Cloud

Release 8.6.3.0 is here! While the revision number is minor, some major features are contained in this release.
 
First on the headline is brand new Advanced Search 3.0 for Touch UI. Major upgrades were required for the Form Rendering Engine to support dynamically created forms. Survey capabilities have been greatly expanded in order to support the functionality required for Advanced Search. 
 
One important aspect of every app is dealing with deployment. The new Publish capabilities introduced in 8.6.3.0 make it easy to get your apps running on the cloud or a dedicated server. Read on below for more information.
 
A large number of other enhancements and fixes are also included in this release.

Advanced Search 3.0

The original implementation of Advanced Search for Touch UI was a custom solution. The introduction of modal pages in release 8.6.0.0 necessitated a rewrite of the functionality. The new implementation in release 8.6.3.0 brings integration with the latest features available in Touch UI - lookups, basket lookups, date inputs, modal forms, surveys, and custom form templates.
 
The new default layout for Advanced Search will read a story to the user. Use Tab, Enter, or arrow keys to quickly navigate through field values. Push Enter key to perform the Search.
 
Advanced Search 3.0 now correctly handles typed inputs. A date picker will be displayed for date fields. Lookups are used for every field to allow the user to select existing values.
 

 
For fields in a “Match All” group, the lookups will be cross-dependent on each other and apply filters to available values based on the current selection. This greatly helps the user explore and understand the dataset without having to perform searches.

Integrated Publishing/Deployment

A major step of every app is to deploy it to the web. Release 8.6.3.0 makes it easy to bring the app to your users with the push of a button.
 
The “Publish” action in previous releases would simply compile the app and open the target folder. In the new release, the action will now display the list of options below.
 

The “File System” option allows publishing directly a folder in the file system.
 

 
The “FTP” option allows publishing the app directly to an FTP-enabled server.
 

Publishing to Microsoft Azure is covered in great details in the brand new tutorials at  

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy2g3SjvDe2YbSdvoXilUh9BvkllO50jh

Integrated publishing to the cloud if the foundation of the mobile application deployment in the upcoming release 8.7.0.0.  Only Code On Time will allow creating a server-side application that becomes automatically mobile and capable of working entirely offline in the release 8.8.0.0. Consult our roadmap for more details at http://codeontime.com/roadmap.

Each Publish option offers the ability to specify overrides for app settings that will be applied when Publish is complete. Here are some of the options:

• Primary and membership connection strings
  
• Enabling remote debug messages
  
• Blob adapter configurations

Support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2017

The app generator now fully supports Visual Studio 2017.

Rich Text Format

Support for rich text has been now introduced in the grid, list, and cards presentation styles. Forms display a keyboard freindly rich text editor. We will be making a few enhancements in the follow-up releases (toolbar, formattings options, etc.) in the coming weeks.

Identity Server OAuth Provider

You can now use Identity Server 4 for the purpose of user authentication based on Microsoft Identity technology.

Microsoft Graph OAuth Provider (Windows Live, Outlook, Office, SharePoint, Azure AD)

This releases also introduces new options that allow authentication of users via Microsoft Azure Active Directory. We are preparing video tutorials that will explain how that works.

Additional Enhancements

• Baskets are now displaying the selected items inline with the text input for a more compact presentation. Selected options are eliminated from the list of options available for selection.
• Powerful client-side caching in database lookups brings performance of applications to a new level.
• Changing models will no longer rebuild data model from the database - much faster for users using remote database servers.
• Project backups are now zipped, reducing Backup folder size by ~90%.
• Published projects are now backed up and zipped.
• New ServiceRequestHandler class allows extending “_invoke” API with new custom handlers.
  Web.config modification instructions now support “SetAttribute” command. See example below:
      SetAttribute: /configuration/system.web/pages
      validateRequest:false
  

• Azure Blob Adapter updated to use API version 2015-12-11.
• Sitemaps defined in CMS now support “CSS Class” property.
• It is now possible to control default modal behavior using touch-settings.json file using “ui.modal.max” and “ui.modal.when” properties.. See example below:
  {
    "ui": {
      "modal": {
        "max": "lg",
        "when": "sm"
      }
    }
  }
  
• Added ability to set thumbnail size in touch-settings.json using the “ui.thumbnail.width” and “ui.thumbnail.height” properties.
  
• New icons in the app generator.
  
• Warning shown under connection string when it differs from the membership connection string.
  
• Only one connection string is created in web.config if primary and membership connection string are equal.
  
• Updated translations for Portuguese - thank you Nielsen Batista!
  
• Updated translations for German - thank you Peter Teutsch!
  
• Added tag “lookup-collapsible” to automatically collapse ListBox and RadioButtonList controls when the user makes a selection. A  chevron is displayed to expand the lookup again.
  
• Custom button support in surveys.
  
• ExportBase.ToClientUrl() is now overridable to allow customization of IQY files.
  
• Calendar Input will focus next field after the date is selected on DateTime fields on desktop devices.
  
• Basket lookups will hide values that have already been selected.
  
• Lookup controls will expand faster to ensure text does not scroll as the user types.
  
• Enhanced support for conversion of strings to date values. For example, type in “011215” to get Jan 12, 2015.
  
• Close button added to Calendar Input when mouse is primary pointer.
  
• Blob Adapter values are stored in the web.config as app settings.
  
• Many-to-many field processing is moved before “After” business rules, and after “Before” business rules, to ensure rules use the correct values.
  
• Tag “open-on-tap” will open a lookup dropdown instead of focusing on text input.
  
• Tag “lookup-distinct” allows reducing the available lookup options to distinct values.
  
• Custom JavaScript files will now be read and appended to the framework when placed under ~/js folder. ApplicationServices.ConfigureScripts() allows controlling which scripts are included.
  
• Custom Cascading Stylesheet files (CSS) will be read and appended to the library when placed under ~/css folder.
  
• Surveys are now loaded from ~/js/surveys folder. When using survey called “mysurvey”, API will pick up files in this order:
  
• Survey definition: mysurvey.min.js, mysurvey.js
  
• Survey rules: mysurvey.rules.min.js, mysurvey.rules.js
  
• Survey template: mysurvey.html
   

Miscellaneous Fixes:

• Fixed dedicated login redirect issue with projects using ASPX page implementation.
• Fixed issue “Error 500: Dangerous request in form” when a form is submitted with HTML formatted values.
• Fixed issue with Membership Manager not updating LoweredRoleName column.
• Fixes with page sizing after device rotation.
• Custom Membership supports optional PasswordQuestion/Answer.
• Charts are now supported with custom controllers.
• Blob Adapters with Source Field value containing spaces is now supported.
• MyProfileBusinessRules properly inherits from SharedBusinessRules when the feature is enabled.
• Fixed “Unable to get property ‘1’ of undefined” error in Project Designer.
• Disabled discard changes prompt in MyProfile controller.
• Fixed issue with Model class objects using Turkish “i” in field names.
• Export action ignores DataView fields.
• Tag “action-call-disabled” now works.

Applications created with Code On Time use a well defined entity model that prescribes presentation of data as grid and form views and determines transition of views via actions. Data may come from any source. For example, a developer can defined an SQL query or stored procedure to read data from the database. An entity can also be programmed to read/write data from a web service, file system, or any other source. Application framework interprets the entity and displays data in various view styles. For example, a typical grid view can be rendered as responsive grid, list, collection of data cards, map, and charts. Request an interactive Webex presentation to learn more.

“Calendar” is a brand new view style that will become available with update 8.5.5.0 on September 2, 2015 . A presence of a “date” field will tell application framework that there is possibility of rendering data as a calendar. New view style offers Day, Week, Month, Year, and Agenda modes. Any field in the view can serve as a “color” field. The framework will assign a color to each data value.  End users can drag and drop events to change values of date fields. Standard form view of an entity is display when an event is selected enabling seamless editing of data.

“Day” view in the screen shot shows 4 data records rendered as events.

Mini calendar on the side bar uses bold font to indicate dates of the month with events. Mini calendar alternates presentation of data between day and week mode when a particular date is clicked. Color legend shows associated data values, which represents the name of the employee assigned to the “order” event. An “event” is a record from Orders table of the Northwind sample.

“Week” view offers seven days of events. Future updates are expected to support 3 and 4 day weeks. Both “Day” and “Week” view are infinitely horizontally scrollable.

“Month” view offers infinitely scrollable events organized in months.

Click on any item in the color map on the sidebar and the application will “dim” events associated with other employees in “Day”, “Week”, “Month”, and “Agenda” views.

“Year” view offers analytical presentation of an entire year and also enables quick data-driven navigation to a month or a specific day.

“Agenda” view provides a convenient condensed summary list of events with a dynamic timeline.

All modes of the calendar view style are responsive. Smartphone users will see presentation scaled to fit the form factor of their device. For example, these two screen shots demonstrate “Day” and “Agenda” view on a typical smart phone.

These amazing capabilities require no programming or coding. Developers can opt to disable the calendar when not desired. Otherwise application will simply offer the end user yet another way to see their data.

Calendar view now joins a first class collection of presentations styles that were made available in the previous releases and greatly enhanced with this new iteration. View selector and sidebar provide access to every view style available for a particular dataset.

For example, charts view displays automatically constructed charts without developer writing any code.  Any number of custom charts can be defined when needed at design time.

“Cards” view presents data items as multi-line cards with the same size. Application framework breaks each three fields in paragraphs offering another way to see data. Cards presented in 3, 2, or 1 column based on the screen size. The screenshot shows two columns of automatically configured cards.

“List” view is the most universal presentation style that will work with fields of any length and any screen size. Field values float from left to right and continue on the next line.

“Grid” view style enhances responsive presentation by introducing automatic data balancing. The new release reduces the number of visible columns by applying 2, 5, 8, 10, and 12 column breakpoints based on screen size when data is rendered. This makes it possible to display a grid of rows with “important” fields without being forced to scroll horizontally. For example, this screenshot shows five columns of data rows in Orders table.

Developers can indicate the minimal screen size that a particular column must be displayed on. For example, tag “grid-tn” will force a column to show up even on “tiny” screen. Small screes with show every column marked as “grid-sm”. The release notes of the update will explain expected logical pixels of tiny, extra small, small, medium, large, and extra large screens.

Previous release required explicit tagging of each field. The new approach is to assume that all fields must be displayed if possible. The mere intent of a developer to place a field in a grid implies that it must visible. Developer-defined tags simply enforcing display of fields on particular screen sizes in responsive grid. The next screenshot shows 8 columns displayed when the sidebar is not visible. Automatic data balancing ensures that “shorter” fields reclaim more real estate from “longer” fields with enforced minimal width to ensure quality “balanced” presentation of data in columns with fixed width.

All view styles also support “long press” that allows displaying of context menu and selection of records on both desktop and touch-enabled devices. The screenshot above shows context-sensitive filtering and sorting options.

“Map” view style is one more method of presenting data that becomes available when latitude/longitude or Address/City fields are present in the gird view.

Context menus and data cards are now displayed at the bottom of the screen on devices with small form factor to enable easy touch operations. A couple of screenshots below show data card of “Map” view style and view selector on a small screen.

The standard collection of presentation styles will be enhanced with horizontally scrollable “Datasheet” view and “Hierarchy” view styles. The implementation of remaining view style is well under way and is based on horizontal scrolling mechanism that was developed and perfected with “Calendar” view.