UI controls on iOS / MS-DOS?

[AlexP]

Hi

As I'm new to this tool, so I have a general question concerning the UI on iOS:

My test app has some labels and edit boxes and dropdown-controls. they all look like on MS-DOS in in year 1989.

Is this meant to be like this or do I need to switch on 2020 -mode?

Thanks,
Alex

[AlexP]

And here is the screenshot .. really cool stuff

[Klaus]

Hi Alex,

the link does not work, resp. I don't see any image.
Simply because the URL is NOT the direct url of the image, but the URL of an
image hoster where you uploaded the image to!

Is this meant to be like this or do I need to switch on 2020 -mode?

Yes, it is meant to be like this, no "look as cool as iOS" switch available.

Unfortunately on mobile the "lookandfeel" is set to the ugly UNIX appearance -> MOTIF.
In other words, you need to create your own appearance on mobile to make it look good.
It may suffice to remove the 3D from the fields and set the background to white.


Best

Klaus

P.S.
There is also a german LC forum but with much less traffic than this here:
https://www.livecode-blog.de/forums/for ... ode-forum/

[AlexP]

Thanks again for your help.

A mobile development tool that canot create apps that look like apps look like in 2020 - that makes sense ..

I think, we will continue to work with xcode and c language ..

[SparkOut]

For mobile development, LiveCode can apply a basic theme ("motif") to standard IDE controls - which is what your results demonstrate.
It's a bit more work, as you don't just "publish" the stack with all cards and controls set, but also within LiveCode you can specify "native" control creation, which will take on the appearance of the o/s native controls, and look completely "2020". These you have to manage the creation and deletion on opening and closing a card, but is straightforward and not too onerous.

[golife]

LiveCode is cross-platform. Here, discussions are so much about iOS and Apple OS? By far, Windows dominates the desktop market, and Android is offered on so many other phones in the billions. I do not understand this gravitation towards Apple.

(At one time in the past, the Apple cult has annoyed me so much that I do no longer touch their products. But do not pay attention to my personal feelings.. )

Modern user interface design

It would greatly increase acceptance for new users if the IDE would come with a modern looking UI (user interface) and compiling to different platforms should reflect modern design as well. This cannot be so much work. I also believe it would expand the user base.

Just a few links found in one minute:
https://material.io/design
https://developer.apple.com/design/huma ... uidelines/
https://design.google/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_int ... guidelines

To leave this work to the developer is counter-productive.

Flutter

Flutter was mentioned in thie Forum several times in the last years: https://flutter.dev/docs/development/ui/widgets .

It is definiately an example of how it can be done. Such UI framework would be excellent for LiveCode. Why? LiveCode mainly could allow a very easy development of user interfaces and it includes working code, and as such, it probably has a kind of unique position, especially for new users.

Be beautiful

If LiveCode would ever be really successful -- it could be for new young developers -- it must shine, it must be sexy, and the first impression are what eyes see and compare with existing apps. We should not have to develop basic widgets and their interplay (whether in LCB or LCS) again and again to reflect modern user interface principles and today's look-and-feel.

80% of all the user interface work means working with menus, fields, buttons, lists, tabs, drag-and-drop, data-relationships, panes, scrollable windows, etc. Buttons and fields and graphics have different states (and therefore different appearances for each state). At least on desktop, often windows are split or have different panes that are movable and windows are scrollable (without having to resort to groups). Or, on mobile, users know about standard behaviours and how menus work there and how to add, change or delete items of a list -- since mobile is basically all a long list with some detail panes. Why do I have to script so much just to make this work? All this could just be setting properties of style sheets and assignment to controls based on templates that are professionally made.

And in my experience, most hard-core developers do not have an eye for beauty, matching colors, consistency of design and an eye-pleasing and functional layout. So, that should come "out of the box" as templates with different styles and stylesheets which can simply be changed to reflect certain application needs. And again: such needs are a handful of repated needs everyhwere.

That "it can all be done" in LiveCode is no excuse in my eyes.

Who can do it?

Since years I believe that there should be a group of dedicated and experienced developers to get something done for the community version and possibly we all could also think about financing a small group of offshore developers that would dedicate full time (range: <>1200 dollars monthly for two to three developers), of course under the control and guidance of the LiveCode team in Scotland. I would be a contributor, but I cannot set it up myself, nevertheless, I could help finding developers as I have experience doing that for many years.

Sponsors?

And maybe, then we also will find some sponsors. Ask yourself: Which sponsor would come on-board at the moment? Why should he/she be interested? For now, the music is played elsewhere. The product must shine... and basically it must be able to sell itself. And I know, no Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc is behind us -- and honestly, I would not like if that would be the case. So, effort is needed to bring LiveCode up to date, pay a bit and possibly find a group of smaller sponsors that are not dominating the market.

My greetings to everyone here )))
Golife

[PaulDaMacMan]

A mobile development tool that canot create apps that look like apps look like in 2020 - that makes sense ..

I think, we will continue to work with xcode and c language ..

That's because LiveCode is NOT a mobile development tool, it's a general purpose RAD cross-platform desktop scripting GUI development tool that has been expanded over the last 10 or so years to allow for mobile deployment (and Web/HTML5). If you want a native look or native controls there is widgets for using SVG graphics, and now a few for placing native controls, and there's commands on mobile for generating native controls on the fly. Now that there's LiveCode Builder too, you can build your own interface elements as Widgets, and you can also hook into Apple's Objective C & C APIs similar to Xcode and Swift ( maybe a bit more like AppleScriptObjC ), in addition to being able to hook into Android APIs, Windows(?), Linux APIs, etc. and wrap standalone code libraries with LCB FFI to call them from LiveCode Script.

I've built a few apps for Android, tested with basic Motif look, and then after getting functionality correct, I took maybe a few hours to make it look pretty and just as modern as anything else on the PlayStore or AppStore (or MS Windoze store). I've seen plenty of stuff built with X-Code or whatever that looks horrible and amateurish. If you aren't going to put in at least a little effort into the graphics/UI, it's just not going to look good or modern.

[PaulDaMacMan]

Modern user interface design

Such UI framework would be excellent for LiveCode. Why? LiveCode mainly could allow a very easy development of user interfaces and it includes working code, and as such, it probably has a kind of unique position, especially for new users.

UI Framework? Widgets?
I built this Widget in LiveCode Builder. I had a working prototype in a few hours, after about two weeks of working a few hours a night adding features and documentation, I'm almost ready for 1.0 release:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg7rBg8 ... e=youtu.be

[PaulDaMacMan]

LiveCode is cross-platform. Here, discussions are so much about iOS and Apple OS? By far, Windows dominates the desktop market, and Android is offered on so many other phones in the billions. I do not understand this gravitation towards Apple.

(At one time in the past, the Apple cult has annoyed me so much that I do no longer touch their products. But do not pay attention to my personal feelings.. )

Ironically, my feelings about macOS still being the best desktop OS (particularly for media creation, and not being too annoying UI-wise like Windoze still is) have slipped a bit since they've become a more consumer oriented company and gained market share. I will no longer fall for the fanboy hate/bait presented above (after this one last time, lol). On mobile I've used both, but iOS is the superior mobile platform over Android (which I do like that it's built on-top of Linux), particularly for my needs.

I think you guys would understand why there is somewhat of a macOS orientation or connection to LiveCode community a bit more if you knew the history of X-Talk Script languages and RAD (Rapid Application Dev) GUI toolkits. Look up HyperCard, SuperCard, Director, MetaCard (HC clone which became Runtime Revolution, and is now LiveCode ). Those were all "inspired" by HyperCard/HyperTalk along with other languages such as AppleScript & JavaScript.

I started using LiveCode after they crowd-funded to go OpenSource about 8 or 9 years ago. I hadn't done all that much coding for decades (a few AppleScripts here and there), and I was able to import a HyperCard stack (LC version 6, I'm not sure if newer versions can still import HC stacks) that I started as a teenager in the late 1980s and basically pick-up where I left off. After a few hours of tinkering, and figuring out the linking to the Android SDK, I had the Stack (a BlackJack game) running on my Android 2.3 phone. That is just amazing to me. And it's gotten much better in the last few major versions. It may not be the right tool for any/every project, but it's superb at what it is good for, particularly considering it's a small staff at LC that's working on it. I've built in-house custom work-flow tools with it thats helped make my life easier at my day job, and for fun on the side I've been building a Music App Toolkit with LiveCode builder for the past couple of few years now, with hooks into Apple's CoreMIDI/CoreAudio APIs (I'm planning to eventually expand it to other platforms with FluidSynth or WildMIDI).

I think that if LC had a bit larger staff, a bunch more pre-made UI elements ("1000 widgets by Christmas" was supposed to happen several years ago but still hasn't) and a bunch more platform-native APIs hooks, and MOST of all a LOT more public relations efforts, it would be able to attract a bigger user base which in-turn would fuel more community development. Once in a while I STILL see people on the internet lamenting that there isn't modern-day version of HyperCard, 25+ years since Apple abandoned it, BUT THERE IS!!! LiveCode should be seeking that out, not shying away from it, and flooding places like that with ads!!!