFile is created in the user’s Documents folder. If you wanted to rename it to something other than the default name with a “.zip” appended to it, you can also use this syntax to pass a destination file instead of a destination folder.

Var destinationFile As FolderItem = SpecialFolder.Desktop.Child("MyZipFile.zext")
Var outputFile As FolderItem = myFolder.Zip(destinationFile)

While we only demonstrated how to zip a folder in these examples, the exact same syntax applies for zipping a single FolderItem file too.

How to Unzip

Conversely, if you wanted to unzip a file, this is a simple call to FolderItem.Unzip

outputFile.Unzip

This unzips the outputFile contents to the same directory that the outputFile resides in. If you wanted to unzip the contents to a different location, pass in a destination folder instead:

outputFile.Unzip(SpecialFolder.Temporary)

This feature is not yet supported in Android. In conclusion, Zipping/Unzipping has never been easier! Learn more in the Xojo Programming Documentation – Zip and UnZip. (Thanks in part to zlib)

William Yu grew up in Canada learning to program BASIC on a Vic-20. He is Xojo’s resident Windows and Linux engineer, among his many other skills. Some may say he has joined the dark side here in the USA, but he will always be a Canadian at heart.

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A set is a group of items, not unlike a Dictionary. You can add or remove items from the set, as you might expect, but some of its more unique capabilities let you do a difference, intersection and union of two sets.

• Difference returns a new Set with members that are unique to each Set. This is essentially the items in the first set that are not in the second set.

• Intersection returns a new Set with members that are common to both Sets.

• Union returns a new Set that contain the members of both Sets.

There are also methods to populate a set from an array or a Dictionary. Learn more about using the Set class in the Xojo Programming Documentation.

Set is based on code written by Xojo MVP Kem Tekinay and works on all platforms.

Kem Tekinay is a consultant and developer based in Connecticut. A Xojo MVP, Kem has been an avid Xojo user since the early days and is a world-renowned thinker and philosopher, at least in his own mind. You can find him and his work at MacTechnologies Consulting.

Paul learned to program in BASIC at age 13 and has programmed in more languages than he remembers, with Xojo being an obvious favorite. When not working on Xojo, you can find him talking about retrocomputing at Goto 10 and on Mastodon @lefebvre@hachyderm.io.

• Declares for the new MobilePopupMenu
• Declares for MobileMoviePlayer
• Extensions for all MobileUIControl subclasses
• New extensions for AndroidMobileTable
• New extensions for MobileScrollableArea
• New extensions for MobileSwitch
• New extensions for MobileTabPanel
• New extensions for MobileTextArea
• New extensions for MobileTextField

Use MobilePopupMenu to Display it in Other Controls

The new MobilePopupMenu is a nice new addition to Xojo’s Android control library. Wouldn’t it be nice to display the popup menu when clicking on a Button or Canvas as well? With the Android Design Extensions you can achieve this.

1. Create a new Android project
2. Import the Android Design Extension folder into your project
3. Add a MobilePopupMenu (PopupMenu1) from the library to Screen1
4. Add some entries to the PopupMenu1 in the Inspector in the InitialValue section (say “Apple”, “Banana”, “Peach”)
5. Set the Visible property of the PopupMenu1 to False
6. Add a MobileButton (Button1) from the library to Screen1 and place it over the “invisible” PopupMenu1
7. Add the Pressed-Event to Button1 with the following code:

Call PopupMenu1.PerformClickXC

8. Add the SelectionChanged-Event to the PopupMenu1 with the following code:

Button1.Caption = Me.SelectedRowText

9. Run your project by clicking Run.

You can use this technique with any control that you want to have a popup menu. For example, in a Canvas you would use the PointerDown-Event.

Feel free to take a look at the developer repository, create feature requests, and provide feedback on extending this extension library.

I’m happy to receive any voluntary financial support for the work I’ve done so far, which you are welcome to share here. You can download the project with many examples here.

Happy Coding.

Martin T. is a Xojo MVP and has been very involved in testing Android support.

Some Background

Xojo has been using Google Maps Embed as our map renderer for a while. Google Maps is a really nice product, but an API key is required nowadays for almost anything. Noticeably, in Xojo’s Eddie’s Electronics web example, the map in the customer list was only displayed if you had a valid API key for Google Maps.

MapLibre is a robust Open Source mapping library alternative that Xojo is using under the hood now. With this update, you can create truly interactive maps with Xojo supporting multiple markers and customization.

While you can still use Google Maps Embed as the renderer, MapLibre is our preferred option and will be Xojo’s default going forward.

Map Tile Providers

When switching to another library, we wanted to make sure you, as a developer, have more control. WebMapViewer comes with a new property, StyleURL, pointing to an endpoint that returns a Style file.

Style files are JSON documents following the MapLibre Style Spec. The easiest way to create a customized map is to register in one of the providers that supports this format. These providers will give you a style URL that you can use with your map. Some of them:

• https://www.maptiler.com
• https://www.mapbox.com
• https://stadiamaps.com
• https://www.arcgis.com

By default, Xojo uses OpenStreetMap raster tiles which should be OK for development or little web applications.

But you aren’t limited to using third party providers anymore. In projects where privacy is important or when you don’t want to be worried about monthly limits or prices, you can use software installed on premises to serve your own map vector tiles!

Martin is Open Source, but you can also use a commercial solution like MapTiler Server.

Address Lookup

Same as with map tiles, by default your maps will be using a free to use Geocoding service, Nominatim. If you hit a limit or if, for example, you are working on a project with privacy limitations, you can install Nominatim on premises.

Using WebMapLocation.LookupProviderURL, you can point to your own Nominatim server.

Retrieving and Drawing Routes

Last, but not least, you can retrieve and render routes, using OpenStreetMap. No matter what map tile provider you are using, you can draw routes on the map. When you use the Directions mode, all you have to do is add locations to your map.

But if you need more control, switch your WebMapViewer to View mode and use the new methods for getting and drawing routes. When using the method to retrieve the route, you will obtain a MapRoute object with distance and duration information. You can also use this object for things like serializing it and storing the result in a database. This allows you to skip sending a new routing request to the service and just render it.

While driving will be the default, the transportType parameter supports Car, Bike and Walking.

Make sure to check the updated WebMapViewer in the Xojo programming documentation.

That’s a Wrap!

We are already working on new features for this control that will come in upcoming releases, and we can’t wait to see what you create with this new version of WebMapViewer.

Ricardo has always been curious about how things work. Growing up surrounded by computers he became interested in web technologies in the dial-up connections era. Xojo has been his secret weapon and language of preference since 2018. When he’s not online, chances are he will be scuba diving … or crocheting amigurumis. Find Ricardo on Twitter @piradoiv.

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A Playground Built-In to the IDE

For those that have already tried the XAML Gallery example project, you may be familiar with one particular part of the demo which allows you to experiment with XAML in what we call the Playground:

This Playground has now been integrated into the Windows IDE in Xojo 2023 Release 3.

The New XAML Control Chooser Window

In Xojo 2023r2 we introduced DesktopXAMLContainer. Dragging one onto your layout and clicking on the edit icon allowed you to pick a pre-defined XAML control via our XAML Control Chooser Window. This XAML Control Chooser Window has now been updated in Xojo 2023r3 to include additional features that mimic what the XAML Gallery example project already provided, and that’s the Playground.

Experimenting in the New Playground

Just like in the XAML Gallery project, you can now enter your own custom XAML code and “run” it (using that play looking button next to the XAML editor).

When you are satisfied with how your XAML looks, just click Add to insert it into the DesktopXAMLContainer.

Et voilà! The new XAML Control Chooser Window provides a unique WYSIWYG interface that you can use to edit your XAML code and to experiment with XAML, now go out and play! Learn more about the the DesktopXAMLContainer in the Xojo Programming Documentation.

William Yu grew up in Canada learning to program BASIC on a Vic-20. He is Xojo’s resident Windows and Linux engineer, among his many other skills. Some may say he has joined the dark side here in the USA, but he will always be a Canadian at heart.

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As for any other features involving the MobileLocation control on iOS, the same rules apply when enabling the required capabilities (from the Attributes section in the Inspector Panel with the iOS item selected in the Navigator), and also when requesting the user’s permission to use location services. In fact, it is advisable to enable the Background Modes > Location capability so your app still gets notified both when using Visits or GeoFencing and the app itself is running in the background.

Because we want to receive these events even when the app is not in use, you will want to use the MobileLocationUsageTypes.Always value for the request:

location1.RequestUsageAuthorization(MobileLocation.UsageTypes.Always)

Have a Nice Visit!

From the device point of view (iPhone or iPad), Visits are the most power-consumption effective way to track the user location involving almost no code. The downside is that the operating system does not guarantee the immediate sending of the generated events to the running app.

In order to get this to work in your Xojo iOS app all you need to do is set the VisitAwareness property on the MobileLocation instance of the app to True. Setting the instance to True starts tracking the device location and setting it to False stops tracking and raising Visits based events in the app.

Then, when implementing the VisitChanged Event Handler in the MobileLocation instance of the app, it will receive the following parameters when a new Visit event is raised by the operating system:

• latitude As Double
• longitude As Double
• accuracy As Double
• arrival As DateTime
• departure As DateTime

So, for example, it will be really easy to automatically add new MapLocation instances to a MobileMap in the app based on the information received. The following snippet of code added to the VisitChanged event shows how to do that on a MobileMap control instance named VisitsMap that has been added to the Screen of the iOS app:

Var arrivalDate As String = If(arrival <> Nil, arrival.ToString, "")
Var departureDate As String = If(departure <> Nil, departure.ToString, "")

Var lc As New MapLocation(latitude, longitude, "Arrival: " + arrivalDate + EndOfLine + "Departure: " + departureDate)
VisitsMap.AddLocation(lc)

It is worth mentioning the checks on the arrival and departure DateTime objects against Nil, iOS does not guarantee to always fulfill this information on the generated Visit events. That means, you may just receive the arrival date and time or the departure date and time, or both of them.

Lastly, the Visits feature will not work when the app is run in the Simulator so you will need to build the app and copy it to the device itself (using Xcode > Devices and Simulators window). You can find an example project for the Visits feature in the Examples folder in the Xojo download,

The screenshot above shows what it looks like after using the app (in the background) for about one hour. As you can see, several MapLocation items have been added to the map tracking the places visited by the user.

GeoFencing on iOS

GeoFencing allows the operating system to notify the app when the device enters and/or exists a previously registered region. These regions are created by providing latitude, longitude and radius (in meters) values along with a String value that uniquely identifies the region. These regions persist even after exiting the app or restarting the device. The main limitation is that a maximum of 20 regions can be registered by an app.

The way to create such regions is through the new MobileCircularRegion class; for example:

Var EiffelTowerRegion As New MobileCircularRegion(48.858093, 2.294694, 20.0, "EiffelTowerExample")

By default it is set to notify when the device enters and leaves the region, this can be changed using the available class properties.

Once the region instance has been created, it needs to be added to the MobileLocation instance of your app using the AddRegion method:

MyLocationInstance.AddRegion(EiffelTowerRegion)

Lastly, and in order to receive GeoFencing events, add the RegionEntered and/or RegionExited Event Handlers to the MobileLocation instance in your app. Both of these will provide the associated MobileCircularRegion instance as the parameter, so the logic of your app can take the required path based on that.

Also, while the Visits feature can only be tested on a physical device, the GeoFencing feature can be tested in the Simulator.

You will also find other new methods in MobileLocation in order to remove a previously added Region or retrieve all the registered Regions in addition to adding them as we did in the earlier code example above.

As with the Visits, you can find a project in the Examples folder to test GeoFencing on iOS.

In Summary

Both Visits and GeoFencing provide to you new ways of retrieving the user location that can be more suitable for the purposes of the iOS apps you develop with Xojo, and because these are based in events managed by the operating system itself, they have less impact in the iPhone/iPad battery.

Javier Menendez is an engineer at Xojo and has been using Xojo since 1998. He lives in Castellón, Spain and hosts regular Xojo hangouts en español. Ask Javier questions on Twitter at @XojoES or on the Xojo Forum.

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