Version 7
Given below are the new-features lists of Version 7 releases.
Version 7.3
In-app Purchases
•You can add in-app purchases to your AppStore Apps. The mechanism to implement in-app purchases and an included example project are described in the section In-App Purchases. The components of the mechanism are listed below.
•The new MobileTogether extension functions mt-in-app-purchase-product-to-platform and mt-in-app-purchase-platform-to-product retrieve, respectively, a product's ID on a given platform from the submitted product name, and vice versa.
•The new MobileTogether extension function mt-in-app-purchase-service-started can be used to check whether the client device is running its in-app service.
•The main interface between the MT design and app stores is the new In-App-Purchase Page Source, which can dynamically hold app store data about products and purchases.
•The following new actions implement in-app purchases: Purchase, Restore Purchases, Query Purchases, Query Available Products, Acknowledge Purchase, Get/Report Consumable.
•A dynamic local variable named $MT_UpdatedInAppPurchases holds a sequence that comprises the SKU-IDs of the most recently updated purchases.
•The new OnPurchaseUpdated event of the In-App Purchase Actions project property enables actions to be specified when the In-App-Purchase Page Source in the design is updated with data about the latest purchase.
•The following MobileTogether extension functions can be used to check the success of the last request to the app store: mt-last-in-app-purchase-response-code, mt-last-in-app-purchase-response-text, and mt-last-in-app-purchase-response-was-user-canceled.
•To enable the simulation of in-app purchases in MobileTogether Designer, you can use data from an XML file as a substitute for app store data.
AppStore apps and their simulations
•Ability to run client-side simulations of AppStore Apps (compiled apps). This is enabled via a new Build Modes setting in the first screen for generating program code.
•Simulate trial runs of app-store apps. During the code-generation procedure, you can specify the connection details of your MobileTogether Designer machine. Once this is done, you can run client simulations of the compiled app at any subsequent time. Even after changing your design, you will not need to re-compile the app to run a client simulation. The app will connect to MobileTogether Designer and use the currently open version of the design.
•When generating program code for compiled apps, you can select whether to use the original SPL template directory or a custom SPL template directory. The option for this selection is available in the fifth screen for generating program code.
MobileTogether solutions in UWP apps
•A SolutionView control is now available. One or more of these controls can be placed in a UWP app and in this way enables one or more MobileTogether solutions to be included in a UWP app.
Actions
•New actions to implement the In-app Purchases mechanism: Purchase, Restore Purchases, Query Purchases, Query Available Products, Acknowledge Purchase, Get/Report Consumable.
•The View Image action has been extended with an auto-rotate property that enables the viewed image to be auto-rotated.
•The Open URL action can be used to construct a command line instruction that can be used in designer simulations.
Controls
•A new Tooltip property has been introduced for several controls. A tooltip provides useful information to the end user about the control.
•The Image control has a new property, Max Control Height, to set the maximum height of the control as an absolute value. It also has new auto-rotate property.
•The control that currently has the focus will be directly selected when the Localization dialog is opened.
•In tables, cells can be set to belong to a group and the text in these cells can be auto-sized as a group. This feature has been enhanced with improvements to the table control's Wrap Content Auto-Fit Group property.
Miscellaneous
•REST requests now support additional verbs from the HTTP vocabulary. This allows requests to be made with verbs other than the commonly used verbs GET, PUT, POST, DELETE.
•Previously read-only files could be added to the Files Pane in order to deploy them to the server. Now you can choose whether to deploy such files to the server or client, or both. Deploying a frequently used file directly to the client can save processing time by avoiding have to transfer the file each time from the server.
•The functionality related to deployed files, as these are accessed in the Files Pane, has been streamlined into a more compact design.
•Support for Android 11.
•Support for the following additional database versions: IBM iSeries 7.4, IBM DB2 11.5, and PostGreSQL 13, MySQL 8.0.25.
Version 7.2
Controls
•Button control: Additional images have been added to the library of images that can be displayed on buttons (via the Button Image property).
•Button control: The new properties Button Image Color and Button Image Color (Disabled) provide the ability to select a separate color for each of the button's two states (enabled and disabled).
•Horizontal Slider control: The new properties Slider Color, Slider Thumb Color, and Slider Color (Disabled) set a separate color for a slider's scale line and marker, and yet another color for the slider (both scale line and marker) when the slider is disabled.
•If controls in the cells of a table have been set to belong to a group having auto-sized text, then these cells can re-sized so that all cells are wrapped into the available view. This setting is made via the table property Wrap Content Auto-Fit Group.
•Table cells now have cell padding properties.
Page sources
•In the Page Sources window, a new context menu command of root nodes deletes the selected page source from all pages of the project.
•In the Refactor menu, the command List Page Sources by Attribute lists the project's page sources into groups according to the values of their attributes.
•The default XML file of XML page sources can be edited directly in Altova XMLSpy by selecting the View Default File in XMLSpy command.
Actions
•The Log Message action enables a customized message to be logged on the server or client during the execution of an action. This helps to analyze the app's behavior during an action.
•This Backup/Restore SQLite DB action enables you to backup an SQLite database to a folder that you designate. Multiple backups are allowed. You can subsequently restore the SQLite database from one of these backups.
Miscellaneous
•New MobileTogether extension functions have been added: (i) mt-control-text-offset, (ii) mt-db-file-path, (iii) mt-page-stack, (iv) mt-server-variable.
•The Options dialog provides a setting for enabling the simulation of server variables.
•The Search in Translations option of the Localization dialog enables you to search for text in localized strings.
•In the More Project Settings dialog, which is accessed via the project's properties, you can enter the message that you want to have displayed on the client device when the server times out.
•Errors that occur during the execution of actions where error-handling is provided are treated as warnings. The number of reported errors is thus reduced. The advantage is that you do not need to check errors on actions for which error handling has already been defined.
Version 7.1
•Internal updates
Version 7.0
MT Debugger for XPath Expressions and Actions
•In the the XPath/XQuery Window, you can not only build expressions using pop-up entry helpers, but also evaluate results and debug expressions.
•In the Actions Debugger, you can debug actions. Before or during a simulation, you can select the actions you want to debug. The simulation will pause at these actions and display them in the Actions Debugger.
•Set breakpoints and tracepoints on XPath expressions and breakpoints on actions. Simulations can be paused at these breakpoints, and the expression or action is displayed in the respective debugger (XPath Debugger or Actions Debugger).
•A new Breakpoints Pane in which debug points (breakpoints and tracepoints) can conveniently be managed in a single place.
•A new Debug menu, which contains the commands relevant to debugging.
Page properties
•Length units of design components and text size in previous versions were given either as pixels or a percentage of a containing component. From version 7.0 onwards, page-related length units can be also be specified as device-independent pixels (dp) and scale-independent pixels (sp). The built-in XPath extension function mt-convert-units enables you to convert between units.
•The Browser Width property has been renamed to Browser Max Width, and now specifies the maximum width of a solution's page in the browser.
•A page's properties now enables page margins to be set.
•A new property named All Styles enables you to set all page styling properties in one convenient location via an XPath map expression.
Controls
•Length units of design components and text size in previous versions were given either as pixels or a percentage of a containing component. From version 7.0 onwards, length units for control properties can be also be specified as device-independent pixels (dp) and scale-independent pixels (sp). The built-in XPath extension function mt-convert-units enables you to convert between units.
•The width of combo boxes can be set (via the wrap_content_longest_entry value of the Control Width property) to be as wide as the longest item in the dropdown list of the combo box. Combo box widths can, as a result, be set more flexibly.
•Check Boxes can be vertically aligned relative to its text if the text wraps over more than one line. This is done via the control's Vertical Alignment property.
•If a table is broader than its parent object, then its the width of any of its columns can be reduced by using the new wrap_content_fit_parent value.
•With the Skip wrap_content property of table cells, the content-width of a specific table cell can be disregarded for the wrap_content calculation (which determines the minimum width of the cell's parent column).
•Button control: Additional images have been added to the library of images that can be displayed on buttons (via the Button Image property).
•A new property named All Styles enables you to set all styling in a single property via an XPath map expression. For a description, see any control, for example the Button control.
•The handling of padding in table rows and columns has been improved.
•Control templates can have their actions overridden for a particular instantiation by defining a new set of actions on the instantiating placeholder.
•The Text Size Auto-Fit property has been extended so that controls in control templates can be grouped to have a singe text-size. Nine such template groups can be defined. The property is available on controls that display text, such as labels.
Actions
•The new Update Variable action enables user-defined variables to be given new values during solution execution.
•The Scroll To action has been extended to specify where, vertically in the view, the target object must scroll.
•The Measure Controls action has been extended to take account of button background-colors and units specified as dp/sp lengths.
•The Print To action provides an option to select the print output format via XPath, which enables the print format to be selected dynamically.
•The DB Begin Transaction action provides a Timeout (in seconds) property for SQLite databases, which enables you to specify a wait period for applying a write-lock.
•The Update Display action provides options for specifying which controls to update.
•The Template Event Callback action can be used on placeholder controls to modify the actions that the placeholder will execute.
XPath-related features and XPath extension functions
•The following new MobileTogether extension functions have been added: mt-convert-units and mt-solution-path.
•The MobileTogether extension function mt-control-width has been extended to take account of button background-colors and units specified as dp/sp lengths.
Miscellaneous
•The browser settings of projects have been extended with two new settings: (i) a base size for calculating the font size of controls; (ii) whether back navigation in solutions that are embedded in IFrames is allowed or not.
•You can specify the default starting language of a multi-language solution when you deploy the solution.
•User Variables can be defined to be stored on the client only, which improves speed when the variable contains or involves the use of large datasets.
•Support for Android 10.