I hope that everyone is safe and well.  We're all doing fine, and just keeping on with our normal routine for the most part.

I've (finally) uploaded build 8 to the downloads area of the web site.

Build 8 fixes all outstanding reported bugs from the support forums, as well as quite a few that I found.

Some general notes:

- There is still an issue with the certificate installations that I haven't tracked down.  I *think* that the problem may be related to the fact that the web server modules installations were trying to install/uninstall the certificate in addition to the main EWB installation.  This issue is fixed in build 8, so please let me know if you're still seeing anything regarding this issue.

- The high-DPI support in the IDE is almost done.  I just need to add additional PNG image sets for the higher resolutions, and then it will be done.  But, the high-DPI support is enabled in the IDE binary and scaling in the IDE should all be working properly, so please let me know if you're using larger font sizes in Windows and you see anything weird.

- Two native external module (different from the native web server modules) example projects are now included with both the main EWB installation and the EWB modules installation, including pre-compiled binaries:

extnamespace: This project shows how to expose a class instance in the module as a global namespace to the interpreter.  Global namespaces act like global contexts, so methods of the class instance become global functions/procedures and properties become global variables.

extclasstype: This project shows how to expose class and enumerated types in the module to the interpreter.  It also shows how to use type aliases to convert internal naming conventions into different naming conventions for the EWB interpreter.

The native external modules are simply DLLs that include the ewbextmodule unit that is part of the EWB modules installation (as a .dcu).  Each example project will be installed when you install the example projects via the Help menu in the EWB IDE, and each includes inline comments that explain how to expose native Delphi functions/procedures/classes to the EWB interpreter.  In addition, the native external module source code generation is now available in the IDE under the Library menu.  You can see how it works by using one of the pre-compiled external module DLLs with the source code generation, and then comparing the generated EWB interpreter code to the original Delphi code.

- The request manager in the IDE is now complete, so you can now fully define requests for use when debugging server applications.  You can define simple textual or file upload POST requests, as well as multipart/mixed and multipart/form-data POST requests where the two are mixed.  The bulk request testing functionality isn't complete, but it will most likely need to wait until after the initial release.  I'm also seeing the need for a way to export/import the defined requests for multiple developers, so expect to see that also at some point.

- The database transaction processing for the server applications is complete, but the BLOB handling still needs a couple of tweaks.  Specifically, I've identified the need to have specific SELECT and UPDATE queries for every BLOB column in a given dataset, and will be adding that between build 8 and 9.  Currently, there is no way for the parameterized UPDATE queries in the datasets to selectively handle BLOB updates if the original BLOB wasn't touched during the update without retrieving and re-sending all of the BLOBs in the updated row, which is very inefficient. These changes will allow for this type of functionality.  This change for build 9 will also allow me to test the database versioning for the web server database where all of the server information is stored.

- There have been a lot of little changes in the IDE/designer, especially with the interface designer.  The interface designer now uses the common left-hand tools panel in the IDE for its navigator, and both the form designer and the interface designer now include their properties panel as part of the designer surface.  The issue with not being able to see the navigator and the properties panel at the same time has been bugging me for a while, and I think this solves the issue and allows for everyone to see everything at a glance instead of needing to click-through in the navigator or switch between the two using the keystroke shortcuts.  Finally, the properties inspectors all have the ability to bold any properties that have been changed from their defaults.

- I'm working on some improvements to the dead-code elimination in the compiler as part of my final testing pass over mobile platforms.  The dead-code elimination needs some improvement still in order to make mobile web apps require as little JS parsing/compilation as possible.  I'm also investigating a way to cut down on the size of the control interfaces and designer files (*.wbi and *.wbf/*.wbd files), which will also help mobile applications greatly.  Finally, I also need to do some further testing regarding scrolling and some other types of functionality on iOS targets.

- There is a new 64-bit version of the EWB Web Server included in build 8.  I haven't tested it completely, but will do so before the final release, so just a word of caution about using it.

- Code completion is still coming, along with the rest of the server RTL/components.  Luckily, most of the RTL/components only involve packaging up existing functionality so that the interpreter can bind to it.

Thanks !

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com