Release: 8.0 DP4... also, HTML5

[Fraser Gordon]

Dear list members,

We are pleased to announce the release of LiveCode 8.0 DP4.

Warning: this is not a stable release. Please ensure you back up your stacks before testing them.

This release contains an alpha release of HTML5 standalone deployment*.

(*and also a fix for iOS device deployment. And various IDE bug fixes. But mainly HTML5.)

To deploy to HTML5, select the “HTML5” option in the standalone settings screen and deploy as normal. The standalone will be created in the target directory. For more information, see the Deploying to HTML5 guide in the LiveCode Dictionary. There is also a blog post available at https://livecode.com/how-to-run-app-in-browser/

The HTML5 standalone is an early prototype and while many stacks will work, some features are not currently implemented. Known issues are:

 - text rendering is limited to a single hard-coded font 
 - alignment issues with text
 - no networking except ‘get url’
 - using ‘wait’ will cause engine crashes
 - only some forms of ask/answer work
 - no externals
 - no widgets
 - no commercial deployment (please use the community engine to test!)
 - the JavaScript engine is very large (however, it will be cached and re-used on later visits)
 - supported browsers are limited to the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome and Safari

More general known issues:

 - revBrowser for 32-bit Linux fails to run (causing the dictionary to be blank).

Just to be clear: you *will* encounter bugs with HTML5 standalones - please report them at http://quality.runrev.com/

We’d be delighted to hear about any web pages you deploy using LiveCode HTML5 - please show them off to the list!

Fraser