Posts by DecSoft

Hello,

I have some news about how to prepare our applications to run in the iOS platform. Today I am talking more with Jordi, an AB customer who already have an AB application into the iTunes store, and they really point me in the right direction.

I was wrong when think we can't do anything from Windows when we are talking about the iOS platform. For that reason App Builder can creates BAT files for all the Cordova's supported platforms except iOS.

But this is not truth at all. On the contrary, Apache Cordova can help us by creating the appropiate files IN WINDOWS in order to be ready to build our applications IN MACOS after that.

You can update now your AB copy, since they include now a new option (app's options dialog -> Cordova tab) in order to generates a BAT file also for the iOS platform.

The steps are:

1º Creates our application, and choose the refered action to generates a BAT file for the iOS platform

2º Execute that BAT file, which tell to Apache Cordova we want our application ready for the iOS platform

3º Copy the "_Compiled" directory to a Mac and open the "\*_Compiled\platforms\ios\New App 1.xcodeproj" with XCODE.

4º That's all! We are ready to generates our application's IPA file, the equivalent to the APK file in Android.

So, in conclusion, and, contrary my first knowledge, we can use Apache Cordova IN WINDOWS to generate the appropiate files ready to be copied in a Mac computer to be finally built with XCODE (XCODE is the development environment in the Mac world).

You know another possible way (basically if we do not have a Mac computer...) is to use the Adobe Phonegap Build online service. I preffer the Apache Cordova way, however, if we really do not have a Mac computer... maybe there is not too much options out there.

Hope this information can results of interest for all!

Hello edunt,

1º You need to prepare certain images to act like the portrait and landscape splash screens.

The program do the rest for you by preparing the images in different files, add the Cordova's Splashcreen plugin and write the appropiate stuff in the "config.xml" file.

4º Nope. I am not talking about save the audio file in the local storage (too big probably!) but just the position of the media player. Supose I open the application an listen the audio for a minute. Then I come to another application and finally open your application again. The point is that using the Pause and Resume app's events probably you can save/restore the position, so I can start to listen the audio in the same position I leave it before.

Related with this last question maybe you can prepare a couple of Push buttons to directly access to some audio position. For example, if you know when certain audio section start, you can have a Push button that jump exactly to that position. Maybe some buttons or a Select control with something like "Chapter 1", "Chapter 2", etc.

5º There is an example of the AdMob plugin included by App Builder. Take a look!

Hello edunt,

Good work! Some sugestion if you allow me, but take only as comments you can take in count or not!

1º Probably a splash screen can be good (maybe the Finnish flag?), even when the application start fast.

2º You know the MediaPlayer can be hidden? Just put their variable "Hidden" to "True". Even when hidden the MediaPlayer is available, then you can, for example, control it (play it) by a Push button. I say that because we are talking about an audio player, so, maybe we no need to view the MediaPlayer and only a Play button and a Range control can be good, this last to change the media player position.

3º The latest releases of App Builder add a new event for the MediaPlayer control: the "CanPlay" event. This can be useful to maintain informed to the user until the media file is ready to be played, for example, by shows a spinner icon, a progressbar or something like this.

4º Maybe you can save into the application's storage (using the "SetOption" action) the position of the MediaPlayer using the app's Resume event, in the way you can then can load the saved position (using the "GetOption" action) to seek the MediaPlayer into the latest position.

And that's all! Maybe another possible ideas come, for example, you can use the AdMob plugin in order to monetize your application, but, these things are all up to you edunt.

Thanks for posting!

You're welcome sir! :)

Hello Donald,

Yes; certain controls base their functionallity in Array variables. This is good, because, we can creates Array variables too, and uses all the Arrays related actions for both control's Array variables and our own Array variables.

For example, if we are talking about Select controls, we always can get the currently selected item using a code like this:

The first argument is the Array from we want to get an specific item. In this case such Array is the Select control "Items" Array, but remember we can use this same action with any Array variable.

The second argument is the "index" we want to get from the Array. The Arrays stores the items in a zero based index, so the first item is the "0" (zero), the second item is the "1", and so on. The Select controls offer to us the "ItemIndex" variable, which stores the currently selected item in the control.

The third argument is the result variable, that is, the variable which stores the item we get from the specified Array.

Above we say the Select's "ItemIndex" stores the currently selected item in the control, and, we also can write this variable in order to select an item programatically, just by using the SetVar action:

The above action establish the first item in the Array (zero indexed, remember) as the selected item in the Select control.

As I said above, we can play with all the Arrays related actions, so, for example, we can add a new item at the end of a Select control:

We can add a new item at the start of a Select control:

We can concat a "Select2" control items into a "Select1" control items:

We can remove the last element form of a Select control:

Or remove the first element:

And finally we can continue using the other Array related actions to reverse the items, short them in various ways, search for items, etc., etc. You can start with the NewArray action in the help file and continue scrolling down for other Arrays related actions.

If you have any further question just post it Donald. :)

Hello,

Hi,
Will this logic work with audio file?

Yes, edunt. In principle, the HTMLContent control can contains any HTML and app variables.

Hello Donald,

The HtmlContent control is a bit special, since we can't access their HTML variable in runtime. In fact probably we can do it using Javascript, however, such variable is plained to used at designtime, commonly to put inside one or more variables. Then this variables are parsed in compile time and therefore become available at runtime.

Therefore, probably what you can do is to think about variables, because variables can be changed at runtime. Then, for example, if you shown an image in your HTMLContent control using a code similar to this:

In the app's view Show event we can set the variable to this:

And then, in every other place (a Push Button's Click event, for example) we can place another similar code:

Also, we can made the entire HTMLContent control a variable, that is, we can simply place inside something like "[MyVariable]", then we can change the content of that variable at runtime.

Hope this can help you in some manner Donald. :)

Always thanks you Donald. :)

Hello Donald,

One possible way (if you have the very latest release of App Builder published right now) is to use the "TextAlign" CSS property of the Label control. In the object inspector, you can view a "TextAlign" property in the "Normal", "Hover" and "Focus" tab. Just choose one of the available values for this property like "center", "right", etc.

Another possible way to align the Label can be using their "Classes" variable. In that variable we can put the value "text-center" or "text-right". These CSS clases are provided by Bootstrap CSS and has available from us.

Another possible way is to use the app's "Inlince CSS". Access to that from the app's options dialog or from the designer object inspector. In the CSS editor, write something like the below code, suposing your Label name is "Label1", change the identifier for your Label's name.

The above code center the label.

The above code align the label to the right. Other possible values for "text-align" can be found here. This way can be useful, because we can use media queries, for example:

The above code means "If the browser window is smaller than 500px, put the 'Label1' to the right".

Finally, we can also use some actions to change the Label's alignment programatically, for example:

Hope this can help you Donald. If you have any further question don't hesitate to post it.

Hello,

I was away little bit from the forum because we just got a new baby girl.

Don't worry, and congratulations edunt! :)

Hello,

A sample application can be good. Anyway, remember App Builder include a Chart and a Gauge control. Maybe not too complete like the library you linked, but, they works out of the box. Anyway thanks for the link edunt.

Hello,

I also note such behaviour using Apache Cordova. Certainly I think it's a problem in Apache Cordova I need to investigate too. If your target is the Firefox OS, for example, you can use the webapp option of App Builder, not the Cordova one. App Builder generates for you the appropiate manifest file, preparethe right icon and finally you can use the Zipper tool to get a valid Zip file to be uploaded into the Firefox Marketplace, just like the Calculator sample app.

P.S. Yes; of course if you need certain Apache Cordova stuff, then before the problem with Cordova must be solved, but I am not completely sure, since I am not try to upload (and corrupted?) Zip file.

Hello Donald,

Sorry the delay, I expend the day in the hospital with my mom. Certainly there is no option currently to made an image "fixed", that is, if you choose the "scaled" app's option, then all the control try to scale, also the Image controls. Currently the only way to maintain the image in a fixed size is to avoid the "scaled" app's option, or, may we can use it, and then, un runtime, use certain CSS classes or actions like "SetStyle" in order to maintain the size of our Image controls or may provide it with a more appropiate images for larger screens, for example. About the zoom feature, yes, it's the application who have an option like that, not the current Image controls.

Hola pesadillo,

No estoy muy seguro de hasta qué punto es el cliente el responsable del comportamiento que describe, puesto que también el servidor tiene algo que decir ahí, por no hablar ya del propio sistema operativo del teléfono en cuestión.

Si le he entendido bien, lo que quiere es, precisamente, que siempre se muestre "actualizado" (hasta donde el servidor entienda) el contenido de los "Iframes". Si esto es así, tal vez pueda usar un sencillo truco.

Se trata de asignar al "Iframe" una URL que ha de ser única, de modo que el servidor, así como el sistema operativo (si este tiene algo que ver) no la guarden los datos en caché alguno. Dicho truco puede resumirse así:

Como ve, primero obtenemos un núero del 100 al 9999 (podría variar, podríamos poner otros datos...) y después preparamos dicho número para ser añadido en una URL. A continuación asignamos la URL del "Iframe1", añadiendo el argumento "r" cuyo valor es el número aleatorio anterior.

Ojalá esta información pueda serle de ayuda.

Hello,

In my opinion the point is that build an application two times is more expensive than build the application one time. Not too much words to said, except that, since we need the release build ONLY when we are ready to upload the application into the Google Play Store, I think build an application's release everytime is a waste of time and resources.

Do you really thing we need both debug and release APKs during the application's development?