Beta 2.2: coming out today!

First good thing made available: Flash drawing APIs!

Our initial versions were missing quite a lot of low level (flash) drawing features.

Well that's solved now. We have integrated a new graphic backend to be able to support things such as line style, gradient fill, path, circle, ellipse, round rectangle, curve, etc.

For that, flash.display.Graphics Class has been implemented, providing those features.
We do still have some small limitations though, you'll see them described in the release note.

On top of this, we're now skinning widgets (their default Flex implementation).

Second good thing available in this release: more widgets, again with iPhone mapping!

We've re-skinned some of the core widgets with a Flex-like skin, so that the default implementation looks good (at least as good as in Flex).
Of course, on the iPhone they will still be looking like iPhone widgets. On other platforms, they'll look like Flex controls

In addition, in continuation of the effort started with Beta 2 release, we've mapped additional widgets to native iPhone widgets. In this release, we're exposing:
- the Web View (on the iPhone for now), allowing to insert web browsing right inside your application
- the activity indicator (for all platforms)

Third good thing available: File upload, and other user requests

That's one of the high priority requests that has come from some users through the forum.
It is now possible to upload files through HTTP, using URLRequest.

More details and sample code is provided in the release notes.

Other user requests that we're providing in this release:
- we've implemented flash.net.URLVariables. This was causing issues to a user when authenticating to Google services
- we're now handling the docking properties “top/left/bottom/right” of UIComponents, as requested, and padding as well
- we're now supporting ProgressEvent in URLLoader and FileReference
- the supported UIComponents are now visible in the design view of Flex Builder

Fourth good thing: performance optimizations

We've been implementing applications on iPhone (3G and 3GS), Windows Mobile (several phones), Symbian / S60 and Android.

One of those apps is in the process of being posted, but it will be the topic of another post.
This allowed us, along the way, to boost quite a lot the performances on those platforms.
These perf optims are also valuable for your apps!

And finally: dozens of bug fixes

Either requested by users, of internally found, we've fixed quite a lot of bugs, progressing towards a more stable version of ELIPS Studio3.

Beta 3: coming in a couple of weeks!

Well, first, Android support!

Expected by many of you, and by us to be honest, we've progressed much on Android, and we're releasing the first support for this platform in Beta 3.
It will work just as any other platform we support: you develop your application in MXML/AS, select an Android device, build, and that's all, you've got yourself a nice Android installer that you can self sign and sell through the Android Market.

We'll be working in the future to enhance platform support through performance optimization, more native stuff mapping, and of course more service exposure, on all platforms.
We're also working on improving what we call "variant management", that is the mechanism which you can use to keep a same code base for all platform, and do not fall in the "least common denominator" approach.

And we'll look into other platforms that will be supported by future releases of ELIPS Studio3, namely Nokia's Maemo, of course, and Samsung's Bada,, which is likely to win some momentum in the future.

Second topic coming up: continuing with widgets, iPhone mapping and others.

We're continuing the effort of providing native access to all iPhone widgets, we'll be working on:
- variable size list (list containing items of variable size, iPhone like but strangely absent from Flex)
- multi-line text input on all platforms
- web view on all platforms (since it's available on iPhone only today)
- segments and switch components.

This list can change based on your inputs - do not hesitate to express yourself and ask for the ones that are important to you.

Third good thing coming up: additional services

Among others, we've selected openURL, OpenVideo (both file and stream), get photo (both camera support & pick file from phone's photo gallery), because those are requested by many of you.
We'll also progress in the support of AMF and AIR database APIs, but this is likely to take a little bit more time - there are open topics on this subject, if you're interested by those features, express your feeling of priority in terms of APIs.
Here again, we're trying to focus on your requirements, so do not hesitate to express them in the forum.

Fourth good thing: performance optimizations and stability enhancements.

With again, a focus on issues that you encounter.

Mac users: be patient...

Of course, in addition, we're actively working in bringing a version native for Mac OS. But that will still take a little bit of time, as already said, our ELIPS Studio has a WIndows history, and we've quite some work to make it running on a Mac. Until then, VM with Windows is your friend...

Comments

dessertgray

0

 

 

Hi Cristian,

It is possible to include AIR database API's on the next beta realease of ELIPS Studio, i need that support (SQL Lite) very badly.

Thank you very much

Tuesday 19 January 2010, 19:02

Guilhem

0

 

 

Apologies for the late answer, there was a bug in our CMS holding back blog comments.

About database support, please see this discussion topic in the Forum:
http://developer.openplug.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=134

BR

Thursday 04 March 2010, 14:31

gensuque

0

 

 

ah well it was YOUR post :)

Thursday 04 March 2010, 14:32

Please login to post comments or replies.