Funcoder Technology Blog

I had a situation the other day with our internal application when I built a new screen to view data from an external database via VPN. The screen just ended up to sluggish and I needed a way to give it some zip.

After a few moments with my 2 brains colliding trying to compete for a solution, I finally found a perfect and fast way to view the data in a major zippy way.

It’s simple really, just create some local HyperFile classic tables to store your data. Then create a method to load up the tables when the screen is opened. This makes it even more simple for you to code up the tables and loopers.

To give the user feedback when the screen is loading the data, I put a progress bar on the first plane.

Once the data has been loaded into the local tables I load up the components and the flip to Plane 2 to show the screen in all its glory.

Now clicking on rows to load up other data is super fast.

So the next time you want to keep your application speedy, you might want to consider this method.

Now that the exciting WinDev 15 release is out the door there are very exciting times ahead for us developers of PC Soft tools.

I noticed on the WinDev site today there is a very cool quick YouTube video by Georgio showing how you can write Java code to access hardware functions within WinDev Mobile 15.

My personal view is that PC Soft has done a great job of allowing us to go beyond the WLanguage functions so we can create professional grade applications in the IDE.

The packaging functionality in WinDev Mobile 15 makes it so easy to create the app ready to deploy to a device.

Check out this video to see for yourself.

I tested my first WebDev 15 site today but getting a strange issue with a 404 error.

When I debug the web app I get the following dialog:

Running the diagnostics everything works except the AWP files configuration. I have tried the Correct button but it doesn’t solve the problem.

Running the web app I get a 404 error.

I’ve checked the CGI mapping is in place and all looks good, so I am lost what is causing this.

Anyone have suggestions?

This is looks totally cool and goes way beyond the functionality of an iPAD.

You just have to ask my wife how annoying I can be when I spontaneously re-enact the Tears in Rain scene from Blade Runner. So you can imagine my delight when I found a video of Lego character also enjoying this moving moment.

I know I’m kind of strange but its the dark side of my geek life.

A leading UK logistics software company are seeking an experienced WinDev Mobile developer to work on a Windows Mobile development project involving GPRS, GPS, TCP/IP socket level comms, signature capture and bar-code scanning. The successful individual will be working with a team of software engineers with extensive experience in the logistics industry, and for a company that has a wide and varied portfolio.

The initial contract will be for a period of 3-6 months and therefore would either suit a self-employed developer or someone seeking fixed-term employment. There is the opportunity of a permanent position.

Salary negotiable. Applicants should apply in writing to cv@logistics-software.co.uk

I have had my Livescribe Pulse for about 2 months now and thought I would let you know my opinion of using this product from a developers perspective.

Thoughts and ideas flow through my head every minute so its great to get them down on paper. The problem is finding information I have written on a pad weeks later is a real pain.

So Livescribe is a perfect fit for my notes, I can write all my notes on the pad and sync to Livescribe desktop and then I can name the pages and search for text though all my notebooks.

I can even upload my notes with a simple click on Livescribe Desktop to share with others.

Then there’s the audio I can use in development meetings. So while I’m making notes in a meeting the pen is recording audio. If I here something I want to review for later I can click the bookmark button on my pad.

Once the meeting is finished I can upload the audio and captured notes to the desktop. At any time I can review my note and clicking on words will play the audio recorded at the time I was writing.

As you can probably see from my post I just love this pen, not just because I’m a geek, it’s so useful every day.

The Android platform is becoming a very popular choice for consumers here in the UK and its a good time for developers to start building applications for both our clients and consumers.

Just look at the popularity of the iPhone app store and Android is growing to become just as amazing.

PC Soft have seen the potential of this market and added some enhancements to WinDev Mobile to make it Android development a breeze using your current WinDev skills.

So what will the WinDev Mobile for Android platform support?

Claudia kindly sent me a list of some features that will be available to us:

“The controls will automatically have an "Android Look".

The local database of Android is SQL Lite. You will be able to link controls with the data through the 7-tab window, and use the WLanguage functions of the "H" family.

The creation of applications for Android will be based on WINDEV’s Java generation, however you will still develop as usual in WLanguage.

The layout of the screen (vertical or horizontal) will be handled using the anchoring method.

WinDev Mobile for Android will offer these controls:
- Label
- Radio button
- Button
- Looper
- Image
- Tab
- Edit control
- Check box
- List
- Combo box
- Menu.

257 WLanguage functions will be available for Android.”

This is very exciting and I can’t wait to get my hands on version 15 and start developing for the Android app store.

WinDev procedure parameters are passed by reference as a default and this is great but can also cause some strange issues in your code if you are not careful.

There are a few ways to pass an object by value and one of my favourite is using the LOCAL statement when defining your parameters.

Here’s an example:

If you don’t define anything as LOCAL then you can also tell WLanguage that you are passing by value just by adding brackets around the object you are passing:

CalculateWinnerPrizeTotals((nWinnerID), xCost)

So the example above shows how you can tell the method you are passing nWinnerID by value and not by reference.

Syndicated from Some Brisbane Guy, by the same clown

I’ve just been trying Google Wave after I was graciously invited by someone awesome, and it looks like it’s really hard on your computer’s system resources when you’re trying to view a big Wave. Here’s my browser, struggling to render a big Wave:

Google Wave, trying to render a big wave

I was trying to read a random Wave that had 129 other users and 340+ wavelets, and it SMASHED my work laptop, which is fairly decent (Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM), so that I couldn’t even really read the Wave — it was too slow to respond.

Windows Task Manager while trying to use Google Wave

I am using the Firefox 3.5.4 beta but it was unusable in Google’s own Chrome, as well. Firefox actually seemed better as it would allocate memory and then release it but Chrome would just eat more and more memory until the machine was paging like crazy. Check out my Task Manager screenshot above, you can see the memory going up and down and one of the CPU cores maxed out.

I’m keen to keep trying Wave out, but is Google doing a Microsoft (see Wirth’s Law), and just expecting that as Wave catches on, everyone will have enough horsepower to run it? Or is it just that it’s beta, and performance will get better with optimisation — including Javascript engine optimisations in the major browsers? I guess we’ll see…