Dear All,
Have you tried LiveCode 8 yet? We’re incredibly proud of it and we think you will love it. You can read all about the new benefits here, watch our launch webinar or read the Q&A about LiveCode 8 here.
I’d like to extend a huge thank you to those of you that backed the project through crowd funding and to all our paid license holders and backers who made this mammoth project possible.
But we’re not done yet.
Infinite LiveCode
As truly wonderful as LiveCode 8 is, it is a new set of foundations and a ground floor – an enabler for an ecosystem an order of magnitude larger than the one we already enjoy today. That’s why today I’m announcing the our biggest and most important campaign of 2016 — Infinite LiveCode.
If you believe in our vision of productive, simple and accessible app development then we need your help. As I said in our 8 launch webinar, every platform that gains critical mass does so because of the wide range of components available to plug into the platform. With the widgets in LiveCode 8 you can now extend LiveCode easily.
As a community it is vital that we all get on board and work together to get these components flying out the door. When we do this every single user of LiveCode wins. When we do this we will bring in many new users to the platform.
There are two ways you can help right now.
Infinite LiveCode: Free Widget Building Course
First, we announced a goal of having 1000 widgets available for LiveCode by the end of the year. If we work together we can make this happen. Imagine if you could go into the extensions store and find a dozen pre-built components for common tasks? Graphs, data display tools, sprites, native objects? We’re in process of putting together a free online widget building course which will be available to everyone. We’re going to be announcing a series of exciting prizes and incentives for the top widgets (chosen by community vote) at the end of the year. Full details will go up on the blog in the next few days.
In the meantime, you can register your interest to join this free course here.
Don’t delay! Give it a go. We’ll cover all the basics of working in LiveCode Builder, the new widget building language. You’ll learn all the basics of the language. It is very LiveCode-like with lots of really cool syntax and capabilities. We’ll show you:
How to create a rotated text object, something you can’t easily do in LiveCode Script just now
How to create a Pie Chart and build a set of properties for it which appear in the Property Inspector
How to modify the existing Tree widget in a variety of ways to add new features and functionality.
We’ll be supporting you every step of the way and answering your questions in a series of online events.
Infinite LiveCode: Widgets v2
Secondly, we need to build on the momentum that we created with our widget building language: LiveCode Builder. The first version of Builder in LiveCode 8 is already very capable – a whole rich new language that has already been used to create the many high quality widgets we’ve included with the platform. It is however a first version of a brand new language, a rich language that carries a great deal of functionality needed to perform its purpose well on every platform that LiveCode supports. Introducing a new language is no small task. And as you might expect, to be truly ubiquitous there are some things it doesn’t do yet that it needs to do if we are to be able to build all the types of widget that we know you want.
For example, while you can talk to simple C libraries we need to extend it to support accessing more complex C libraries, Objective-C and Java on the appropriate platforms for each. We need to enhance the native layer support – the ability to plug in OS and third party components and create many more objects that are like the new Browser Object in 8. With these additions you’ll be able to easily wrap any native library or object on every platform. Need to embed a native field on Android and iOS? Use Builder v2 – or a widget someone created with Builder v2. Need to access audio recording features on every platform? Use Builder v2 – or a widget created by someone. Want to create a new database wrapper? Use Builder v2.
We’re busy planning our next steps now that 8 is out the door. As a development team we love creating robust, complete software that does everything it needs to do. Nothing would please us more than to spend the next three months creating v2 of this language. Our team is primed, ready and chomping at the bit. We know that as you get into building widgets you’ll encounter some limitations and we want to get ahead of you while you do the introductory course over the summer and round out the feature set, one key feature at a time.
The reality is that we can’t commit to this vital work without community support. LiveCode 8 was the most expensive project we have ever done and we need to recoup the costs now by working purely on commercial activities. We are not in a position to do this project in anything less than a year with our current resources. Yet we know that doing Builder v2 right now is what is in the best interests of 100% of our users, whether using Community or Commercial, no matter what platform you are working on. This is not just another feature. It’s not just another edition. This is building capability into the platform so that you, the community, can build at least as many features as we do in the future. This is about building a platform without limits.
We know the strategic benefit of doing this work next is high – everyone wins. If you agree then please back our new Feature Exchange: Infinite LiveCode. We’re putting our money where our mouths are and have done everything we can to bring the costs of this project down to the minimum. At our standard rates this is a $210,000 project. Due to the strategic value we’ve discounted our usual rates 66% to bring it down to being break even, i.e. we will do this at cost. And in addition to that we’ve put in $10,000 sponsorship of our own from licensing revenue, the maximum level possible at present. We’ve also split this project up into manageable chunks. That gives us just $30K to raise to deliver the base goal, and three very useful stretch goals that would take the project up to a maximum of $60K. If we can fund this now we’ll have this with you in the summer of this year, 2016 as opposed to summer 2017. Across our community that’s not a huge amount. For example, if 800 backers put in $75 each we’d make our goal.
If we hit the project core goals and the stretch goals then:
– You’ll be able to wrap complex C libraries on any platform. (You can access C in Builder today however the syntax for doing it is fairly basic.)
– You’ll be able to access Java libraries on Android and Objective-C on iOS & Mac OS
– We’ll complete the set of features for working with each of these languages to make it easy for you to work with them all.
– We’ll extend the basic Widget Building Course. Together we will build a new native field object for iOS and Android with a full set of lessons, Google hangouts and source code. That will form a template that you can use to wrap any other native platform control.
– We’ll do the same and build together a new wrapper around SQLite, again on all platforms.
– And finally, we’ll wrap the audio recording APIs on all platforms in the same way. All of this will be documented and reusable.
Whether or not you need these specific features, you’ll know that any other feature you might need is going to be at your fingertips to wrap. Imagine knowing that you or dozens of people in the community can bring the functionality of any Java library into LiveCode? Or incorporate any object that Apple brings out for iOS or Google brings out for Android? Imagine being able to download that functionality and drag it out from the tools palette every time one of these things is wrapped by someone.
Take another look at the Q&A for the 8 launch webinar. There is simply no way our small team can bring you every one of those features. But with this campaign and the course we’re running, the community can. This is your platform and it is your choice whether we do this next. Everyone here at LiveCode believes this is the right thing to do next for the future of the platform and community. The alternative is for us to focus on building out features for Indy and Business. As important as that is, it’s just not as exciting, as empowering or as enabling for us all. This is about community, it is about harnessing all the passion out there for LiveCode to take all of us to the next level.
With 8 launched we are deep into planning and have to make this decision quickly: What is to be our focus for the next three months? Its up to you.
To read more about our campaign and to back it please go here. Thank you for your support.
Kind Regards
Kevin Miller
LiveCode CEO
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