[ANN] Release 9.6.0 DP-4

[panagiotis merakos]

Dear list members,

We are pleased to announce the release of LiveCode 9.6.0 DP-4.


Developer Preview Release
=========================
Warning: this is not a stable release.  Please ensure that you back up your
stacks before testing them.


Getting the Release
===================
You can get the release at https://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/ or via
the automatic updater.


Release Contents
================
LiveCode 9.6.0 DP-4 comes with more than 20 changes, including:

New Features
  - Ability to detect dark mode on MacOS, iOS and Android
  - Improvements on mobilePickPhoto on Android, including support for front
camera
  - Ability to highlight none of the icons in the navigation bar widget

Bug Fixes:
  - Improvements in the text-to-speech library
  - Improvements in the android mobile player
  - Improvements in the iOS native browser
  - Improvements in the Android barcode scanner widget
  - Support for dark mode on mobilePick on iOS

For the full list of all fixes, updates and enhancements please see the
release notes:
http://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/9_6_0/LiveCodeNotes-9_6_0_dp_4.pdf


Known issues
============
- The Browser widget's native layer is not shown in some Linux distros with
Cinnamon window manager.
- The use of the Browser widget is not supported on Ubuntu 18.04 64 bit LTS
yet.


Required Software
=================
To build iOS apps with LiveCode you must have the appropriate versions of
Xcode as follows:

  - macOS 10.13.4: Xcode 10.1 - LiveCode builds iOS apps using the iOS 12.1
SDK
  - macOS 10.14.4: Xcode 11.3.1 - LiveCode builds iOS apps using the iOS
13.2 SDK (also covers iOS 13.3)
  - macOS 10.15.3: Xcode 11.3.1 - LiveCode builds iOS apps using the iOS
13.2 SDK (also covers iOS 13.3)

There is a full list of working LiveCode/macOS/Xcode combinations here:
https://livecode.com/docs/9-5-0/faq/faq/

Note: Whilst we endeavour to release updated versions of LiveCode
supporting the latest Xcode/iOS SDKs as quickly as possible; we strongly
recommend disabling automatic update of Xcode or downloading the specific
version of Xcode required directly from the Apple developer portal and
installing it separately.

Important: From the end of June 2020, Apple will only be accepting apps
built using iOS13 SDKs. This means that, if you wish to submit apps to the
AppStore you will have to be running at least macOS 10.14 in order to be
able to install the necessary version of Xcode.


Important Note
==============
As it stands 9.6 no longer supports Android 4.x. It might be possible for
us to push back dropping support for this (now unsupported) Android version
to 9.7, however, this is only something we will consider if we assess that
there is a real need. IF you are a commercial license holder AND you have a
significant customer base still using this very old operating system AND
there is a genuine reason why that customer base cannot upgrade AND there
is a genuine reason you will need to use 9.6 to support them, please give
us feedback to support at livecode.com so that we can assess the need. Please
do not feedback on the basis that you think there may be a handful of
customers still using it. We're looking for definite evidence that there
are significant numbers of your end users still reliant on this OS AND that
you will need to be able to use 9.6 to support them.


Feedback
========
Please report any bugs encountered on our quality center at
http://quality.livecode.com/

We have a forum available for discussing LiveCode Builder at
http://forums.livecode.com/viewforum.php?f=93


Have fun!
The LiveCode Team
--