How is HTML5 development going? When will it be released? For months your questions have flooded our inboxes, forums, and social channels. We understand: HTML5 is certainly an exciting prospect. Developing a cross platform application for mobile or desktop – or even both – has made LiveCode into a hugely popular tool. Adding web deployment to that list is another leap in the right direction and it will save time and costs for LiveCode users. So how is HTML5 going? When will it be released?
read more8 Reasons You Should be Talking about LiveCode 8.0
by Ben Beaumont on January 27, 2015 30 commentsTaking too long to code? Just invent a new programming language!
In early 2014, we were looking at a roadmap that was so long it would have taken our existing team years to complete. If you work in software, you know that roadmaps only ever grow – especially if you’re supporting customers using a variety of platforms. We knew that we couldn’t go out and hire another 50 developers, so we had to be radically creative. We decided to create a new technology! This technology would make extending LiveCode so easy that we would be able to deliver our roadmap with our existing team and also enable anyone with a passion for LiveCode to add to it and share their work.
read moreWe need your help: 6.7 and 7.0 Final DP’s released
by Ben Beaumont on July 22, 2014 14 commentsAfter months of hard work both from the LiveCode team and the community in testing we’re nearing the release candidate cycle for both 6.7 and 7.0. Today we release the final DP or “developer preview” of 6.7 and 7.0 containing more than 180 fixes.
LiveCode 6.7 contains many new features and refinements to the high DPI support:
- Cocoa – Latest Mac OS API’s making your apps a 1st class citizen on that platform
- coreText – Faster rendering of text on Mac OS
- webKit browser – Improved desktop web browser with two way Javascript communication
- Extended in-app purchasing – Support for Samsung and Kindle stores
- AVFoundation – New multimedia playback on Mac enabling appStore submission
- Effective points of graphics – A great community contribution from Mark Wieder
- Nine-way stretch for images – Making fluid layout skinned applications even easier
- 126 bug fixes
LiveCode 7.0 contains a completely restructured engine and will be the foundation of everything we do in 2014/2015
- Transparent Unicode support – Create apps in any language.
- New chunk expressions – Paragraph, sentence, trueword, codeunit, codepoint
- Engine refactor – New modern internals making development easier and external contributions simpler
- Linux GDK port – This is similar to the Cocoa port for Mac. Linux users will now enjoy better platform features
- 181 bug fixes
Developer previews / release candidates?
A developer preview (or “DP”) is a build of LiveCode that contains new features that we would like to offer to the community for testing and feedback.
A release candidate (or “RC”) is a build of LiveCode that contains new features that we propose are ready for release. During the release cycle the team focuses on testing, refinement and bug fixes. Bugs found are fixed and a new release candidate is built. Multiple RC’s are released until the build is deemed stable.
A stable release (or “GM”, short for “Golden Master”) is a build of LiveCode that is feature complete and at the time of release bug free.
How can you help?
We invite you to download and test your projects in both of these releases.
Testing is easy. Simply open your projects in LiveCode 6.7 and 7.0 and run through your normal testing procedure. You may have written automated tests for your product or work methodically through your app, testing each of its features. Either way, doing this will reveal any changes to the behaviour of LiveCode. Our aim when redeveloping both 6.7 and 7.0 was to make stacks run EXACTLY as they did in previous versions of LiveCode. For the most part, we have achieved this so 99% of stacks should run unchanged. If you notice any changes in behaviour or experience any instability please file a bug report at quality.runrev.com.
When will you go RC?
These are the last developer preview builds. The next builds will be release candidates which we hope to make available at the end of next week. Much will depend on feedback from you and whether we can resolve the issues reported over the weekend and through next week. We are still working on a multi-core rendering optimisation that will enable LiveCode to use all available CPU cores when rendering your stacks. It looks like it will offer some good performance improvements and will be released in the first RC builds.
Why not merge 6.7 and 7 into 1 release?
Some of you have asked why we don’t put 6.7 and 7.0 together into a single release, especially considering they are both coming out at the same time. Our primary motivation is you, our users. Many rely on our technology in your businesses and 6.7 provides a much smaller jump in changes upon which to deliver your products. The 7.0 developments have changed the way your stacks read in and write out out to disk as well as altering the performance profile of LiveCode. Certain operations in LiveCode are now slower while others are much faster. Text manipulation is at the heart of the LiveCode engine which now stores and processes strings as Unicode which is much more complex than the previous native format. Almost every command and function in LiveCode interacts with text meaning that many now perform at different speeds than they did before. Providing a 6.7 release enables those of you who need to tweak your apps for 7.0 the time to do so.
Where can I get these releases?
You can download installers at downloads.livecode.com or choose “check for updates” from the help menu in LiveCode.
Report it at quality.runrev.com. The better your report the more quickly our test team can reproduce and the easier it is for our developers to identify the problem in the source and fix it. A great bug report would contain:
1) A simple sample stack with a script that triggers the issue. The simpler, the better.
2) A step by step guide to causing the issue. E.g:
a) Open the attached sample stack
b) Click on the “start” button
c) RESULT: Causes LiveCode to misbehave is x,y and z ways
d) EXPECTED RESULT: LiveCode previously behaved like a,b and c
Where can I find out about the specifics in these releases?
We provide release notes with every build of LiveCode. These provide details of every feature, change and bug fix made in the release. You can find links to the release notes at downloads.livecode.com and from the help menu in LiveCode.
read moreThe present and future LiveCode
by Ben Beaumont on June 30, 2014 16 comments2013 was a big year for the LiveCode technology if not the biggest to date. The Kickstarter campaign allowed us to not only take LiveCode open source, but provided us with the funding we needed to completely refactor the way the LiveCode language was processed internally. You’re starting to see the fruits of that work with LiveCode 7 and transparent Unicode support, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. 2014 looks set to be an even bigger year for the technology with team members being committed to some of the most exciting projects I’ve seen in my 9 years working on the technology.
In the year since the Kickstarter campaign we’ve put out 15 new releases of LiveCode spanning versions 6 and 7. New features include:
- Core Refactor: Modernise 500,000 lines of code paving the way for another decade of innovation
- New Graphics Layer: Modernise the graphics to pave the way for ‘Resolution Independence’, ‘Fullscreen Scaling’, ‘Stack Scaling’ and other scheduled projects.
- Resolution Independence: Apps takes advantage of high DPI displays
- Fullscreen modes: Apps scale to any device for you with just 1 line of code
- Stack scaling: Helps you work on your projects on small laptops
- Unicode: Seamless easy Unicode in any app on any platform
- Cocoa / CoreText: LiveCode on Mac OS now works with the latest API’s
- Image Cache: LiveCode apps are now smoother and faster on mobile and desktop
- OpenSSL: Apps can now be as secure on mobile as they are on desktop
- Proxy Support / Secure sockets: Your apps can now work seamlessly from behind proxy servers
- WebKit Browser: New webkit browser helps you make better cross platform apps
- Integrated Fonts: Apps load and use fonts with no hassle
- Server Graphics: Create graphics using LiveCode on the server
- 9 way image stretch: Create skinned apps even more easily
We’re also in the process of finalising a couple of other features on our roadmap which will be out in testing in the coming week or two.
- Multimedia: We’ve replaced the MacOS video player with the latest API’s (AVFoundation)
- GDK: LiveCode on Linux now works with modern windowing API’s
Much of the work we’ve completed in the last 12 months was on our public roadmap, but you’ll notice that a number of items were not. With the desktop and mobile platforms constantly evolving we’ve been working hard to deliver on the commitments we made while keeping LiveCode at the cutting edge of cross platform development. So where does that leave us on our journey?
Roadmap
Active
Performance |
Open Language |
Themes / Widgets |
IDE |
|
Regions LiveCode to use more intelligent region data to reduce the number of pixels rendered. Awaiting build – LiveCode 6.7 DP5 Effect: 0 – 5x Speedup |
Evaluator Write a new evaluator Prototype complete |
Widget Architecture LiveCode to have pluggable themed controls that can be written in the LiveCode language by inhouse developers or community members. Prototype in progress |
Widget IDE Widgets provide an ideal focal point for the new IDE. We’re prototyping a basic IDE to help test and progress the widget prototype. This builds on other IDE prototypes created in the past. Prototype in progress |
|
Multicore Rendering LiveCode to use all CPU cores when rendering Prototype complete Effect: 2x Speedup |
Parser + Specs Write a new parser Prototype complete |
File Format New file format to save new controls into stack as well as provide for better versioning system integration |
Stack Views * A stack view in LiveCode will enable us to load stacks as a view and create a single windowed IDE |
|
Multicore Accelerated Rendering LiveCode to use all cores when generating data for GPU allowing LiveCode to use the GPU by default |
Network / Sockets Use new open language feature to implement |
Cross browser player object Use widget framework to wrap video playback on all platforms into a single object |
Full IDE Prototype * A full prototype of a new IDE based on a solid architecture |
|
Database Use new open language feature to implement. |
Vector Shape Object Use widget framework to write this control |
Performance: We’ve made substantial changes to the graphics architecture in the last 12 months. The core has been replaced with a modern abstraction providing a foundation upon which much of our future tech will be built. However, Resolution Independence has required this library to do work it never had to in the past. A retina display requires the graphics library to render 4 times the number of pixels to the screen. Every pixel takes time to calculate, so the more you have, the longer it takes. This project was added to our roadmap to address the slowdown caused by this increase in pixels. We’ve created a generalised threading library that the engine can use to take advantage of all the cores available on a given system. We’re also looking at ways to reduce the number of pixels LiveCode renders taking advantage of features in our new graphics library. Most of these changes have been prototyped and are now being implemented for release in 6.7 or 6.7.1.
Open Language: With the core refactoring almost complete (LiveCode 7.0) we’ve started to turn our attention to the final aspect of this project which is to open up the language for extension by anyone. We have been prototyping for quite some time now and plans are in place to move this project forward at a rapid pace once LiveCode 7.0 is released. We will complete network, socket and database libraries with easy to use English like syntax as part of the development and testing of this feature. This is currently slated as one half of our next major release, currently imaginatively named “8.0”.
Theme / Widgets: Another important prototype we’ve invested time in is codenamed “Widgets”. Our aim is to provide a means for any LiveCode developer to extend the control set. This builds on “Open Language” making it possible for any developer to extend the language and the UI. While still in its infancy, we are really excited about the results which will make LiveCode 8.0 a groundbreaking release.
We’re looking forward to showing these prototypes at the upcoming conference which we hope will give you a flavour of where the technology is going in 2014/2015. This is going to be another special 12 months for LiveCode!
* These features are reliant on strands 1-3.
Queued
That leaves us with only 2 queued projects. Physics is best implemented using the features in planned for LiveCode 8.0. It will take advantage of the new controls as well as have wonderful English like syntax to power it. The Windows 8 port can take place as soon as engineers are available to work on it. The platform layer underpins the LiveCode 6.7 Cocoa port making this Windows port much easier to tackle.
Physics Engine
Incorporate Box2D into LiveCode along with an animation loop feature.
Windows 8
Port LiveCode to Windows 8 on mobile platforms using the new platform API developed for the Cocoa port.
Summary
We’ve shared at length over the last few years our dreams for the technology and creating a “Next Generation” version of LiveCode. A bold step forward to make LiveCode a mainstream language with awesome tools to make app development efficient and easy. Our vision as a company is to make programming simple. For professionals, that means achieving amazing result with a small team. For those new to programming, it means a chance to learn a skill that we see as vital in the 21st century.
LiveCode’s roots are in Hypercard, a wonderful vision to make programming simple brought to us by Bill Atkinson and his team at Apple well over 20 years ago. We share their vision many years on and in a new technological landscape. The first Kickstarter campaign that you supported enabled us to prepare the LiveCode technology to be opened up to every developer.
After 14 months of hard work we are now starting to see the fruits of our labours. LiveCode 7 is a huge milestone which sees your existing LiveCode projects running on completely new foundations. LiveCode 8 builds on these changes bringing the LiveCode language into the mainstream and providing a way for anyone to extend LiveCode to do exactly what they need.
read moreLiveCode 6.7.0 DP1 Released
by Ben Beaumont on March 28, 2014 5 commentsWe are pleased to announce the preview release of LiveCode 6.7.0 DP1.
For those of you that don’t know, LiveCode releases come in different stages.
DP – developer preview (feature incomplete likely to be unstable)
RC – release candidate ( feature complete, likely to be quite stable but is not considered the final stable release)
GM – gold master ( feature complete stable release)
The primary focus of this release is cocoa support. This required us to re-port LiveCode to the newer Mac platform API’s (cocoa). As a result, there may be some instabilities on Mac OS. Once again, thanks to those who helped with alpha testing to iron out the major bugs. 6.7 has now passed all automated tests and a first pass community test. We are aware of a sporadic crash related to audio which we’ve been unable to replicate or trace.
Release Contents
- Cocoa Support
- New revBrowser WebKit external (Windows, Mac) with new bi-direction javascript to LiveCode communication.
- Mobile In-App Purchasing support extended to Amazon * and Samsung stores
- Clipboard data ‘styledText’ array accessor
- OS 10.5 (Leopard) Support dropped
- 4 bug fixes:
- 11975 – "import snapshot from rect …" only imports part of the screen on Windows
- 11946 – iOS 7.1 Simulator doesn’t remember device type when launching using ‘Test’
- 11917 – Setting the label of an option or combo-box does not update the menuHistory.
- 11808 – pixelScaling not enabled on Windows Commercial edition
* Our in-app purchasing implementation for the Amazon AppStore is unfortunately restricted to commercial license holders only. This is due to the Amazon PML license being incompatible with the GPL. If you wish to use the Amazon in-app purchasing features of LiveCode you will need to be a valid commercial licence holder.
For full details of features and fixes please see the release notes: http://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/6_7_0/LiveCodeNotes-6_7_0_dp_1.pdf
Known Issues
- We are yet to implement an AVFoundation version of the player object and switch the engine to weak link to Quicktime. This is expected for DP2.
- Performance on High DPI system slow from 6.6 onwards. Our head of technology posted about this on our blog last week. We plan to refine his prototype and include during the 6.7 cycle. For those of you who missed the post you can read it here: http://livecode.com/blog/2014/03/18/hi-speed-hidpi/.
- Sporadic crash related to audio (not reproducible at present).
- Field navigation with arrow keys in WebKit browser input fields. http://quality.runrev.com/show_bug.cgi?id=12047.
Testing
As always we appreciate very much all those who help us refine these early releases.
- If you are a browser object user, we would appreciate you testing your projects with the new revBrowser external. You can create both old and new WebKit browser instances. Please see the release notes for details of how to create the WebKit variant. The original revBrowser object remains unchanged.
- If you are a mac users please test all your projects by opening them and seeing how they behave in the new windowing system. Your apps will now be rendering entirely in the cocoa windowing framework so you’ll notice subtle differences.
- If you have a mobile app that uses in-app purchases please see the release notes for details of the new in-app API. You will need to make some minor changes to your projects to ensure that your in-app purchases remain functional with LiveCode 6.7. The new API is cleaner and simpler as well as supporting the two additional stores and subscriptions.
Reporting Bugs
If you encounter an issue with this release please submit a bug report to our quality centre: http://quality.runrev.com/enter_bug.cgi
Get the release
To upgrade to this release please select "check for updates" from the help menu in LiveCode or download the installers directly at: http://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/
Resources
For lessons related to the new in-app purchasing api please see: http://lessons.runrev.com/m/19606
THERE ARE INSTABILITIES IN THIS PREVIEW RELEASE so please take care to use backups of your stacks when testing.
read moreLiveCode 6.6 Released
by Ben Beaumont on March 26, 2014 9 commentsThis release brings automatic scaling and handling of Retina screens to the desktop platforms, in line with the existing iOS and Android support. Also in this release open SSL and encryption support have been added for the mobile platforms. LiveCode continues to increase the feature parity available on all six supported platforms it offers.
We recognize that whilst the mobile platforms are continuing to grow and mature in terms of apps and development, the desktop platforms are vitally important to developers and end users alike. We are proud to offer seamless support for a huge variety of screen sizes, shapes and densities with LiveCode 6.6. Now you can write the same single line of code to handle scaling for your app on the smallest Android device and the largest Mac Retina screens.
Here is everything that is new in LiveCode 6.6
Assert Command (Experimental)
A new assert command has been added to help people who wish to write tests. It was primarily written to support in-house testing of LiveCode but has been documented in the release notes so LiveCode developers can also make use of it with their projects.
High DPI support
High DPI support on windows and OSX has been added meaning LiveCode applications will now run at the native screen resolution on computers with high density screens. For example, the MacBook Pro now comes with a ‘retina’ screen which has 4x the number of pixels than a standard laptop screen. The extra pixels are there to make the apps on screen crisper, rather than provide more screen real estate. By default, the OS up scales applications implemented without High DPI support to the high density screens, resulting in some pixilation. LiveCode 6.6 now creates apps in the new format allowing the OS to render them at the true screen density. The result, your app looks beautiful!
LiveCode CTO Mark Waddingham talks about the High DPI in his blog post titled – Hi-speed HiDPI
ShowAll fullscreen mode
When running a stack in fullscreen mode you can tell LiveCode how you want your app to be scaled. In LiveCode 6.5 we added a number of scaling options and in 6.6 we added an additional one. ShowAll scales the stack preserving aspect ratio so all content within the stack rect is visible. Portions of the stack outside the stack rect will be visible if the scaled stack does not fit the screen exactly.
HTTPS through proxy
The desktop version of LibURL has been updated to support fetching HTTPS URLs through a proxy server. Anyone writing an app that was deployed to a network secured by proxy could not access internet based URLs. LiveCode now supports auto-detection of proxy server settings so that developer apps will automatically tunnel outside of a network with zero configuration.
Image Filtering Updates
Due to a degrade in the image resizing quality in 6.5, the image filtering algorithms have been updated for 6.6.
For LiveCode versions prior to 6.5, the image filtering algorithms were not universal across all platforms. "Good" resize quality used bilinear filtering and "best" used bicubic filtering for all platforms. However, "normal" differed. On Mac, box filtering was used. All other platforms applied no filtering.
For LiveCode versions prior to 6.5, all resize operations were cached (i.e. moving a resized image around did not cause the resize to be recalculated).
For LiveCode 6.5, the image filtering was united across all platforms, with no filtering being applied in "normal" mode, bilinear filtering being used in "good" mode and bicubic filtering being used in "best" mode.
For LiveCode 6.5, only "best" resize operations were cached (the acceleratedRendering mode should be used for caching in other modes). All others were calculated on the fly.
The bilinear filter used in 6.5 was of poorer quality when compared to pre 6.5. Additionally, the "normal" mode on Mac was poorer (due to the loss of the box filter). We’ve addressed this in LiveCode 6.6 by improving the image filtering algorithms across all platforms. "Normal" and "good" mode now use updated algorithms. "Best" mode remains as before.
It should be noted that the improvements to the filters used may cause a slight drop in performance. The final image filters and resize modes used has not been finalized and is open to user input.
iOS 7.1 Support
Support has been added for iOS 7.1. For OS 10.8 and 10.9, LiveCode now uses the iOS 7.1 SDK to produce device builds. As such, OS 10.8 and 10.9 users must have the iOS 7.1 SDK installed (which comes with Xcode 5.1) and configured in their mobile preferences in order to produce iOS device builds.
Open SSL & encryption
Open SSL & encryption support has been added to the iOS and Android engines (using LibOpenSSL version 1.0.1e). This allows developers to use the encrypt and decrypt commands on the mobile platforms in exactly the same way they would on desktop. In order to include the SSL and encryption libraries, developers must tick the "SSL & Encryption" checkbox in the iOS/Android pane of the standalone builder.
SQLite update
The version of SQLite has been updated to 3.8.3. We have also cleaned up the way you connect to the database making it simpler, as well as improving binary data support.
Binary data can now be placed into SQLite databases verbatim (without the encoding that used to occur) – this means databases can be made to contain binary data which is compatible with other applications. To utilize this functionality, the ‘binary’ option must be passed to the revOpenDatabase() call when creating the database connection (see below).
Stack Scale Factor
The new scaleFactor stack property allows you to set a custom scale factor for a stack. If you are working on a stack that is larger than your screen, you can ’zoom out’ by reducing the stack size via the scaleFactor property. The stack appears smaller and all assets are scaled, however, the stack still reports to be its native size.
Hashbangs recognized
Hashbangs ‘#!’ is now recognized by LiveCode Server – this brings the LC Server engine more in line with expected behaviors in the Unix/server scripting world.
55 bug fixes
55 bugs have been fixed in this release making it more stable than previous releases.
Get LiveCode 6.6
Your LiveCode install should prompt you to download this latest release. Alternatively you can download the latest release from the LiveCode Download area
read moreLiveCode 6.6
by Ben Beaumont on March 26, 2014 No commentsThis release brings automatic scaling and handling of Retina screens to the desktop platforms, in line with the existing iOS and Android support. Also in this release open SSL and encryption support have been added for the mobile platforms. LiveCode continues to increase the feature parity available on all six supported platforms it offers.
We recognize that whilst the mobile platforms are continuing to grow and mature in terms of apps and development, the desktop platforms are vitally important to developers and end users alike. We are proud to offer seamless support for a huge variety of screen sizes, shapes and densities with LiveCode 6.6. Now you can write the same single line of code to handle scaling for your app on the smallest Android device and the largest Mac Retina screens.
Here is everything that is new in LiveCode 6.6
Assert Command (Experimental)
A new assert command has been added to help people who wish to write tests. It was primarily written to support in-house testing of LiveCode but has been documented in the release notes so LiveCode developers can also make use of it with their projects.
High DPI support
High DPI support on windows and OSX has been added meaning LiveCode applications will now run at the native screen resolution on computers with high density screens. For example, the MacBook Pro now comes with a ‘retina’ screen which has 4x the number of pixels than a standard laptop screen. The extra pixels are there to make the apps on screen crisper, rather than provide more screen real estate. By default, the OS up scales applications implemented without High DPI support to the high density screens, resulting in some pixilation. LiveCode 6.6 now creates apps in the new format allowing the OS to render them at the true screen density. The result, your app looks beautiful!
LiveCode CTO Mark Waddingham talks about the High DPI in his blog post titled – Hi-speed HiDPI
ShowAll fullscreen mode
When running a stack in fullscreen mode you can tell LiveCode how you want your app to be scaled. In LiveCode 6.5 we added a number of scaling options and in 6.6 we added an additional one. ShowAll scales the stack preserving aspect ratio so all content within the stack rect is visible. Portions of the stack outside the stack rect will be visible if the scaled stack does not fit the screen exactly.
HTTPS through proxy
The desktop version of LibURL has been updated to support fetching HTTPS URLs through a proxy server. Anyone writing an app that was deployed to a network secured by proxy could not access internet based URLs. LiveCode now supports auto-detection of proxy server settings so that developer apps will automatically tunnel outside of a network with zero configuration.
Image Filtering Updates
Due to a degrade in the image resizing quality in 6.5, the image filtering algorithms have been updated for 6.6.
For LiveCode versions prior to 6.5, the image filtering algorithms were not universal across all platforms. “Good” resize quality used bilinear filtering and “best” used bicubic filtering for all platforms. However, “normal” differed. On Mac, box filtering was used. All other platforms applied no filtering.
For LiveCode versions prior to 6.5, all resize operations were cached (i.e. moving a resized image around did not cause the resize to be recalculated).
For LiveCode 6.5, the image filtering was united across all platforms, with no filtering being applied in “normal” mode, bilinear filtering being used in “good” mode and bicubic filtering being used in “best” mode.
For LiveCode 6.5, only “best” resize operations were cached (the acceleratedRendering mode should be used for caching in other modes). All others were calculated on the fly.
The bilinear filter used in 6.5 was of poorer quality when compared to pre 6.5. Additionally, the “normal” mode on Mac was poorer (due to the loss of the box filter). We’ve addressed this in LiveCode 6.6 by improving the image filtering algorithms across all platforms. “Normal” and “good” mode now use updated algorithms. “Best” mode remains as before.
It should be noted that the improvements to the filters used may cause a slight drop in performance. The final image filters and resize modes used has not been finalized and is open to user input.
iOS 7.1 Support
Support has been added for iOS 7.1. For OS 10.8 and 10.9, LiveCode now uses the iOS 7.1 SDK to produce device builds. As such, OS 10.8 and 10.9 users must have the iOS 7.1 SDK installed (which comes with Xcode 5.1) and configured in their mobile preferences in order to produce iOS device builds.
Open SSL & encryption
Open SSL & encryption support has been added to the iOS and Android engines (using LibOpenSSL version 1.0.1e). This allows developers to use the encrypt and decrypt commands on the mobile platforms in exactly the same way they would on desktop. In order to include the SSL and encryption libraries, developers must tick the “SSL & Encryption” checkbox in the iOS/Android pane of the standalone builder.
SQLite update
The version of SQLite has been updated to 3.8.3. We have also cleaned up the way you connect to the database making it simpler, as well as improving binary data support.
Binary data can now be placed into SQLite databases verbatim (without the encoding that used to occur) – this means databases can be made to contain binary data which is compatible with other applications. To utilize this functionality, the ‘binary’ option must be passed to the revOpenDatabase() call when creating the database connection (see below).
Stack Scale Factor
The new scaleFactor stack property allows you to set a custom scale factor for a stack. If you are working on a stack that is larger than your screen, you can ’zoom out’ by reducing the stack size via the scaleFactor property. The stack appears smaller and all assets are scaled, however, the stack still reports to be its native size.
Hashbangs recognized
Hashbangs ‘#!’ is now recognized by LiveCode Server – this brings the LC Server engine more in line with expected behaviors in the Unix/server scripting world.
55 bug fixes
55 bugs have been fixed in this release making it more stable than previous releases.
Get LiveCode 6.6
Your LiveCode install should prompt you to download this latest release. Alternatively you can download the latest release from the LiveCode Download area.
Find more information on LiveCode 6.6 here.
read moreLiveCode 6.5
by Ben Beaumont on December 6, 2013 No comments
Resolution Independence
Your app scaled beautifully on any device
Mobile app development is now even easier with LiveCode 6.5. Your stack can now be scaled to run fullscreen on ANY device, no matter its size or aspect ratio. What’s more, LiveCode fully supports high density screens by upscaling text, vectors and automatically substituting in high quality images. Your apps now look stunning on any device.
Best of all, these features are built right into LiveCode and are enabled with just ONE LINE OF CODE!
How to use
No changes and just one line of code
To use this feature with existing stacks requires no changes.Simply tell LiveCode to scale and what your preferred scaling method would be. LiveCode will take care of the rest.
set the fullscreenmode of this stack to “exactFit”
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