It should have been updated today. FWIW, it actually will run on G2.0 or G1.0. It now checks the build version and applies colors and positioning relative to the graphics engine in place. Normally you would not want to do this and at some point, this extra code will probably be removed, but while we have the community on both platforms, it made sense to have one version that ran in both engines.
Rob
Thanks for the update. I think the conditional code will be interesting to observe as well.
Folks,
I’ve been scouring the threads for a couple of days now and I’m sure I can get a quick answer here (the last entry regarding this was in 2011, from what I’ve found).
I have max resolution on my iMac 27"
Everytime I run the “iPhone” simulator it’s roughly the right size for the 3 & 4 series.
When I select the 4 or 5 iphone it goes offscreen and I’m on a 27" system with resolution maxed out.
Any quick quotes that might assist me? (oh, and just to have a tidbit on topic, my oral surgeon found out I build apps and wants me to build him one. Guess I’m going to be getting on the bus app demo soon 
.
Thanks much.
Richard
Quick question on statusBar. I noticed the use of a display.newImageRect to paint over the statusBar using the same image file that is used to create the titleBar. I was wondering how you managed to color the statusBar (looking at the simulator) and tracked this down in your code. Very interesting… Did not try this on the device yet. Does it work well? Is this the best way to match the statusBar color to the rest of your app color scheme? Thanks
Richard, can you post this in a new thread as it’s not widget related and we don’t want to hijack this thread.
As for my trick of coloring the status bar, basically it’s there to not mess up some math I had going. The statusBar is transparent and sitting on top of my rectangle. It’s a hack, but it works.
Rob
Ahh, I think I get it. Its because Apple made the status bar translucent this works in IOS7 right? I was looking at the code to see if you used
display.setStatusBar( display.TranslucentStatusBar )
and did not see one so I was confused. Nice hack.
Seems like there is a bug in the video viewer scene. I built it for device and ran on my iPad mini trying to verify something asked in another thread and noticed this issue. Once you start playing a video inside this app the back button and the other tabBar buttons no longer respond. Even if you pause the video using the Youtube pause button you can’t use the app back button etc. In other words, once you start playing a video you are locked in that scene. This needs to be looked into in order to make the sample more useable. Thanks
I just tested this on my iPad 4 and I don’t see this issue.
Rob
Ok. Thanks for checking this out. I downloaded a fresh copy from Github and built it again. Now it runs fine. Not sure what happened to the code I have but no need to worry. False alarm.
hi, I gave this app a spin yesterday. It’s looking nice so far. Here’s some feedback:
I wish that it was fuller-featured to really resemble a kitchen-sink style biz app. I’d like to see every single widget featured to put them through their paces. In particular, I’d like to see how to best handle dropdown menus (which actually popup) and how they look on iOs7 with GFX2. I have converted one of my apps (SevenMinutes and that was the trickiest part; this widget is a little hard to handle as you have to find a way for the drop down to appear and then disappear on a button click that you need to build yourself. I had to tweak the placement of the popup so that it transitions up from the bottom of the screen.
I also think that the use of rss feeds twice in this app isn’t super useful, just my opinion; I’m going to need to use a database both local and cloud (which I do for all my stuff) but it would be a service to the folks I think to show how to do that.
I guess what I’d say is that since biz apps are tied so closely to widgets, I’d love to have a real showcase of widgets within this sample code.
thanks,
Jen
Yes. Sort of get the current WidgetDemo and latch it onto the Business App Sample and put a db on it for good measure. Why not…
Oh, while at it, make sure to create a super duper data entry screen with many textFields, keyboard entry etc.
Last but not least, a search box implementation sample on a tableView would be super.
Thanks for the feedback Jen.
When we first conceived this app, we were trying to decided what features to show case. Clearly the RSS feed’s main purpose was to show off fetching data from a remote source and populating a tableView and show detail pages from tapping the tableView, which also got webViews. We decided to also have a button menu, maps, a basic photo handler and “video”. For video, how do i show YouTube videos was what we wanted, and getting a list of videos seemed to be best done with RSS.
From a demo perspective, yes it’s duplicating RSS, network downloads, tableViews and webViews.
We are looking at things to expand this and things posted in this thread are going to get high consideration for the next adaptation of this. But as for showing off all the widgets, that’s the purpose of the WidgetDemo sample app. Until we need a real-world reason to implement a slider or a radio-button switch bank adding those for the purpose of demoing them is duplicating what the WidgetDemo app is for.
I’m leaning towards a data entry form, ingestion/submission of some remote data source, possibly a local SQLlight database. But adding the kitchen sink would also have the problem of bloating this. Good things to think about.
Rob
hi, adding a data entry form would be nice, as you could then showcase the radio button and drop down widgets, I think. The radio could be a simple ‘remember me’ toggle that would set or not set the credentials into a local database, and a drop down could ask which YouTube channels to show. The textfields could then be saved (or not) locally, incidentally showing how to dismiss the keyboard on device.
thanks for considering!
best,
Jen
My brother is a designer is CA. He uses a service called Bizness Apps ( search it on Google ), its a monthly hosted business apps service. He says the back-end is like wrestling a hydra. We tried to convert one of the apps with Corona but we hit roadblocks quite quickly. If Corona wants to get more serious about taking on the business app market space, then take a look at the features section on the site .
I asked how many of his clients actually use all of that stuff and he claims that he has used most of the items at one time or another, so I think it’s a good reference point. Most of the 3rd party stuff is HTML5 web views, which is achievable in Corona.
Of course a lot of those features are more complicated widgets, with data, etc. But, it would be a good starting point for what Corona Labs should focus on as far as the message to potential developers looking to produce business apps with Corona SDK. Though some do exist, tutorials and examples based on these features would probably be helpful.
Cheers.
I looked at their features, and most of those we can do. A lot depends on having data and getting data into the system. A few things we lack enough features to do. It’s a good list of things that apps could do.
What particular roadblocks did you hit?
Thanks for sharing.
Rob
Corona does indeed cover most of these features, and I don’t think it should be Corona Labs job to provide that backend – though that may be an interesting business idea for someone – I was more pointing out the types of things that might attract people looking to build business apps.
It was about half a year ago. From what I recall we had issues with maps and markers in Android, couldn’t gain access to a QR reader without pro (though recently he told me that QR is not as popular anymore with clients, so that could be skipped), there was no “share” feature at the time, which I believe Corona has now. A couple other issues here and there.
When I say we hit roadblocks pretty quickly, I should have been more clear that it was the order in which we approached the conversion. As far as the feature set of the BA based app, I think Corona can do 95% or so, with a backend service.
The more I think about it there may be a good fit for someone to develop similar widgets and backend to BA for Corona developers. Maybe I should dust off some of my PHP books…
Cheers.
hi, DevElephant, I see the word ‘php’ and start hyperventilating… I strongly recommend not having CL worry about developing their own backend or anything like that but rather making it very easy to integrate with solid, modern, cloud-based NoSQL BaaS solutions like Parse.com. I have used Parse and Kii and have written about those, it makes configuring your backend crazy simple with REST API calls. Better still would be to allow us to easily create plugins to these services so that you can throw it in and just call it as we would using PhoneGap with the Parse SDK integrated.
My .02 cents.
BTW, Rob, going through the biz app sample again, I see some misspellings that may cause issues, including:
function scene:destoryScene( event )
local group = self.view
print(“destroy scene”)
end
–shouldn’t that be destroyScene?
thanks,
Jen
@jen.looper I meant to do that so someone would offer a better solution. ;p
In any case the idea would be to hide that aspect of it from the developer. As far as the BA system works you’re just using forms, etc. The widgets handle the work, so… the language that powers it is of little importance from the front-end developers perspective.
You’d simply drop in a “reservations” widget and link up your “Corona Biz Tools” account ID for example. There would be no need for the developer to handle any of the backend infrastructure, no database calls, etc. Just methods like:
local reservations = require( “biz.reservations” )
reservations.accountId = ###
reservations.addReservation( dateObj, details, etc )
Just throwing out ideas, the technology is secondary in this case.
P.S. I read your piece about Parse and I was very inspired to try it out, but still have yet to apply it myself.
Cheers.
Lol, if only I was on Parse’s payroll…
It’s a really interesting idea, sort of ‘souped up’ widgets, with pre-packaged backend calls. I like it!
J
Thanks for spotting that typo Jen, I’ll get that fixed.
As for what you’re describing @develephant, that is what our plugin system is designed for. Corona builds the infrastructure and companies like Bizness Apps could build a plugins for turnkey reservation systems. If you look at what PlayTogether did for their BaaS cloud service for games, someone could engineer a similar service for business apps.
And Jen, I think it would wonderful if Parse were to work on providing a plugin for their service. Eventually we will get the market place going and more people can contribute plugins for things like this.
Rob