xDev is a bimonthly digital publication and a staple of the Xojo community since 2002. Every issue is packed with fresh and vital information: step-by-step tutorials by Xojo experts, columns for the beginner and expert, “behind-the-scenes” postmortems of popular programs made with Xojo, fascinating interviews, handy tips, product reviews and Xojo news. Subscribe today and start expanding your Xojo world.

10 Questions with Marc Zeedar of xDev Magazine

Mac, Windows or Linux?

Mac.

What do you wish more people would ask you about when it comes to xDev?

I love learning about people’s projects. I find many (most) people are overly modest about their own work and over-idealize the coding of others. Every programmer creates bugs. The truth is that *every* project is interesting, regardless of skill level. That’s one of the things I love about programming: it’s so vast and covers such a broad array of uses. They’re all fascinating.

It’s especially gratifying to hear about xDev articles or tips that readers put into practice. There’s nothing better than learning how the magazine helped someone!

How would you explain your most recent project to a 5 year old?

I got AI to help find writing errors in articles (see xDev 22.4’s “Beginner’s Corner” column).

What’s next on your Learn Next list?

Oh boy. That list is so long! And it doesn’t just include programming. Like I’m working on building a microcamper and I’m wanting to learn more woodworking skills so I can build some custom cabinets. I know just enough to be dangerous now and to realize how much more I need to learn!

In terms of programming, I always feel I’m weak on the algorithms side. There are many project ideas where I have no idea how to even begin. So I’m always open for more learning in problem solving.

In tech, I’d like to learn more about AI from a behind-the-scenes perspective, such as training models. For instance, could I create an AI model trained on xDev content that would make it easier to find coding help from past articles?

When do you think of solutions for big bugs?

Usually several hours after I wished I had! Typically that’s at 3 a.m. when I should have quit and gone to bed at midnight. Then I’m kicking myself for making such an “obvious” error.

What programming moments made you think “Wow, I love my job so much.”

Every time my code actually works! There’s nothing more satisfying than having an idea and then seeing it come to life. Probably 90% of the time when I start a project it’s on a whim and I’m just “playing around” to see if the idea is even feasible. Then when it works I’m totally jazzed and inspired.

I did that recently with my “Sandstorm” simulation (xDev 22.1) [Download this article for free], my “Find the Differences” game (xDev 21.6), and my “Xojo Jigsaw” app (xDev 20.4). They all started out with me just fiddling around and then ended up as surprisingly good apps I could write articles about.

What’s something that has surprised you about coding in the last 10 years?

Probably AI (horribly named since it isn’t intelligent at all), which is problematic, but capable of impressive feats. The idea that it can actually generate useful code is wild to me. It’s still early days and there are serious issues to figure out, but it has incredible potential.

Focusing more on coding itself, I don’t think it’s any one thing, but just the way programming has improved and grown more powerful over the last decade. Each year there are small improvements and after ten years you look back and you’re amazed. The high standards of software these days — what users expect — keeps rising and yet coding is getting more powerful and making achieving those levels possible.

What’s a cool piece of software more people should know about?

Not really software, but a technology: RSS (Really Simple Syndication). It’s old, but so simple (it’s even in the name) and effective. I hear so many people grumbling about bad stuff on the news, social media, screen addiction, etc. and I wonder why they put themselves through that. The beauty of RSS is you can use it to set up your own custom feed of information and ignore all the cruft. I get to ignore politics and nonsense and focus on interesting people and technology.

What’s the coolest thing you worked on recently?

Besides my microcamper? My current project is always the coolest, at least until the next one comes along.

Music or no music while coding?

No music. I wouldn’t hear it anyway. When I go into coding mode (or writing mode or reading mode), I’m not aware of much that’s around me. It’s like I’m underwater.

Thank you to Marc Zeedar for answering our questions. If you want to learn more about xDev visit https://www.xdevmag.com/, you can get your subscription via PDF, or print for those of you who still like to hold your media in your hands. xDev also offers a 500-page printed book of each year’s issues.

Since its launch in 2002, Marc Zeedar is the publisher and editor of *xDev Magazine*, an independent bimonthly publication focused on instructing users of the Xojo development environment. He’s been using Xojo (then called REALbasic) since 1998 when he released his acclaimed Z-Write word processor, a unique tool for creative writers. In his spare time he hikes and camps, reads, writes novels, watches soccer and films, and lets his dog and cat tell him what to do. He lives in beautiful Oregon wine country.

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

Developer Tools

piDog DataView is a fast and flexible list viewer and includes one year of updates.

Markdown Parser for Xojo is a class that allows you to implement the ability to parse Markdown source text into HTML + the provided CSS styles, so it can be presented on the fly over an HTML control for its use “as-is”, as a starting point for invoices, reports, templates or document conversion.

If you don’t have anything from Monkeybread Software, then this is a great deal for you! Everything is 20% off from the Complete Plugin Set, which includes 54,000+ functions, to DynaPDF for creating and editing PDF documents and more.

Mime Parser is a class for parsing emails.

The OMP Plugin allows you to easily parse Microsoft Outlook Structured Storage (.MSG) files cross-platform from Xojo.

Also offered is a Spell Checker Class to easily spell check text.

User Interface

ARWaitingView is a class to prevent the user from navigating the interface while something is downloading or doing a long process.

AXControlGrid is a complete and powerful Xojo desktop UI component for macOS and Windows that it makes possible to put Canvas-based controls in a Page or a series of Pages of a given size and, optionally, their associated captions.

AXImageCanvas greatly simplifies the task of displaying a Picture with the ability to correctly display the image maintaining its original aspect ratio, and keeping the full resolution of the picture and reference to the original FolderItem.

AXNumValidatedTF is a Xojo TextField subclass (32/64 bits) for Windows and macOS allowing the input validation of a defined numeric range, using the system Locale settings for decimal and grouping text formatting.

Antonio Rinaldi offers Doughnut, which is an extension for iOSGraphics to draw circular graphs. Additionally, iOSTableViewExtended is a subclass that adds useful features including: swipe to reload, table header and footer, customer section header and footer, contextual menus, side index, TextEdit fix and more.

GraffitiSuite All Access, Desktop and Web are on sale! They are a collection of custom components for Xojo Desktop and Web.

MBS ChartDirector lets you create professional charts in Xojo, with 30 chart and gauge types.

RubberViews from Match Software maintains the place and relative size of every control when a Window or Container Control is resized. They also offer Window Placement and Screen Extensions that are modules that let you manage windows with greater control.

Database

DataViewer Component is a collection of objects for Xojo that can easily incorporate into your own projects to give SQL Query and DML functionality for SQLite and MySQL databases along with Data Export facilities. Full source code edition also available.

The MBS SQL Plugin is an alternative database interface to Xojo that gives access to SQL databases including Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, DB2, Sybase, Informix, InterBase/Firebird, SQLBase, MySQL, PostgreSQL, ODBC and SQLite. Also available is the MBS SQLite Extension is a plug-in for cubeSQL Server, a plug-in for SQLite Manager (sqlabs) and an extension for SQLite that you can use in all SQLite-based database engines, including the SQLiteDatabase class in Xojo.

SQLVue is the fast and easy way to manage your SQLite databases.

Distribution

App Wrapper from Ohanaware simplified the process of preparing applications for submission to the Mac App Store and deploying on websites. Get a 30-day or a 1 year single user or team update plan during this limited time offer.

BoxedApp Packer helps Xojo developers prepare a single executable file that contains all required files a Xojo application needs.

The GuancheMOS plug-in is a serial number creation and validation Engine. Also available is GuancheID, the easiest way to get a unique ID for macOS and Windows based computers, so you can use it in combination with GuancheMOS or your own software licensing scheme to make sure your software only runs on the computer the license has been generated for.

Quick License Manager protects your Xojo Windows application with licensing for trials, perpetual or subscription-based licenses.

Learning

AprendeXojo has 2 Spanish-language ebooks in the store available for $20 each during the sale: Programación Multiplataforma Xojo and SQLite.

xDev Magazine is an independent bimonthly publication focused on educating Xojo users through instruction, tutorials and programming. Score a 1 year subscription during the sale for just $40!

Shop Now

The Xojo Extras store has something for every kind of Xojo developer, whether you are learning something new or looking to save some time implementing something tricky. Take a look now to see what can help make your development life easier! The Xojo May Sale runs until midnight (CT) Friday, May 7th.

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Show Topics

• Use Xojo to create your own apps for Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, Raspberry Pi and web. Download and try Xojo for free. 
• BKeeney Software
• xDev Magazine
• Star Wars Trailer

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Show Links

• Oracle Database
• Natezza
• IBM iSeries
• xDev Magazine
• Firebird Database
• Valentina Database
• ODBC webinar
• Mac ODBC Drivers
• Windows 10
• Kubuntu
• Linux Mint
• Raspberry Pi

Geoff Perlman opened XDC by announcing that, for the first time ever, we are recording the entire conference- that includes Geoff’s keynote, all 35 sessions plus bonus material! Recordings will be available for sale by early June. XDC attendees will get a copy free.

xDev Magazine’s Marc Zeedar Checking in with Passbook on his Apple Watch

After a review of this #XDC2015 attendees- representing 12 countries, with 24% of attendees being first time attendees- Geoff moved on to talk about what’s coming up in future releases of Xojo.

Xojo Cloud Upgrades
Starting in June, all Xojo Cloud servers will get upgraded to 2x the RAM, 2x the throughput and full SSD storage at no additional cost! That means in June: Small Xojo Cloud Servers will offer 1GB RAM, 20GB SSD Storage and 200Mb/s throughput; Medium Xojo Cloud Servers will offer 2GB RAM, 40GB SSD, 2 vCPUs and 400Mb/s throughput; and Large Xojo Cloud Servers will offer 4 GB RAM, 80GB SSD, 4 vCPUs and 800Mb/s throughput. All at no additional cost per month, plus the extensive Xojo Cloud Security and 1-click deployment of your Xojo web apps! With this upgrade even Small Xojo Cloud servers will be have database support for MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Cookie Break at the Radisson in Downtown Austin, Day 1

Xojo Web Drag & Drop
Geoff gave us a demo of touch-enabled drag and drop, coming to Xojo Web. This feature gives you client-side (browser) ability to handle drag and drop. You’ll be able to specify controls that can be dragged, those that can accept drops and get notified when drops occur.

Geoff Perlman being interrogated by the Austin Police…at the Dinner Detective evening event.

64-bit Schedule
As you know, we’re working hard updating all platform frameworks to be fully 64-bit capable. It’s huge project with hundreds of thousands of lines of code and we’ve made great progress to date, Geoff announced that we have already built a 64-bit release of Feedback for OS X and Windows. Xojo iOS is already 64-bit. We’ll be adding an optimizing 64-bit capable compiler & linker and few if any changes will be required in your projects.

Bob Keeney and Scott Boss on the Lone Star River Boat awaiting Austin’s Bats

Raspberry Pi
Probably the most talked about announcement is that Xojo will be adding support for Raspberry Pi later this year! Xojo Pro users will get Raspberry Pi included in their existing licenses at no additional cost. Separate Xojo Raspberry Pi licenses will also be available.

Plugins in Xojo
Get ready to build your plugins in Xojo! We’re developing a new plugin format that lets you build your Xojo plugins in Xojo- no more C/C++! No Plugin SDK, so no waiting for features to get added to the SDK, use features as soon as they are available. These plugins are compiled down to LLVM bit code. Existing C/C++ plugins will continue to be supported long term on existing platforms & 64 bit desktop/console/web platforms.

Xojo developers ready for a good dinner and a good mystery.

Retina Support
Retina support will be coming in 2015 Q4 with support for both the Xojo IDE and the framework, so you can support it more easily in your own apps.

Geoff also announced that we’ll be dropping Windows XP build support in Xojo 2015r3. We’ve blogged about this many times since 2013. Leaving XP behind is necessary and doing so will allow us to move forward and adopt new technologies on the Windows platform.

As always, XDC’s 3 days went by incredibly quickly. XDC 2015 wrapped up with a brand new coding contest- it was totally retro, dude! Bruno’s spaceship trumped even Joe’s bot, and he won a new Apple Watch!

Bruno, conquerer of Xojo Space and winner of #XDC2015’s Coding Contest

If you missed #XDC2015, don’t make the same mistake in 2016. In addition to the 35 sessions and other perks of being an attendee, there was the time Christian Schmitz’s brother full-body tackled the “murderer” at our Dinner Detective event and a gorgeous cruise down Lady Bird Lake ending in an amazing view of thousands of bats taking flight! The benefits of the conference are many and the memories…well, those can’t be quantified and some should probably not be recorded. As one attendee wrote me yesterday “Words can’t express the time that I had, people I met, and what I learned. I wish that I had attended the earlier ones. I will be at the next one…”

The Lone Star Riverboat, Docked After Taking XDC Attendees on a City Tour and Bat Viewing

For additional information, you can watch Paul’s XDC recap webinar. Also, check out the many threads on the Forum from some of the Xojo Forum’s most active members. If you have any questions feel free to post here or ask me on Twitter @Xojo. If you were at XDC, tweet us a pic of you wearing your #XDC2015 shirt in your hometown for a RT!

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Show Links

• xDev Magazine
• SD Times 2015 Predictions

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