LiveCode 8.1 – A major minor release

Back in May 2016 we released LiveCode 8, a massive step forward for the LiveCode ecosystem with new externals, new extensibility with LiveCode Builder widgets, and a new and improved IDE.

Today we’re pleased to announce the release of LiveCode 8.1, which builds on the LiveCode 8 foundation to bring dozens of new features, better performance, and some developer-assisting improvements that’ll just make your life a bit easier – not to mention 200 bug fixes.

Faster, better networking with tsNet

Working in partnership with Tech Strategies, LiveCode 8.1 makes your network-aware apps more reliable and more responsive using the new cURL-based tsNet external, which comes as standard with LiveCode Indy and Business editions.

Because tsNet plugs into the standard LiveCode network stack, you don’t need to change your app at all to immediately take advantage of up to 3 times greater speed that it brings on faster networks or when handling a large volume of traffic; just redeploy your app with LiveCode 8.1 to upgrade.

With a few small changes to your app, load data faster and keep the user interface responsive by doing as many simultaneous, non-blocking network operations as you like, even to the same server.

tsNet brings new capabilities too, with built-in support for communicating with SMTP and SFTP servers.

Learn more about the new networking capabilities for LiveCode

New Networking Capabilities

Windows multimedia without QuickTime

LiveCode 8.1 brings reliable video playback back to the Windows platform.  The days of struggling to get QuickTime installed and working on Windows 10 are over!

The completely-rewritten Windows player object uses DirectPlay to play your media, enabling out-of-the-box video playback on Windows, Android, MacOS and iOS.

Read more: Removing QuickTime dependency from LiveCode’s player object

Streamlined deployment

No more fiddling with externals.txt and the “Copy Files” pane in the standalone builder.  LiveCode 8.1 streamlines preparing for standalone deployment by bringing all externals, extensions and script libraries together in a new “Inclusions” pane in the standalone builder.

To streamline things further, you can now leave worrying about externals and extensions to us: the standalone builder can now automatically scan your app for the inclusions that it needs, no matter which platform you’re deploying to.

And just to make things even easier, you can now deploy for mobile platforms and desktop platforms simultaneously.

Read more: Cross-platform app deployment with LiveCode is now even easier

HealthKit external

iOS devices provide a secure central store for health and fitness data via the HealthKit API. LiveCode 8.1’s new external lets your app integrate fitness monitoring or health diagnostic features, or to safely store the data it gathers from the user about their health & fitness.

Read more: Extending the BMI app with HealthKit

IDE upgrades

Based on your feedback, LiveCode 8.1 has some nice new quality-of life improvements to the IDE to make developing with LiveCode easier.

• the documentation viewer loads faster, shows more info, is easier to navigate, and clearly indicates deprecated entries
• the Project Browser now supports keyboard navigation and highlights scripts that failed to compile
• the message box has syntax highlighting

Engine & LCB improvements

Even the core LiveCode engine has got its share of LiveCode 8.1 upgrades.

• GPS location history system for Android and iOS
• list files and folders without changing the current folder
• “filter” now works on arrays
• extended new “return” syntax lets you write functions & commands that set “it”

Read more: Faff-free files function

But wait, there is more! LiveCode 8.1 contains the first few upgrades to LiveCode Builder from the “Infinite LiveCode” project.

• most variables now get initialised by default, so less boilerplate is needed
• variables have lexical scope, so variables defined inside a repeat loop don’t “leak”

Upgrade now

There are even more improvements in LiveCode 8.1 that couldn’t be fitted into this blog post; check out the full release notes (PDF) for all the details.

Since LiveCode 8.1 has many security fixes and performance enhancements, we recommend immediately upgrading to all our users and customers.

You can get LiveCode 8.1 via automatic updates from within the IDE (‘Help → Check For Updates’), or download the installer now.