developing for mobile devices

Fri Nov 2 09:19:52 EDT 2012

Christophe,

First and foremost, welcome to LiveCode and to this list.  It is
welcoming to see some familiar names from the Director community!  Let
me say that from a previous Director advocate, I totally understand
your frustration and sense of confusion.

LC has sooooo many things going for it and I have fully endorsed it as
my development tool.  I do quite a bit of desktop application /
database product development and LiveCode has filled  the gap that
Director failed me.  As an added bonus, the ability to also produce
cross platform mobile apps, to me, is an added bonus.   A HUGE bonus!

Having said that, I have spent so much time researching items,
techniques and procedures, like you have indicated in your email that
it becomes very frustrating at times.  The good thing about Director
is that there was quite a bit of printed material and documentation
out there that it was very easy to get around and find what you were
looking for.

I wish there were more books out there like Colin's and books that
covered different skill levels.  Heck, I just wish the LC dictionary
would be provided in PDF file so we could print it out.  With Director
I made it a habit to read through their dictionary every couple of
months to inspire new ideas and concepts and to make sure that I was
getting the most out of my product.

This list is a very good resource for you and your questions.
Everybody seems to be very helpful and knowledgeable in different
aspects of LC development.

By the way, I like your idea:
> Ok, so what I am now after would be ideally a table with all available UI
> elements on iOS (by iOS version number), and how to invoke these (if
> possible) in LC.

SKIP KIMPEL
Magicgate Software

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 7:53 AM, Christophe Leske <info at multimedial.de> wrote:
> Am 02.11.2012 01:18, schrieb Colin Holgate:
>>
>> Well, these are early days still. A lot of the inconsistencies are where
>> you either have to simulate the native appearance using LiveCode controls
>> and tricks, or you talk to the OS and get native controls. Eventually they
>> will probably allow access to all of the native controls.
>
>
> Ok, so what I am now after would be ideally a table with all available UI
> elements on iOS (by iOS version number), and how to invoke these (if
> possible) in LC.
>
> Is there such thing? If not,  should we build one (by "we" I mean people on
> this list).
>
> I can do the "building" part (putting together the table - screenshots of
> the elements and how to get them), but I definetely would need help for the
> programming part of things, as I don't know how to invoke these.
>
> When you debug your iOS applications - do you do this mainly in LC itself,
> in the iOS simulator, or the real physical device?
>
>
>> When do you have to write your book review by? Will it just appear in
>> Germany?
>
> There was no timeframe. I am done with it though, and wanted to write the
> review this weekend.
>
> The book itself is pretty complete (for its compact amount of pages), and
> well structured.
> It is however not aimed at the absolute beginner. It does give you a good
> overview on how to get a testing and debugging enivronment set up, but no
> in-depth introduction to LiveCode and which commands are generally
> available, and then available or useable on iOS/Android.
>
> It is a head first introduction to mobile development. It is definetely
> better than no book at all, but left me (a beginner in LC) with a lot of
> questions (namely on how to invoke all the other UI elements in iOS not
> mentioned in the text, and how to configure them).
>
> I will contact Kraig - my understanding was that I am supposed to write the
> review and hand it to him? And/or eventually publish it on Amazon.
>
> I would give it a 4 out of 5 stars - the structure of it is excellent (step
> by step instructions, general layout structure for each chapter,
> screenshots, lots of additional links, etc), yet there could be a bit more
> information and content in it... :-)
>
> I could have read on after the last chapter about more advanced techniques
> like XML parsing for instance, or database connectivity, or network testing,
> or scrolling content panes...
>
> But this is more related to custom extensions (and how to work with them)
> instead of LC itself, i give you that. Then again, this is how mobile
> development works for the time being, and therefore should be part of the
> book.
>
> To put it otherwise:
> the book teaches you about the "how" part of mobile development "know-how",
> yet not (enough) about the "know" part of it. MobGUI is mentioned, as well
> as mergExt, yet not how to work with the most important ones of these...
>
> One of the main disappointments after having bought my LC license was indeed
> to learn, that for most of the parts I am NOT invoking original UI widgets,
> but am mostly "recreating" them from identically looking graphics  - this
> complicates if not prohibits the creation of multi-language applications.
>
> Also, no word on how to create unified apps for the iPhone and iPad (by the
> way, any info on that available somehwere? I reckon it needs at least two
> main stacks for the different screen sizes and layouts?).
>
> And finally:
> if you add an lcext to your project, won't LiveCode complain about new
> command words it cannot understand that you put into the code in order to
> invoke the functions in the extensions? I am an old time Director user, and
> Lingo would always complain if it would encounter a command in lingo it
> couldn't figure out.
>
> Long post, I know, but I must go for the rest of the day,
>
> --
> Christophe Leske
> multimedial.de
>
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