Funcoder Technology Blog

UPDATE!!

This afternoon I received a telephone call from Claudia at PC Soft. She discussed my comments in this blog post and explained about some of the benefits we have received from a later version which included more examples translated to English.

I reiterated about the number of bugs we are getting with this new version and Claudia has asked for you to please send bug reports to PC Soft so that they can investigate them.

She also wants to hear from you if you are having any issues with PC Soft or concerns about bugs not being resolved. Please contact Claudia at claudia.rivera@pcsoft.fr and help her to understand any issues you have.

I discussed about the bugs that developers are complaining about in the latest version

I have been developing applications and websites in WinDev / WebDev for the past 2 years. So why this question now?

Well we have seen the release of Version 14 at the beginning of this month, 6 months after the French release. Come on now PC Soft, 6 months is a lifetime in the technology industry. If they were really committed to expanding then you would see the English version created in parallel to the French.

If you look at other development tools, many produce multi-lingual versions and release them at the same time.

Maybe its a problem with their codebase which makes it complicated to created multi-lingual versions, but surely they would be working towards resolving this.

The other issue is the lack of communication between the community and PC Soft. The www.windev.com website it pretty much stagnant with no focus on providing information about news, tips etc.

What about LST? Why do they not produce an English version?

Don’t get me wrong, I love programming in WinDev but I feel it is a very lonely experience. I am also finding it harder to convince clients their are other developers that can support the systems I write. I know there are some but we are talking so much less than there should be.

WinDev 14 has made me re-think about this product, not only for the 6 months wait but then the quality. Every day I come across a bug which is driving me nuts.

The new version has all these new information messages to help you build quality code, but it generates these errors even on PC Soft’s own RAD classes.

I don’t want to move back to .NET but its looking more that I will have to. It’s sad as I have already started writing a WinDev book but what should I do?

I think now it the time for the powers at PC Soft to speak up and be more open about their future plans.

We’ll there’s my rant and you are welcome to disagree. Leave a comment and maybe we can make PC Soft aware of our feelings and hope they will become more involved in the community.

Are you a WinDev Developer and use Twitter?

I am collecting a list of Twitter users together to put on the site, so that others can join in the family.

If you would like to be added to the list then please drop me a DM (direct message) at http://twitter.com/funcoder

I am very happy to announce that I have started work on a new book focused at the new wave of software development using WinDev. The book isn’t just about understanding how to program in Wlanguage, it’s a complete guide to my approach when developing software.

Here’s some of the topics I will cover:

• Powerful communication tips to help you have successful meetings with clients and get the information you need.
• Keeping focused on your own. If you are a solo developer then you are going to love this chapter on how to keep the motivation going.
• Developing robust OOP code in WinDev.
• Test Driven Development Really Works!
• Keeping the client happy.
• Always give the client more…

From concept to completion, you will learn how to produce quality solutions, elegant tested code and some exciting ways I keep relaxed and focused.

Once I have a good amount of content I will be releasing it as a beta book in PDF version. If you would like to be notified on the progress of the book then please follow me on Twitter.

I would be very happy to hear from you about any topics you would be interested in the book covering. Just drop me an email at funcoder@gmail.com with the subject line Funcoder Book.

I have been testing out the Engish Version of WinDev / WebDev 14 and thought I would post up a screen shot of some code which shows you how easy it is to parse an RSS feed now.

One strange issue I had was defining the rssEntry variable with the rssChannel definition. This for some reason showed a syntax error. It wasn’t until I moved it to above the second FOR EACH that the compiler was happy.

With May now approaching the hopeful release of WinDEV, WebDEV and WinDev Mobile 14 is on its way.

Here’s my Top 10 new feratures I am so looking forward to in this release:

1. Container Columns in Table

You can now add controls into cells to make some incredible table views. Tables are my favorite control in WinDEV 12, especially when I look back to my .NET days and the amount of code I had to write. Happy days!

2. Google Apps Integration

We have some great plans for using the Google maps integration in WinDEV. I know this was possible before by hacking some code together, but once again PC Soft have made it a breeze to implement.

3.  Widescreen Environment

I use a 20” screen for my development and always have WinDEV maximized to cover the whole screen. Now the IDE has more improvements to allow for better use of the space.

4.  Class Data Binding

You can now drag a class into a window to create corresponding controls and bind them together.

5. Monitoring Tool

You can monitor the availability of your systems, including http servers, WinDEV and WebDev applications. Email messages can be configured to alert you when problems occur.

6. New RTF Formatting Buttons

The RTF features in version 12 were OK but I really wanted more functionality.  They have moved forward a little bit adding justification but I still feel we have a way to go on this one.

7. Controlling Devices Around the Home

WinDEV 14 now has support for domotics CM15. I know this is a bit of a geeky feature for me to be excited about. But being able to control devices around my home from my WinDEV apps is very cool.

8. RSS Feed Parsing Engine

There are a number of new commands I can use to load an RSS feed and parse it. You can do this with the XML parser but now I can do it with just a few methods.

9. HTTP Functions for Processing Forms

In certain applications I have needed automatically fill out web forms, which is not an easy task. Not until now that is, as there are new simple HTTP methods to build the form and send it.

10. No Declaring Arrays as Zero Length

This was just an annoying feature in Wlanguage but now you don’t need to specify zero when declaring an array.

PROCEDURE MyProcedure(ArrStrings is array of strings)

I do a lot of development for Internet Marketers and for some reason didn’t think of WebDEV as a platform for me to develop on. I have been using Dreamweaver to do all my work.

Now I have switched and code all my client sites in WebDEV. Its so much more fun now and I tend to be a lot more creative in this tool.

There are a few issues I have come across when integrating with Aweber.com Form code but I have found ways around this.

This is an example Squeeze Page that only took me 30 minutes to complete and upload.

I have to admit that when I started out developing WINDEV applications I used multiple Window Planes a lot.

The problem with using a Plane is that your code can get very complicated to manage and the Window will use up a lot of memory.

Striving to make my code clean and manageable I use the Internal Window to separate functionality out.

Above is a very simple example of how this works. I have created a project with one main window and 2 internal windows:

In the main window I have added an Internal Window Control and 2 buttons. The buttons just have one line of code in each to easily switch between the internal windows.

So to show my first internal window I just use the WLanguage command:

ChangeSourceWindow(IW_Main,IW_InternalWindow1)

Sometimes you might need to initialise the internal window with parameters. You can add paramers to the ChangeSourceWindow to perform this.

ChangeSourceWindow(<Name of Control to Modify>, <Name of Internal Window> [, <Parameter 1> ... [, <Parameter N>]])

As you WINDEV folks may know the lovely people at PC Soft have their offices based in Montpellier, France.

Wouldn’t it be fun to see Montpellier while you are coding away in your favourite IDE?

I did a bit of hacking this morning after finding a good quality webcam in the centre of Montpellier. Click here to view the website.

The webcam is Flash based and I wanted to create a little app where I can view the webcam and maybe in future include some other bits of information like news from the PC Soft website.

So the first thing to do is dig into the HTML code. Looking at the page code I can spot the embedded flash object as it starts with:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash"

The WINVDEV application is a very simple window with an ActiveX component.

You will need to configure the ActiveX component and select the Shockwave Flash Object as the host.

Finally all you have to add is a bit of code to tell the ActiveX where the movie is, which be the flash file ending in .swf.

Usually this is enough to show the video but the website does something slightly different. It uses the FlashVars paramter to pass information about what to play.

So here’s the code which you can add to a button or the Window initialisation:

AX_ActiveX1>>Movie = “http://java.viewsurf.com/manager/Player.swf”

AX_ActiveX1>>FlashVars = "playlist=%3Cplaylist%3E%3Citem type=’video’ source=’%2Fmontpellier%2Ffilm1_HQ%2F%2Flast’%2F%3E%3C%2Fplaylist%3E"

AX_ActiveX1>>Play

Hey presto:

 

Have fun with this….

The original point of creating my blog was to have fun with software development, but time has not been on my side.

Today I decided it was time to have some fun, so I wanted to see if WEBDEV would allow me to integrate JQuery.

The idea was to just create a simple page which I could call a JQuery scroll-up effect on some text. I wanted to do this with a Dynamic WEBDEV application as this is where I spend most of my web development time using.

I created a static control inside a cell. There’s some HTML DIV tags you need to set in the controls.

Firstly the cell description dialog you need to add the html in the advanced section. It’s only a couple of lines.

The DIV class name then can be referenced in the JQuery method.

You also need to add a paragraph tag to the static control.

Then the final thing to do is add some JavaScript code to the button. If your code window is in WL language mode   then you need to click on the WL to change it to JavaScript .

Now all you need to do is add your JQuery JavaScript code:

$("div.contentToChange p.firstparagraph:visible").slideUp("slow");

There is one final part to this code. We need to tell WEBDEV where the JQuery JavaScript library is. There are a few places you can do that, by downloading the library and telling the project where the JavaScript file is or for my simple experiment I have included the html to reference the JavaScript libraty from the Page Description dialog, as seen below:

Now you can run the Web App page, click on the button and you will see the text scroll away.

If you have any more experience of question using JQuery with WEBDEV please post a comment so that others can learn.

One of the many great things I love about PC Soft is their presentation to detail. With every new release they produce a stunning brochure giving details of new features.

Release 14 is a version I am very excited about. With integration to Google app’s, SalesForce and more powerful RTF editing, I am going to be a happy bunny when I get my hands on the release.

New Table features have been added to make our lives even easier than they were before. I can’t believe the days when I used to have to write hundreds of lines of code in .NET, but with a few lines of WL I can implement some very powerful table features.

Last week a client asked me if there was a way of viewing some of their data so that they could track and analyse it.

In a few hours I had implemented a powerful Sales Analysis screen showing data in both graph and table form. Of course there was the standard features that allow the data to export into apps like Excel which I don’t even have to concern myself about as they are built into the  tables components features. This also now includes Excel 2007 open xml format.

Another feature that I find very interesting is Simple Binding. You can now bind a class instance to controls on a form. This makes is much easier to implement the MVC pattern into app development.

You can also bind arrays to controls, so for example an array of countries can be bound to a list control.

The first feature I will be implementing into a client’s app is the new native Google Maps functionality. I can now show on a map where holiday prize winners will be, with bubble information.

Integration with Picasa online gives me some great ideas for some new projects. Being able to store your photos in Picasa and then linking them to Google maps bases on their marked location sounds a lot of fun.

The Monitoring Centre can now keep track of many different elements of the infrastructure, so if the WEBDEV application server has issues of a client application is causing problems then I can be alerted in many ways, from email to SMS.

To learn more click http://www.pcsoft-windev-webdev.com/WX14-Features.pdf