2023r4 – Xojo Programming Blog

Small and Simple Changes to Speed Up the Xojo IDE

William Yu — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 14:30:00 +0000

At times, we encounter minor yet impactful changes stemming from seemingly uncomplicated issues. In specific instances, addressing these modest complexities may necessitate minimal adjustments, yet yield substantial outcomes.

Optimizing the Navigator

In Xojo 2023r4 we tackled a performance issue impacting the navigator’s speed, particularly during scrolling. Upon closer examination, we identified that the substantial consumption of resources and time was attributed to the rendering of these basic and compact navigator icons.

What was initially intended as a straightforward drawing of an icon, ended up becoming a needlessly intricate element that significantly impeded overall speed.

The Before and After

In 2023r3, a noticeable lag occurs during scrolling, with the thumbtrack failing to keep pace with the mouse movement.

In 2023r4, scrolling has been significantly improved and the thumbtrack now maintains synchronization with the mouse movement, resulting in a smoother experience.

What other benefits does this change offer?

Having pinpointed the root cause of this issue, we proceeded to implement updates across various instances where the needless drawing persisted. We identified a similar occurrence when rendering command bar icons affecting every keystroke in the code editor and movement in the layout editor. Refactoring this aspect is expected to enhance performance in these specific areas of the IDE. We trust that you will find the IDE more enjoyable following these small and simple changes.

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.

Time to Reflect on Stack Optimization

William Yu — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 14:30:00 +0000

As the year draws to a close, it’s a fitting moment to pause and contemplate for a minute. Oh, my apologies, in Xojo 2023r4, my contemplation time has been decreased to a swift 30 seconds. Let me make the most of that time to reflect instead…

Overflowing with Gratitude

Our stacks are overflowing with appreciation. Appreciation for not being overworked that is. That’s what they have been doing, being overworked in Xojo 2023r3 and slowing things down. In 2023r4, we have optimized our stack overflow checks to reduce the unnecessary effort expended on this task. This optimization will be especially valued by macOS users, as our stack overflow checks consumed the most time on that platform. Take for example, how many more functions calls can be made in 2023r4 over 2023r3 in just one second:

Var start As Integer = System.Ticks
Var count As Integer
While System.Ticks - start < 60
  Reflect("Thanks")
  count = count + 1
Wend

MessageBox count.ToString + " functions calls in one second"

In 2023r3, we can Reflect (“Thanks”) 1236484 times in one second.

However, in 2023r4 we can Reflect twice as many times, over 2777000 times! That’s a lot of Reflection.

Appreciation for our Users

It would be unjust not to recognize the assistance we’ve received from our users, particularly those who consistently report issues for us to address. A special acknowledgment goes out to those who go the extra mile in helping us pinpoint problems and offer valuable tips and solutions. You know who you are, and we sincerely appreciate your contributions!

Scanning a QR Code from an Android App

Paul Lefebvre — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 14:30:00 +0000

One of the new features available to Android in Xojo 2023 Release 4 is the Barcode class. With this class you can scan barcodes, such as QR codes, to get their content.

To use Barcode, you can just drag one onto your screen. Add the ScanCompleted event handler, which is called when a code is successfully scanned. You’ll get the result as a string parameter.

Call the Scan method on the screen object. For example, if you’ve dragged a Barcode class onto your screen and named it Scanner you can start scanning like this:

Scanner.StartScan

That opens the system UI for code scanning, activating the camera. When a code is successfully identified and scanned, Scanner’s ScanCompleted event is called with the value provided as a string.

You can then display this value or use it in some way. For example, you could detect if it is a URL and use it with an HTMLViewer.

Here is a sample QR code that has encoded “https://www.xojo.com”. Scan it to see the URL in the TextArea using this Barcode sample project.

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.

Finding the Right Example Project

Javier Menendez — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 14:30:00 +0000

One of the best resources for Xojo users is the more than 140 example projects available within the Xojo IDE. Find them in Xojo by choosing File > New Project and then clicking on Examples in the New Project window. Starting with Xojo 2023 Release 4, it will be even easier to find that specific example you need with new descriptions and filtering options.

To start, when an example is selected in the New Project window you’ll find a description of that example. Plus we’ve included what kind of project it is (Console, Desktop, Mobile, Web), what platform it is intended for (Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Raspberry Pi, Windows) and the path (location) for the example in the Examples hierarchy.

Xojo New Project window

When typing in the search field the list of examples will be filtered not only by those matching the example project name, but also the description. So, for example, when the word “Canvas” is typed in the search field, the list will display projects that have the word “Canvas” in the file names and also in the description.

But in order to narrow down the matching results even more, it is now possible to filter examples using different criteria like Kind (Console, Desktop, Mobile, Web) or Platform (Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Raspberry Pi, Windows). If you are interested in all the example projects showing how to use the Canvas specifically for the Desktop platform, we only need to use that filter and… voilà!

We hope that our users will appreciate this minor but substantial improvement when it come time to dig into the increasing number of available example projects in Xojo. Visit the Xojo Documentation to learn more.

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.

More Options with Maps on iOS

Javier Menendez — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 14:30:00 +0000

Starting with Xojo 2023 Release 4 Xojo improved areas of the MobileMapViewer and MobileLocation classes on iOS. This release includes a new way to add locations to a Map itself, plus PointsofInterest and DistanceTo methods.

Adding New Locations

Previously, the only way to add new locations to a MobileMapViewer on iOS was via code. Starting with Xojo 2023r4, the user can do this with a long press on the Map control itself. This will raise the new Pressed event handler providing the latitude and longitude parameters and allowing you to use these values to add a new MapLocation instance from the values; for example:

Var nl As New MapLocation( latitude, longitude )
MapViewer1.AddLocation nl

In addition, the user can now select any of the Pins previously added to the Map control and drag them to a new destination in the map.

Points of Interest

Another new feature for your Map-based iOS apps is the PointsOfInterest method for the MapLocation class. When this method is called on a MapLocation instance it will return an array of strings with the points of interest that are nearby. For example, relevant landscapes, monuments, museums, etc., just the kind of information the user may be interested in when walking around or when selecting any of the Pins in your app.

This line of code will retrieve points of interest (if any) from a MapLocation instance pointed by the “nl” variable:

Var pois() As String = nl.PointsOfInterest

Track the Distance

Another new method added to the MapLocation class on iOS is DistanceTo. This method is called on a MapLocation instance, expect to receive another MapLocation instance as the parameter. It will return a double value representing the distance, in kilometers, between the locations.

For example, this code added to the Pressed event of the MobileMapViewer will add the distance between a new location where the user long presses on the Map and a previous location saved in a Screen object property:

Var nl As New MapLocation( latitude, longitude )
MapViewer1.AddLocation nl

If PreviousLocation <> Nil Then
  distanceLabel.Text = nl.DistanceTo(PreviousLocation).toString
End If

PreviousLocation = nl

In Summary

With these additions and improvements available in Xojo 2023r4 for MobileMapViewer and MobileLocation on iOS, we expect you will be able to provide even more power and flexibility to your Map-based iOS apps! We can’t wait to see what you do with these!

Android Design Extensions 2.0 for Xojo 2023r3 and Later

Martin T. — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 14:30:00 +0000

Half a year has passed since the introduction of Android as a new target in Xojo 2023r2 and hundreds of framework and compiler bugs have been fixed and new features introduced. This is also the case in the latest Xojo release 2023r4. So it’s time to take the Android Design Extensions to a new level and release version 2.0 with over 80 new extensions. This version works with Xojo 2023r3 and late releases.

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.

Performance Improvements in Xojo Web

Ricardo Cruz — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 14:30:00 +0000

The last big Xojo release in 2023 comes with a lot of performance improvements everywhere. The Xojo IDE itself is faster, which gives you Time to Reflect on Stack Optimization. In this post, I want to detail those improvements in Xojo 2023r4 that target Xojo Web including faster HandleURL responses, faster transfer rates in Windows and Linux, static assets cache control, Events improvements and a new experimental option.

Faster HandleURL Responses

With Xojo Web you can create APIs backing your Mobile or Desktop applications. Just by updating to Xojo 2023r4, your web services will get the benefit of much faster responses and the ability to handle many more requests per second.

Just to compare between different Xojo versions, we’ve created some benchmarks using Xojo Web 1 (with Xojo 2019r3.2) and some Xojo Web 2 releases, 2023r3.1 and the latest one, 2023r4.

Here are the results, returning plain text:

And the same test, but this time returning a string generated by JSONItem:

Xojo 2023r4 is capable of serving around 20x more requests per second compared to Web 1, and around 4x compared to Xojo 2023r3.1. And thanks to the reduced latency time, your API will return the contents much faster.

Faster Transfer Rates in Windows and Linux

While working on performance, we’ve found that applications deployed on Windows and Linux were serving large files much slower than those deployed on macOS servers.

William improved the low level code for sockets on those targets, allowing the server to transfer large files at a much faster speed. During my tests, I’ve seen 10x faster transfer rates.

But this doesn’t affect only our Web target! If you are using a ServerSocket with TCPSocket classes, your Console and Desktop applications will also benefit from these improved transfer rates.

Static Assets Cache Control

In this release, we’ve also improved how the framework interacts with the browser. When your user visits your web application for the first time, it will store all of the required JavaScript and CSS files.

This was already happening in previous releases but with a subtle difference. From now on, the browser won’t even need to check with the server if the file has changed since the last visit. This translates to faster load times for your users and less server load for you since the server won’t need to handle all those requests anymore.

Improved Compile Time

In this release, Xojo Web will compile your projects a few seconds faster. The first time you compile your project, it will cache the result of some processes that are only changing between Xojo releases.

Here is a comparison between 2023r3.1 and 2023r4, both are running a debug session of a blank project:

That’s around 3-4 seconds faster every time a project compiles.

Events Improvements

Some web controls were sending information from the browser to the server more frequently than needed. For example, a WebContainer.Scrolled event was being sent for every scrolled pixel, causing unnecessary server load.

We’ve been reviewing these controls and have made some improvements:

WebCombobox
WebContainer
WebSearchField
WebTextArea
WebTextField
WebUploader

All of them will continue communicating their state updates, but the framework will focus on delivering the latest value available.

For example, in a WebSearchField, if the user writes “hello”, the framework will send the first key press (“h”) as soon as it happens. The next event it will send will depend on how fast the user types, so it can be either “hel” or maybe directly “hello”. What is guaranteed is the TextChanged event will be fired for the final value (“hello” in this example).

New Experimental Option

WebSession has a new experimental option available, disabled by default. “Send Events in Batches”:

Turning it on will make our JavaScript framework group different event notifications in a single request. Projects that contain complex layouts that show and hide several controls at once may benefit from snappier GUIs.

As a side effect, it will also ensure the events arrive to the server in the correct order. Think about a login screen where the user has an email field, a password and a “Login” button with the Default setting turned on (to allow the user to trigger the Pressed event by pressing the Enter key). When sending the events in different requests, because of network latencies, the WebButton.Pressed event could arrive at the server before the last WebTextField.TextChanged.

We would love to hear your experiences when turning on this experimental option. If you find an issue, please report it.

Wrapping Up

As always, while Xojo 2023r4 comes with a lot of performance improvements, it also comes with bug fixes and feature requests. I want to again thank everyone who took the time to create new Bug reports and Feature Requests, and tested the pre-releases.

We’re looking forward to see what you build with it!

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.