Firstly, the MVPs work as your advocates, drawing attention to issues that they feel are important to the community. Their passion comes through in all interactions with the Xojo team, from justifiably reminding us of bugs we need to address or features that would be appreciated by many.

Since the MVPs all use Xojo in different ways, this helps to make sure we get a wide variety of feedback. Sometimes we get direct, specific suggestions such as the Set class, which (due to the provided code), we were able to add as a feature to Xojo relatively quickly. Some especially valuable MVP insights regarding stack checking helped us to pinpoint areas where we could make changes to the Xojo framework that resulted in dramatic performance improvements to Xojo itself along with all your projects. MVP tips and testing have also helped us nail down some issues that helped improve debugger stabilization. MVPs have even created a supplemental unit testing suite to help test the Android framework!

Speaking of testing, the MVPs certainly do more than their fair share of testing. They have helped with an enormous amount of testing for many parts of Xojo, most recently including PDF, Barcode, Charts and Android. When they find bugs, MVPs always create thorough, well-explained Issues, usually with sample projects, allowing us to fix things faster for everyone’s benefit. At times MVPs even review your own submitted Issues and may offer suggestions or advice for you to try.

In addition to testing and providing feedback on the product as you see it today, MVPs get to see stuff early, sometimes even before designs or implementations are finalized. This may be in the form of demos or test builds. Their tips, comments and suggestions can help provide direction to how we end up actually implementing a feature or change.

The Xojo documentation is also continuously improved by MVP feedback and suggestions. MVPs were first to see the new documentation site before it was unveiled to everyone and their keen eyes have helped us improve search, sample code and continue to polish things.

From inception to documentation, this group of dedicated Xojo experts has helped us shape Xojo. If you are pleased with what Xojo is today, you should thank a Xojo MVP.

To Anthony, Christian, Gavin, Jeremie, Kem, Martin and Wayne we at Xojo offer a heartfelt “Thank You!” and have made donations on your behalf to several open-source projects that also help make Xojo possible: LLVM Foundation, Bootstrap and Ubuntu.

Textbook, Books & Magazines

• Introduction to Xojo Programming Textbook – This is where you start if you are new to programming. Learn the fundamentals of programming. The book uses Xojo to teach programming, but the concepts are applicable to any programming language.
• Teacher’s Guide – A guide to help teachers introduce students to the basics of programming. using the Textbook
• I Wish I Knew How To…. – A Book Series from Eugene Dakin that covers many topics including I Wish I Knew How to … Program SQLite with Xojo, I Wish I Knew How To … Program the Canvas Control and I Wish I Knew How to … Program Plugins with Xojo on Windows, to name a few.
• xDev Magazine – A staple of the Xojo community. Subscribe annually or review the collections, books and back issues for articles.

Xojo Documentation

The Introduction section in the Xojo Documentation is great place to start if you already familiar with Xojo or object-oriented programming. From there, you can choose a QuickStart for Desktop, Web, iOS or Android. Xojo’s Documentation site is organized by the following sections:

• GETTING STARTED – step by step tutorials and a high-level overview
• TOPICS – categorized discussions on accomplishing specific tasks
• API – guide to the specifics of the Xojo language and framework
• RESOURCES – information including licensing, system requirements, how to report bugs or request features, etc

You can also find many Third Party resources from the Xojo community in the Xojo Documentation, including books, magazines, tutorials, free source code, open-source projects and more.

Browse the sections or search for exactly what you need.

Xojo Examples

Experiment with Xojo example projects. Run example code, edit it and use it to get your own project started.

• In Xojo, choose File > New Project and then click on Examples.
• Search for a specific example.
• Download the examples to work off-line.

Xojo Programming Blog

The Blog is an ever-growing resource that offers insight into Xojo features with code examples and best practices, plus community news and events. The Xojo Programming Blog includes guest posts from Xojo users and third party developers as well as posts from Xojo team members.

Xojo Video Library and Webinars

Xojo’s YouTube Channel has hundreds of videos from beginner topics, object-oriented programming concepts to how to use databases with Xojo. It also hosts recordings of the Xojo Webinars.

Xojo Forum

A search of the Xojo Forums often leads to a helpful discussion or a solution to that thing you just could not figure out on your own. And if it doesn’t, forum members are friendly and free with their Xojo knowledge. The forum is free for everyone, no license required. Enable Forum Access in your Xojo Account and go to the Xojo Forum to read the discussions and ask your questions.

Email Xojo, we’re happy to help you find a resource or take a request for a topic for a future blog post, webinar or tutorial.

• Facebook
• X
• LinkedIn
• GitHub
• YouTube

Since we know you all love seeing stats, I wanted to share some from the survey:

• 85% of Xojo users are satisfied
• 71% have recommended Xojo to someone else
• 60% primarily use the current release of Xojo
• 40% primarily make apps that they sell
• 28% primarily make apps for themselves
• 24% primarily make apps they (or their coworkers) use at their workplace
• 29% use the Xojo Forum
• 87% have had a positive experience using Issues, our new bug reporting and feature request system
• 74% have had a positive experience using the new documentation
• Target platform breakdown: Windows (75.95%), macOS (75.11%), Web (31%), Linux (28%), iOS (20%), Pi (18%)
• 25% have contacted Xojo Support in the last 12 months

We really appreciate everyone who took the time to fill out this survey. We get feedback from users in a variety of ways and the annual survey is so valuable in highlighting concerns, letting us know what you thought we got right, and bringing all kinds of things to our attention. If you did not receive the survey, please check your email settings and make sure you are opted in to our emails so you’ll receive future surveys.

Dana Brown is Xojo’s Director of Sales & Marketing. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Communication and a Master’s degree in Advertising. Having worked in the marketing field for almost 20 years, primarily in the technology sector, she has extensive experience in everything from digital marketing to search engine marketing, content creation, website development, event planning, brand development, advertising and more.

Download mp3 or watch on Xojo’s YouTube Channel.

Topics include:

• Xojo Team
• New Xojo Documentation
• Xojo 2022 Release 1 Release Notes

With this Xojo Documentation site you’ll find:

• A single help window that includes all pages of the documentation rather than just the Language Reference
• A table of contents is always available on every page, making it easy to navigate
• Class pages have been redesigned to have a top-down view (basic information at the top and more detailed information below), making them easier to use and review
• Dark mode support
• Pages that automatically adjust to smaller screens
• Starting with Xojo 2022r1, documentation for each version of Xojo will be available online
• Documentation that is far easier for Xojo to maintain because it’s designed to be used with version control

In Xojo, this documentation system will be online by default, that means that when you access the documentation from within Xojo, rather than using local files, it will access the online Documentation site. Because of this, new content and fixed issues will be immediately available to you in Xojo and on the Documentation site. As always, each Xojo release will come with a complete set of built-in Documentation to be used when Internet access is slow or unavailable.

This Documentation site is currently available for preview. We are still fixing bugs and it is currently scheduled for release in Xojo 2022r1.

API 2.0

You can use this category to show all API 2.0 items across all releases, which is quite useful with the release of 2019r2:

https://documentation.xojo.com/Category:API_2.0

All Deprecated

Use this category to show all deprecated items across all releases:

https://documentation.xojo.com/Category:Deprecated

All Deprecated for a single release

This category to shows all deprecated items for a specific release:

https://documentation.xojo.com/Category:Deprecated2019r2

Change the release value to see other releases.

All New for a single release

Use this category to show all new items for a specific release:

https://documentation.xojo.com/Category:New2019r2

Change the release value to see other releases.

Show All User Guide topics

This category displays all pages that are part of the User Guide:

https://documentation.xojo.com/Category:User_Guide

Show All Categories

There are many more categories. You can use this link to see them all:

https://documentation.xojo.com/Special:Categories

Or as mentioned earlier, at the bottom of each topic page you can view the list of categories to which it belongs. Jumping to other categories can help you find other related information for quickly.

iOSTable Pull-to-Refresh

You can now enable pull-to-refresh on iOSTables by setting the AllowRefresh property to True. This allows the user to drag down from the top of the table to initiate a refresh which displays the spinner UI at the top. When they do this, the Refreshed event is called where you can reload data as necessary. When you have finished refreshing the data, call the EndRefresh method to remove the spinner UI.

iOSTable Custom Row Heights

When using iOSCustomTableCells within an iOSTable you may have times when the cell heights vary. To allow the table to display rows with cells of varying height, set the UseDynamicHeight property on the custom table cell to True.

Then when you add the custom cell to the table, change its bottom constraint to be constrained how you want. For example, this code changes the bottom constraint to be the bottom of a label that can have different amounts of text that change its height. This code does just that in the RowData method of the class that implements iOSTableDataSource:

// Set container bottom constraint to the bottom of a label that
// can change its height.
Dim bottomConstraint As New iOSLayoutConstraint( _
  customCell, _ // firstItem
  iOSLayoutConstraint.AttributeTypes.Bottom, _ // firstAttribute
  iOSLayoutConstraint.RelationTypes.Equal, _ // relation
  customCell.TeamNameLabel, _ // secondItem
  iOSLayoutConstraint.AttributeTypes.Bottom, _ // secondAttribute
  1.0, _ // multiplier
  iOSLayoutConstraint.StandardGap, _ // gap
  1000) // highest priority

customCell.AddConstraint(bottomConstraint)

Download sample project.

You can also use this property when you are using multiple custom cells in your table to allow the table row height to increase automatically to fit the cell size.

iOSView Large Titles

iOSView has a new property called LargeTitleMode which can be used with iOS 11 or later. LargeTitleMode accepts three values: Always, Automatic, Never. For backwards compatibility it defaults to Never. To use this feature on iOS 11+, set it to Automatic or Always. As you would expect, Always makes the title always use the large size. With Automatic, the title of the view is only set to Large if the previously displayed view was also set to Large.

Other Improvements

• iOSHTMLViewer now uses WKWebView for better compatibility.
• iOSSQLiteDatabase has been updated to SQLite 3.23.1.
• iOSApplication.Open now receives the launchOptions Ptr as a parameter (for use with Declares) and returns a boolean as to whether or not the app is handling the request.
• Inserting or Removing a row/section within the visible rows of an iOSTable is now animated.

Download Xojo 2018 Release 2 to try out these iOS improvements.

Here are five questions to guide your decision:

1. What type of app are you creating?
Do you want to make a web app, a desktop app or a mobile app?

To help decide what you need, ask yourself who will use the app? Is it just for your use or do you plan to distribute it? It may turn out that a desktop app is better than a web app because the app will be used offline. Maybe a web app is better because it will be much easier to deploy and update to all your users. Maybe the app needs to be used “in the field” and mobile is the way to go.

2. Do you need cross-platform support?
Does your app need to run on your Mac and an iPad? Do you need to share it with a co-worker who uses Linux?

These days people often use multiple devices, so it can be a competitive advantage to have an app that runs on more than one device type. If so, consider a tool that makes it easy to create apps for multiple platforms. Using a cross-platform tool can be a lot simpler than learning to develop with multiple tools to create all the apps for all the platforms you need to support.

Also consider the platform you want to use while developing. Some tools will let you develop from any platform, but not all do.

3. Are you already familiar with a development environment or tool?
Perhaps you did some development many years ago or took a class back in college. Also, if you are tackling this project for your job, find out why current tools are being used at your workplace. Is it because of cost, inertia, standardization?

Although you may find you have to use a specific development tool in the office, many companies simply prefer that problems get solved quickly. In that case, look around at tools that can help you create rapid (RAD) solutions while still being compatible and supportive of the required development tools.

4. How experienced are you?
Have you created apps before? Consider your skills when picking your tool. Some tools can be amazingly complex. Perhaps you are creating a simple app for yourself or just your department, you may not have the time to master all the intricacies of Java and its related tools.

5. What resources and learning materials are available?
Does the tool you want to use have the resources in place to help you build your app? Review the documentation, look around for videos, articles, books and forums that can offer support. Webinars can also be a great way to quickly learn about a tool.

Of course, we think Xojo is a great fit for a wide variety of apps. With Xojo you can quickly build apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, Raspberry Pi, web and iOS – with Android support currently in development too. Xojo may not be as well known as the other tools you are considering, but we’ve stood the test of time; and Xojo is consistently updated and supported.

This new local Language Reference is enabled by default in new installations. You can also manually enable it in Preferences by choosing “Use built-in documentation” in the General tab.

You can of course search for several things at once by entering a list of keywords separated by spaces, but you can specify that results should only be of certain types using the “type:” qualifier. So a filter like “table list type:class” will find everything that matches “table” OR “list” and is a class.

Oh, and yes you can even include multiple types to do something like “table list type:event type:class”.

For even more specific filters, you can also specify where the results should come from (the older wiki or the new Dev Center) by using the “source:” qualifier with “wiki” or “devcenter”. For example “integer source:devcenter” shows only Dev Center pages containing “integer”.

Enjoy!

When you visit the site you’ll start at the Home page. Here you can do a search or quickly jump to commonly used topics.

On the left side you’ll find the Navigator. You can expand the sections to see additional topics. There are Expand All and Collapse All buttons at the top right.

As you click on topics, they open in new tabs within the doc site. You can close individual tabs as needed. If you’d rather not use tabs, you can switch to “Basic” mode using the View menu at the top of the site.

Also, at the top of the site is a drop-down for Google Translate that you can use to quickly translate a page to another language. Since this uses Google Translate, keep in mind that everything on the page is translated (including sample code) and that Google Translate sometimes results in unusual translations.

In addition to the online docs, a PDF version (with inline links) is included with your Xojo installation in the Documentation folder (Xojo Reference Guide.pdf). You can use the PDF to read on your mobile device or print (it is in portrait format).

These docs are obviously quite new and will continue to be expanded over time, but we welcome your feedback. At the bottom of docs pages there is a “Was this helpful?” section with Yes/No buttons. Please use this feature to send feedback on the page, especially if you know of additional information that you would like included.