LiveCode Forums.

I tried dp13 briefly. I thought there was talk about native looking (or better yet, native) controls? Don't see them when running in the iOS simulator. It still looks ugly and non iOS conferment...

For iOS business app development xcode with Swift seems the way to go... to get anything done in LC takes way too much time, especially things that xcode handles for you like native controls, navigator, tables, autolayout, copy pasting, autocomplete, ...

LiveCode in theory should hide the details... in practice your suffering from lack of basic feature on iOS. No good looking controls, no decent table, no easy scrolling, no on device debugging, no auto layout. Things that you take for granted... and you can take it mostly for granted when developing desktop apps with LiveCode... but mobile is annoying. And it's been like that for years while all the marketing department goes crazy about how easy it is to develop apps... It's easier in XCode/Swift I argue once you 'get the basics'. Which I'm getting at now.

But the question here is... what features does LC8 deliver in regard to mobile development/debugging/deployment?

Hi Rinzwind,

did you try the widgets like Title, Header, Segemented, Selector, Switch Button, Push Button? They can be set to iOS or Android "native" behavior in the properties inspector.

Look in the dictionary API section to see the messages they send and the properties they have. Dictionary is still a bit buggy in DP13, but just making it manually a bit wider should work.

They look pretty "native" to me.

Kind regards
Bernd

they only look 'native' in the IDE (widgetTheme: iOS), not when running on an actual device or simulator. Back to motif.

OK, I was too lazy to download Xcode 6.2 which I need for DP13 on MacOSX 10.9.5.
Now I did it and it turns out you have to include the widgets you want to use in your iOS app in Standalone Application Settings -> Copy Files.

They are listed there and if you check the ones you use then it works in the simulator. Did not test on a device but I guess that should also work.

The widgets look a bit more "native" than Motif.


Kind regards
Bernd

Actually I've switched over to LC 8 exclusively. I find the widgets work great and look perfect in the sim and my iPhone 4, iPhone 6s and iPad. And I guarantee you, once you get used to LC, you can develop apps 8x faster. I'm impressed how fast LC 8 is being developed.

I do know LC quite well... Too bad mobile is still not great with 8. Thanks for the tip Bernd. Any official answer about 8 mobile improvements? Easy scrolling as on desktop? Table? Textfield with native functionality (like basic select, copy & paste)? Default at least a decent theme that does not look ugly? Working layout stuff as on desktop? You loose so much time trying to imitate functionality you get for free when using xcode/swift... And still it wont work quite like the native counterpart.

I do like the concept behind widgets (but long due imho).

LiveCode supports OS-native controls for mobile - filter the Dictionary with "mobile" to see those and other ways LiveCode taps into mobile-specific OS features.

Yeah but thats more like a hacked way into access to some more usable controls in a cumbersom way. Not using any of the LiveCode controls. Glad those functions to access some mobile controls are there but not what a LC developer expects when he is used to what is possible on desktop and how to accomplish it. Its certainly not what RAD and WYSIWYG is all about. Plus those mobile function returns controls that are not part of a stack but float over it... Scrolling impossible.

Offtopic.. some automatic data binding to controls would be nice too..

Agreed. It's transitional. But much better than attempting to roll your own.