Desktop Build Limitations

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

I can’t seem to find a specific Desktop forum, so I apologize if there’s a better place for this.

My team and I are working on a desktop version of our business app, and, in doing so, we’ve uncovered a lot of limitations. At first, the desktop build announcement seemed amazing (and it probably is for games), but in its current state, it looks like we are not going to be able to use Corona for desktop unless these limitations are addressed.

I believe these are all documented already, and there should be nothing new here that the Corona team doesn’t already know. I just wondered if any of the following might be fixed in the near future?

In order of importance to us:

* Using a camera and opening a file picker dialog (for photos) does not work in Windows;  it does work in OSX.
 

* Social Sharing does not work via any of the built-in showPopup options in Windows or OSX.

* Google Maps do not show up in Windows or OSX.

* Getting the user’s GPS coordinates doesn’t work properly in either Windows or OSX.

* Flurry Analytics does not work currently in Windows or OSX.

Thanks,

Dave

#2

In general, if there is a standard operating system supported way to do things, we want to include support for them.  Obviously we can’t do everything at once but that’s the long term goal.  We aren’t, however, going to try to make the desktop environment appear like a mobile device.

Several of the items you are looking for are mobile specific.  For example, neither Facebook nor Twitter offer desktop APIs like they do on mobile and Flurry is similarly only available on mobile platforms (desktop apps generally make HTTP calls to implement things like this; I understand there’s a plugin that implements Twitter this way).  GPS is also a mobile-centric thing though we do offer location support to the extent offered by the operating system on OS X.

Things like maps are also operating system dependent and you should probably be thinking in terms of webviews or system.openURL() to display maps in a more OS independent way.

#3

The forums are under the Beta Testing section.  See:

https://forums.coronalabs.com/forum/649-os-x-desktop-app-testing/

and

https://forums.coronalabs.com/forum/650-win32-desktop-app-testing/

Rob

#4

In general, if there is a standard operating system supported way to do things, we want to include support for them.  Obviously we can’t do everything at once but that’s the long term goal.  We aren’t, however, going to try to make the desktop environment appear like a mobile device.

Several of the items you are looking for are mobile specific.  For example, neither Facebook nor Twitter offer desktop APIs like they do on mobile and Flurry is similarly only available on mobile platforms (desktop apps generally make HTTP calls to implement things like this; I understand there’s a plugin that implements Twitter this way).  GPS is also a mobile-centric thing though we do offer location support to the extent offered by the operating system on OS X.

Things like maps are also operating system dependent and you should probably be thinking in terms of webviews or system.openURL() to display maps in a more OS independent way.

#5

The forums are under the Beta Testing section.  See:

https://forums.coronalabs.com/forum/649-os-x-desktop-app-testing/

and

https://forums.coronalabs.com/forum/650-win32-desktop-app-testing/

Rob