There is a new build 4 of the preview available for download on the web site.

There are a *lot* of changes in this build, so please uninstall the prior build 3 and *delete* the ewbide.ini file located here:

C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\Elevate Software\Elevate Web Builder 2

*before* installing this build.  That will make sure that you get a clean installation with all of the new controls and changes without having issues with missing pieces.

If you have created or modified the interfaces, then you're going to want to re-do the modifications using the interfaces included with this build, or perform a diff on the build 3 and build 4 interfaces, and adjust your interfaces accordingly.

Also, the WebCtrls unit has been broken up into a *lot* of new units.  This helps save space by not including interfaces that aren't used, and makes the units much easier to read.

The default TForm control looks different now, the TDialog form has been changed around a bit, and there's a new TProgressDialog control.  The TPaperForm control is now gone, so if you were using it, then you'll need to modify the .wbf and .wbs files and change the class names accordingly.  This was all done to make the forms more "mobile-friendly" and more in line with the expectations of new customers.

Along the same lines, the TDesktop control is now called TSurface.  There are now also ShowProgress/HideProgress procedures that will show an animated progress dialog while lengthy processes are taking place.  You can also enable a load progress dialog for an application by doing so in the Project Options (Application tab).

As part of the new animated progress dialog, EWB 2 now supports using the browser's requestAnimationFrame for animation, if it's available, or a timer if it's not.  So, the groundwork code for animation is done.

The new controls are:

THeaderPanel - useful for mobile
TScrollPanel - also useful for mobile
TAnimatedIcon - a control for animating PNG sprites
TPaint - same as EWB1, with some slight modifications for the canvas images
TGrid - you can load/display data, but not edit it, and some of the events aren't there yet

The string comparison routines are now available in normal versions and locale-sensitive versions.  The locale-sensitive versions start with Locale*, so SameText is LocaleSameText if you want a locale-sensitive comparison.  This results in a *big* performance improvement for EWB, especially on mobile devices.

The complete list of new functions/procedures are:

ClassByName
CreateMethod
LocaleCompareStr
LocaleCompareText
LocaleLowerCase
LocaleSameStr
LocaleSameText
LocaleUpperCase

Finally, the way that forms/interfaces are loaded has been completely changed and optimized.  EWB 2 now includes RTTI with every application, and uses the RTTI to dynamically load the forms and interfaces.  You can't save objects as JSON yet using the RTTI, but you will be able to with the final release.  This means that you will be able to persist objects to/from the web server as JSON with just a couple of method calls.  Also, the forms and interfaces included in the HTML loader file are all now compressed along with the JS when compression is turned in the project's compiler options.

There are also a lot of bug fixes for various issues, but I'm not going to detail them here.  If you reported a bug, then it was fixed in this build - no exceptions.  The main areas that were addressed were the scrollbar functionality and the loading time for applications, especially on mobile.

I think that's everything, but I might have missed a couple of items.   Things are getting close, so a final release is starting to appear on the horizon....

As always, thanks for your help,

Tim Young
Elevate Software, Inc.
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim Young [Elevate Software] wrote:

> The default TForm control looks different now, the TDialog form has
> been changed around a bit, and there's a new TProgressDialog control.
> The TPaperForm control is now gone, so if you were using it, then
> you'll need to modify the .wbf and .wbs files and change the class
> names accordingly.  This was all done to make the forms more
> "mobile-friendly" and more in line with the expectations of new
> customers.

so the TPaperForm basically moved to TForm, and the TDialog is the "old
style" bordered form. My only thought on this is that the IDE should
remember the last form type created. To default to TDialog seemed odd
to me until I realised the designs, but remembering or defaulting to
TForm would be good.

Also, I forgot to delete the .ini file, and it offered to add the
missing components to the toolbar which is nice. Then I deleted the INI
file...



>  The locale-sensitive versions start with Locale*, so SameText is
> LocaleSameText if you want a locale-sensitive comparison.  This
> results in a big performance improvement for EWB, especially on
> mobile devices.

Which one is faster?

Thanks, Matthew

Matthew,

<< so the TPaperForm basically moved to TForm, and the TDialog is the "old
style" bordered form. My only thought on this is that the IDE should
remember the last form type created. To default to TDialog seemed odd to me
until I realised the designs, but remembering or defaulting to TForm would
be good. >>

I've been meaning to do this, so thanks for the reminder.  I've just set it
to default to "TForm", since that makes the most sense.

<< Also, I forgot to delete the .ini file, and it offered to add the missing
components to the toolbar which is nice. >>

Yeah, it's all set now to detect when new standard components/controls are
not installed, and to automatically install them for you during startup.
This will make things as smooth as possible when we roll out new
components/controls with minor releases after the initial release.  With EWB
2.x, there's going to be a lot more value involved with customers keeping
their subscriptions current.

<< Which one is faster?  >>

Yes, sorry about that - that was as clear as mud.   The
non-locale-sensitive versions are much, much, much faster than the
locale-sensitive versions, especially with Chrome on mobile.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim Young [Elevate Software] wrote:

> There is a new build 4 of the preview available for download on the
> web site.

Another thing to look at - clicking on a TPaint and then clicking on
the form gets a zero by zero component. I can recover from the combo,
but a default size would be good - I do this too much!

Tim Young [Elevate Software] wrote:

> Also, the WebCtrls unit has been broken up into a lot of new units.
> This helps save space by not including interfaces that aren't used,
> and makes the units much easier to read.

I had the WebPaint unit open in an editor, and I glanced at it and my
mind read it as "wet paint". Wot! 8-)

Matthew,

<< Another thing to look at - clicking on a TPaint and then clicking on the
form gets a zero by zero component. I can recover from the combo, but a
default size would be good - I do this too much! >>

Got it, it just needed an interface.

Thanks,

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

most impressive playing with version 2, a whole new world opens up

I can confirm that the 'touch' functionality works well, I am very happy to have that

one teensy teeny request for consideration.. can you change the color of the 'run' button to green? I've now introduced a couple colleagues to EWB and I notice that they don't use that button.. they go to the menu. We are so pre conditioned to a green 'run' button from the world of Delphi.. . That being said, I will upgrade to v2 without the green button..

.. Bruno
Logiciels Bitwise Software
Edmonton, AB, Canada

Bruno,

<< most impressive playing with version 2, a whole new world opens up >>

I'm glad you like it.

<< I can confirm that the 'touch' functionality works well, I am very happy
to have that >>

The TListBox items don't respond to touch events, but I'm issuing a new
build today that fixes that.

<< one teensy teeny request for consideration.. can you change the color of
the 'run' button to green? I've now introduced a couple colleagues to EWB
and I notice that they don't use that button.. they go to the menu. We are
so pre conditioned to a green 'run' button from the world of Delphi.. . That
being said, I will upgrade to v2 without the green button.. >>

I'll see what I can do.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim Young [Elevate Software] wrote:

>> There is a new build 4 of the preview available for download on the web site.

Tim

This really is a deeply awesome release. Well done. As an aside, did you ever get around to that "how do I build a new component from scratch" video? Now would be a great time I think.

Cheers
Mark

Mark,

> This really is a deeply awesome release. Well done. As an aside, did you ever get around to that "how do I build a new component from scratch" video? Now would be a great time I think.

Maybe you missed this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZEQBqP8NME

?

Uli