Widgets in Corona Cards

CoronaCards (Corona in native apps) CoronaCards for WP8
#1

Widgets are not displaying on the Windows 8.1 phone or the simulator.

Is this a known issue?

Larry Meadows, Jr

#2

We don’t support widgets on WP8 yet.

Have a look at the link here for which Lua APIs we currently support…

   http://docs.coronalabs.com/daily/coronacards/wp8/index.html#lua-apis-supported

#3

If you don’t mind using an iOS7 theme, then I can show you how to add widgets support to your app yourself.

You would need to do the following:

  1. Go to website:  https://github.com/coronalabs/framework-widget
  2. Click the “Download Zip” button on the right side of the page.
  3. Unzip the file.
  4. Drag-and-drop the following unzipped files to your project’s “Assets\Corona” folder in Visual Studio’s “Solution Explorer” panel.  (Note that dragging files into Solution Explorer will also automatically copy them under your project’s directory too.)

Files to copy:

  • widget_theme_ios7.png
  • widget_theme_ios7@2x.png
  • widget_theme_onOff_mask.png
  • widget_theme_pickerWheel_mask.png

The widget Lua library is already embedded into Corona for WP8, we’re just missing a means of providing embedded resources at the moment.  Lack of time.

#4

Cool, I’ll check it out.

Really I was using the Widget Lib just to start testing the Composer Framework for navigating to different screen and such.

I’ll try your solution and see how it goes.

Thanks

Larry

#5

One thing to watch out for is that display.newText() and print() functions are extremely expensive on WP8.  We’ve optimized display.newText() as much as we could on our end, but there is only so much we can do with it.  So, if you’re using a TableView that’s creating text every time a row is scrolled onscreen, then the performance will be horrible.  The only work-around is to either cache the text objects on startup (provided that you don’t have too many text objects and eat up too much memory) or switch to bitmap fonts… and the bitmap font route is what Microsoft recommends when you need to update text regularly.

#6

Larry,

We’ve added widget support in build #2398, which should be made available later today.  However, we currently do not provide a WP8 widget theme at the moment.  Instead, it defaults to an iOS7 theme, which seemed appropriate since it has a monochromatic theme too.  We’ve also included Android themes such as holo dark and holo light that you can choose to use.  I think the holo dark theme looks quite good on a WP8 device.  Instruction on how to select a theme can be found here…

   http://coronalabs.com/blog/2014/08/08/update-android-widget-themes

#7

Tested and Verified !

Worked in the simulator.

Now I have 2 version one with the Widgets one with Graphical buttons :slight_smile:

Sweet

Thanks

Larry

#8

We don’t support widgets on WP8 yet.

Have a look at the link here for which Lua APIs we currently support…

   http://docs.coronalabs.com/daily/coronacards/wp8/index.html#lua-apis-supported

#9

If you don’t mind using an iOS7 theme, then I can show you how to add widgets support to your app yourself.

You would need to do the following:

  1. Go to website:  https://github.com/coronalabs/framework-widget
  2. Click the “Download Zip” button on the right side of the page.
  3. Unzip the file.
  4. Drag-and-drop the following unzipped files to your project’s “Assets\Corona” folder in Visual Studio’s “Solution Explorer” panel.  (Note that dragging files into Solution Explorer will also automatically copy them under your project’s directory too.)

Files to copy:

  • widget_theme_ios7.png
  • widget_theme_ios7@2x.png
  • widget_theme_onOff_mask.png
  • widget_theme_pickerWheel_mask.png

The widget Lua library is already embedded into Corona for WP8, we’re just missing a means of providing embedded resources at the moment.  Lack of time.

#10

Cool, I’ll check it out.

Really I was using the Widget Lib just to start testing the Composer Framework for navigating to different screen and such.

I’ll try your solution and see how it goes.

Thanks

Larry

#11

One thing to watch out for is that display.newText() and print() functions are extremely expensive on WP8.  We’ve optimized display.newText() as much as we could on our end, but there is only so much we can do with it.  So, if you’re using a TableView that’s creating text every time a row is scrolled onscreen, then the performance will be horrible.  The only work-around is to either cache the text objects on startup (provided that you don’t have too many text objects and eat up too much memory) or switch to bitmap fonts… and the bitmap font route is what Microsoft recommends when you need to update text regularly.

#12

Larry,

We’ve added widget support in build #2398, which should be made available later today.  However, we currently do not provide a WP8 widget theme at the moment.  Instead, it defaults to an iOS7 theme, which seemed appropriate since it has a monochromatic theme too.  We’ve also included Android themes such as holo dark and holo light that you can choose to use.  I think the holo dark theme looks quite good on a WP8 device.  Instruction on how to select a theme can be found here…

   http://coronalabs.com/blog/2014/08/08/update-android-widget-themes

#13

Tested and Verified !

Worked in the simulator.

Now I have 2 version one with the Widgets one with Graphical buttons :slight_smile:

Sweet

Thanks

Larry