LiveCode 6.7.0 DP1 Released

We 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. 

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.