Posts by DecSoft

Hello Donald,

This have a long story behind. The initial App Builder releases based their designtime controls in the Microsoft Windows WebBrowser control. In that days every control in the designer are in fact a WebBrowser control which in fact reflect more or less well the final result. Unfortunatelly, the usage of the WebBrowser control have a great impact in the program behaviour, like you can see in the below video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZE2QShiIR4

In order to get an IDE really faster and don't worry if our applications have two or twelve views, dozens of hundreds of controls, I decide to get out the WebBrowser control as the base for the designtime controls. However, I know the current designtime controls can probably be enhanced. This is something I know and therefore I want to deal with it in the future.

Hope this can help you in some way. :)

Hello,

No problem Donald. Certainly the file's manager copy the "complete" path because we can use it in Image controls, HttpClient controls, etc. In fact we only need to refer to paths like "../" when use it in CSS styles. However probably I can do something about. In the meanwhile, it's good to know the app's directory tree, where the files, images, etc., are placed, etc. Therefore, forgetting the drawbacks, maybe we can learn something here. :)

Hello Donald,

If you added a "redwhite.png" image using the app's file's manager (under the Images tab!) then the below code must work:

Are you sure you put that code for the entire app, or, in other words, are you sure you add the code in the right app's view?

Can you provide (attach it here if you wanted) a sample application in order to try here.

Hello,

App Builder produces applications are HTML5 applications ready to be deployed in desktop and mobile browsers. This is why I recommend to use the App Builder's integrated debugger, and, also, the Firefox browser, since their developer console (just press "F12" when you are in Firefox) is absolutely amazing and can help us too much.

Apache Cordova, on the other hand, allow us to build such HTML5 applications in order to be deployed in various platforms, one of them Android, but also others like iOS, for example. But, in my opinion, we must debug and test the application before build for that possible platforms, using the integrated debugger and other browsers like Firefox.

Of course certain things cannot work in browsers. For example, if we plain to use the "Files" Cordova's plugin in order to write and read text files from our applications, the FileWrite, FileAppend and FileRead actions can't work until our application are build using Cordova. But we know (using the [App.Cordova] global variable) if our application is running in a browser or builded with Cordova.

Then we can prepare a "workaround" to that actions, again, in order to continue debugging our application using the integrated debugger and Firefox, for example. In few words, trying to made something like this can save our time since the integrated debugger is faster that any emulator nor bridge. Of course we must to test our application in a real device, but we must do that in any other environment.

That's the idea.

Hello Donald,

It's more easy than appear. Taking a look first at the compiled app's directory tree:

When we use the app's file's manager to choose an image (to later use it as the background) such image is copied into the "app/images" directory when the application is compiled. The app's stylesheets, however, are placed in the "app/styles" directory. Then, when we must to refer to an app's image file from an app's stylesheet, we must "up to the parent directory", and this is what is we are doing below in the code:

Such code are placed in an stylesheet in the "app/styles" directory, so we "up to the parent directory" (using the "../") and then enter in the "images" directory to finally choose the "Background.jpg" image file.

Hello Ade,

Yes; fortunatelly we are both in home. However she requires lot of cares. Hopefully with their rehabilitation and the sufficient time she can recover their mobility. :)

You're welcome! :)

Hello to all,

PS

This broswer in AB is read only in the forum. At least for me it is, Anyway to make it so we can copy code samples from the forum views?

Donald, update your App Builder copy. The current release allow us to use the contextual menu and also to select text from the welcome page browser.

www.getappbuilder.com

Hello to all,

Ok. The current App Builder release include a new feature based in certain class added to the BODY of our applications. Please, take a look at the also new Themes2 app sample, which show us how we can, thanks to this new feature, hack certain application's themes and not others. In a few words we can apply certain CSS rules only for certain views, controls, etc., only if the application use certain theme, so that CSS rules are not applied for other themes.

Hello to all,

We are in home! After more than a week into the hospital we are back to home. Of course we need to continue with their rehabilitation, but this is the first day in an entire week that I can touch my development computer and I feel good. Thanks ya'll for the good whishes and kindly words. :)

Hello,

PS

This broswer in AB is read only in the forum. At least for me it is, Anyway to make it so we can copy code samples from the forum views?

The next App Buidler release allows you to copy text from the welcome page browser. I guarantee you Donald. :)

Hello Donald,

What we need to put into the "BackgroundImage" editbox is just this:

As you can see, the path must be relative to the CSS file. Please, take a look at this sample application I prepared for you. In this case, the background is applied to the entire application. Download the sample from the below link:

Background.zip

Hello to all,

Thanks Ade. Some advances these days. Tomorrow, if everything is OK, my mom come back to home. They are not fine, of course (just a few days ago they suffer a surgery) and can't stay up, but, hopefully with my brother and my own help she come more or less fine with sometime.

More tomorrow. :)

Hello Asley,

Thanks for sharing! And please, continue sharing with us your AB created apps! :)

Hello,

Something I want to do as quickly as possible is to add the right stuff into the debug BAT file in order to directly run the application in our devices, if they are connected to an USB cable. Anyway, the idea of App Builder is we can test almost everything in the program's debugger browsers. Of course we can't use the Cordova Camera plugin in the debug browser, for example, but, we can act like if the plugin are ready to use, or simply know our application is running from the debugger and act in consecuence. Anyway, the point is we can do almost all the debug without leave App Builder and the system installed browsers, then we need to test it in our devices as little as possible.