Altova MobileTogether Designer

Given below are the new-features lists of Version 5 releases.

 

Version 5.4

New features and updates in MobileTogether Designer Version 5.4:

 

A Video Recording action starts the video recording app of client devices, and saves the recording to a location that you can define. Key properties of the recording can be specified.

A Geolocation Map control can be used to display the map of a specific area, in street, satellite, or hybrid view. Points of interest in the area can be shown by markers in the map. The control has a OnGeoMapMarkerClicked event, for which actions can be defined.

A MobileTogether extension function mt-geo-map-marker that creates a marker for the Geolocation Map control.

A dynamic variable $MT_GeolocationMapMarker, which contains information about the marker that was last clicked by the client's user. Information about the marker can be returned via an XPath expression.

An Altova extension function geolocations-bounding-rectangle that creates a bounding rectangle around a set of submitted geolocations.

The Save/Restore Page Sources action has been renamed to Backup/Restore Page Sources.

 

Version 5.3

MobileTogether Designer Version 5.3 adds the mt-is-server-purchased() function and an option, in simulations, to simulate that the server has been licensed with purchased license/s.

 

Version 5.2

MobileTogether Designer Version 5.2 provides the ability to export a project (or design), together with its resources, as a MobileTogether Package. The package is saved as a .mtp file, which can be opened in MobileTogether Designer and deployed as a solution (together with resources) to MobileTogether Server.

 

Version 5.1

New features and updates in MobileTogether Designer Version 5.1:

 

 

Controls

Two useful formatting options for Tables have been added: (i) The Background Color property of a table cell can take a value that sets the cell's background color to be the same as that of the control that is in the cell; (ii) The table property Apply Borders to Cells automatically passes the table's border properties to the borders of all cells in the table.

If the text of a Label contains URLs (such as www.altova.com) or email addresses (such as altova.user@altova.com), then such text can be set, via the Automatic Link Detection property, to be automatically displayed as a live link in the label text.

A maximum number of lines can be specified for Label controls that have been set to multiline display.

The auto-sizing of text applies not only to single-line text in controls, but also to text in controls that have been set to multiline display.

 

 

Actions

The Read Folder action has been extended so that: (i) multiple filename patterns can be specified in the action's file filter; (ii) an option to recurse into subfolders is provided; (iii) if recursing into subfolders is specified, an option to read the information of empty folders is provided.

The Send SMS To and Make Call To actions can be started directly in designs that have been generated as AppStore Apps, but need the end user's permission in designs that are deployed as MobileTogether solutions.

In addition to being able to save entire page sources to file, you can optionally save sub-trees of page sources to separate files.

The View Image action has been enhanced with a fit-to-screen option.

The OnPageRefresh event (of a page) has a new option: Refresh due to Orientation or Size Change. This option specifies the actions to carry out when the end user changes the device's orientation or re-sizes the app window (on devices where the window is re-sizable).

 

 

Miscellaneous

Android support has been extended to Android 8.1 and 9.

Support for round and adaptive icons in appstore apps for newer Android versions.

When generating code for appstore apps, you can view image files of launcher icons directly from the code generation dialog.

In the project's settings, you can specify that the device settings be saved with the design.

XQuery page sources can be specified to be persistent on the client, via the XQuery tree's context menu.

When a solution is opened in a web client, client files are stored at a session-specific location on the server and are deleted from this location when the session ends. See, for example, information about file locations of the Save File actions of page sources.

Ability to disable, for individual pages of a project, the message box that asks the end user to confirm their wanting to leave the page. The message box is set for all pages of the project in the Browser Settings of the project, and it is disabled for individual pages by assigning a value of mt-no-browser-exit-confirmation to the Browser CSS Class property of the individual pages.

A new XPath extension function for MobileTogether, mt-run-web-url, to generate a URL that opens a specified solution in a web browser.

The Simulator window provides the ability to search in the Page Sources pane for text in page source nodes and data.

 

 

Version 5.0

New features and updates in MobileTogether Designer Version 5.0 are listed below.

 

 

Controls

New border properties (width, color, and style) have been introduced for table items (cells, columns, rows, and table).

Border settings can be applied quickly to different table items by using the Border Settings dialog.

Shorthand margin and padding properties have been added to controls that have margin and padding properties. This enables a common value for all four sides to be specified in a single property, rather than individually for each side.

Padding properties have been added to more controls where padding is applicable. This enables space to be added between individual borders of a control (left, right, top, and bottom) and the control's content.

In a Combo Box control that allows multiple values to be selected by the end user, different separators can be used to construct (i) the string that is entered in the page source node and (ii) the string that is displayed in the combo box. The former is set via the Multi Select Separator property, the latter via the Multi Select Separator Visible property.

In Combo Boxes,, the text of dropdown list items and the corresponding XML data values can be defined via an XPath expression that returns a sequence of two-member arrays. This way of defining combo box entries is in addition to existing options.

The appearance of Buttons has been enhanced so that both a Button image (see the Button Image property) as well as a Button text can be displayed. For the Button image, you can choose from a range of predefined icons or use a custom image. You can also set the position of the Button image to be to the left or the right of the Button text.

The Text Size Auto-Fit property of Controls that have a Text Size property has an additional option. Text that is too long to fit within the width of a control is shown as a truncated string that ends with an ellipsis. This is in addition to existing options for auto-fitting text.

Values for the Checked Values (true/false) property of the Check Box and Switch controls can also be set in style sheets—which enables this property's values to be set globally for these controls.

The Checked Values property of the Radio Button control can also be set in style sheets. This enables this property's checked value to be set globally.

The OnEnter/OnEscape events of the Button, Chart, Image, and Label controls have been enhanced for use on all client devices (in addition to their use on Web and Windows clients).

The Rich Text control can use a predefined Rich Text style sheet for text that is marked up with HTML tags.

The text that will be the content of the control can be defined with an XPath expression that evaluates to an HTML-encoded string.

The Vertical Line control can be given top and bottom margins.

The Horizontal Slider control has a Auto Correct Value property that automatically corrects values in the associated page source node to a value that is within the defined slider value range.

A context menu command for controls in the Controls Pane displays all instances of that control type.

 

 

Actions

A new Quick Filter text box in the Actions dialog enables you to filter the actions and action groups of the dialog.

Actions and action groups can be added to the actions of an event from a popup in the event pane. This is in addition to the standard way of adding an action by dragging it into the event pane.

A new action, Load/Save Text File, enables (i) text to be loaded from a file to a page source node, and (ii) for text to be saved from a page source node to a text file.

A new action, DB Read Structure, enables the structure of a DB to be read and for data in the DB to be stored in a new type of page source, the $MT_DBSTRUCTURE page source. Data in this page source can be used in te same way as data in any other page source. This action is useful if you want only a data read-out.

The Open URL/File action has been enhanced to accept data URLs. As a result, binary files can be opened directly in a new tab of the web client's browser.

The Update Node(s) action enables multiple nodes to be updated by specifying the target nodes in an XPath array.

The text color of Comment actions can be customized.

Where an action's settings includes the selection of a page source, this selection can additionally be specified via an XPath expression.

 

 

Rich Text

The Markup toolbar icon of the Rich Text control in the deployed solution has been enhanced to let the end user select from a range of markup-tag sizes.

You can specify, in the Browser Settings dialog, the fonts that are available to the end user when editing rich text.

 

 

Special MobileTogether-related XPath extension functions

Six new MobileTogether extension functions have been added: (i) mt-available-db-connection-names, (ii) mt-called-by-enter-key, (iii) mt-called-by-escape-key, (iv) mt-get-page-source-structure, (v) mt-table-rowgroup-count, (vi) mt-table-rowgroup-index.

A number of new Altova extension functions are available for use in XPath expressions. For descriptions of the currently available functions, see here.

 

 

Databases

A new action, DB Read Structure, enables the structure of a DB to be read and for data in the DB to be stored in a new type of page source, the $MT_DBSTRUCTURE page source. Data in this page source can be used in te same way as data in any other page source. This action is useful if you want only a data read-out.

The Simulation 2 tab of the Options dialog provides a new option to generate DB connections to an XML file, which can be used for simulations of the DB Read Structure action.

A new MobileTogether extension function named mt-available-db-connection-names gets the names of all available DB connections in the solution or on the server.

The new Replace DB Sources command enables you to switch the DB connection of DB page sources in the design to alternative DBs. One use case would be to test with a non-production DB, and then switch to a production DB when the solution is deployed.

 

 

Miscellaneous

A new Find & Replace Pane enables you to search for strings in the design, including in XPath expressions, functions, and action groups. Found strings can also be replaced.

A new Listings Pane displays various kinds of lists; for example, lists of all global variables, all user-defined functions, or instances of a particular control type. These listings contain links to the relevant design components, which enables you to quickly find a design component and go to it.

You can copy a pre-existing style sheet and paste it as a new style sheet.

MobileTogether Server Services can be configured to send push notifications (PNs) to standard MobileTogether solutions as well as to MobileTogether AppStore Apps.

The Network Proxy options dialog enables you to configure custom proxy settings for the application.

The SPL language that is used to generate program code for AppStore Apps for Android, iOS, and Windows has been extended with functionality to trim strings of specified characters from left and right.

The context menu of the Styles & Properties Pane has been extended with commands to (i) list controls having the same value as that of the selected property, and (ii) display controls in groups according to the values of a given property.

Page sources that are supplied with data from a FlowForce job can now accept HTML or JSON data, as alternatives to the already supported XML format.

REST functionality in MobileTogether now supports the sending of files; this is in addition to the sending of XML and Base64 data.

Multiple font files can be embedded in the solution. These files can be referenced via CSS when the solution is displayed in web clients. The font files to embed are specified in the Browser Settings of the project's properties.

 

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