Background Stories, Interesting Facts and Announcements

Protogrid is alive and kicking. In this blog, our innovative engineers and creative graphic designers share their stories, anecdotes as well as useful tipps and tricks.

Protogrid 1.0.5

Michel Müller on 2015-11-21

Protogrid has just been updated system wide to 1.0.5. There are a few exciting new features:

  1. Date-only datatype (1.0.3)
  2. Relation Filters (1.0.4)
  3. Read-only JSON-Interface (Read-Write will arrive until end of 2015).
  4. Automatic sorting of Tableviews using the leftmost sortable column.
  5. Passwords can now contain any combination of letters (English alphabet), numbers and special characters.
  6. iOS:
    1. Automatic deletion and resynch of data on the device when a user role is removed or when his password is changed on the server (useful when device lost or stolen).
    2. Encryption of all data on the device.
    3. Fixed a bug that would show the wrong status for the synching (cogwheel).
    4. Fixed a bug that would continue the seed and show status succeeded when the credentials of the seed user are wrong.
    5. Login shows the environment against which app is synched.

The ideal application development platform for the next 10 years?

Gregor Weisser on 2015-11-20

How does the perfect application development platform for the next 10 years look like? This is the question we asked ourselves, and these are the requirements we consider crucial:

  1. We want to stay flexible and avoid a lock-in to a specific platform. We do not know what our preferred corporate platform will be in three years from now: Android? iOS? Windows? Our users want to use the application on all widely used platforms. From a technical point of view these are at present and in the near future Windows, iOS, Android and the web browser. From a hardware point of view the most used platforms are Tablets, Notebooks, Smartphones, Desktops and upcoming Smartwatches. Ideally I develop an application once and use it as is on all platforms without big additional effort. That’s what we call good portability. It helps to save time and cost.
  2. We want to have new business applications quickly and for little money. Our developers shall not loose their valuable time with repeating tasks and focus on application specific things – like special algorithms, business logic, interfaces. Therefore we need tools that support rapid application development. That also helps to save time and cost.
  3. Business critical data must be accessible from everywhere. According to surveys between 3% and 10% of all users are really mobile digital nomad workers and need access to business data on the fly. Really mobile users know the drawbacks and problems when it comes to stable, continuous internet access be it in a train, tunnel, elevator, basement and many more places. Even in the center of large cities it happens to be without access. So we need applications with off-line capabilities that still work 100% when the internet access is stuttering.
  4. In all countries where the citizens speak different languages but also in international corporations the applications need to be multi-lingual. Here we wish an easy solution that allows power users (and not only software developers) to translate the texts of the application any time and deploy the new translations fast to all devices.
  5. Most of us run a (too) large number of servers and want to avoid having to add additional servers whenever possible. Cloud solutions help to unburden. We do not need additional server hardware, no additional floor space, no additional sys admin personnel, are allowed to add additional users or delete users any time and hence reduce cost to zero within on month.
  6. We want to roll-out upgrades quickly. Globally. At least as easy as an update of an app on a smartphone, but better easier than that: The user has nothing to click.

For all these requirements we have checked out the offerings of Google, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and others. We also checked out a series of open source software. We developed prototypes, did feasibility studies and tested. We wanted to know who is offering the best platform. Our answer? Protogrid!

Finally: Release 1.0!

Michel Müller on 2015-03-05

We are proud to announce the release of the long awaited version 1.0.

What is new?

iOS Roll-out
App developers can now export and download a zip file with the Proto Grid iOS client. More information can be found in the Readme. The Protogrid code is compiled / rolled uglified and works in simulator and device.

Script Library Enhancements
When you create a new script library a sample library is generated that helps writing and learning.

The syntax highlighting has been fixed.

We have a new API on_render (card, bevore_first_save) that allows for executing code before displaying. This allows to put default values and to calculate computed fields.

Language support
Users can select all languages ​​in all regional variations and make a list of your own prioritization.

App developers also define within the app a list of all supported languages by the app. This list is matched when you save the Application Properties with the underlying Multilanguage Proto: For each language there is a text box set. All Multilanguage Cards (= currently field labels, help texts and app title) will receive these fields and can be translated.

Proto Grid makes every time a matching between the user settings an the available data from the Multilanguage cards. At the same time regional variants are preferred, if selected by the user, otherwise fallen back to the main language. This holds even for complex cases such as Chinese, that has in the locale the main language, writing system (script) and regional variant (e.g. zi-Hant-HK).

For the interface we currently support English, German and Spanish. There are still a few gaps. If you find something, please report it. That means although your applications can support all languages, for the system texts we fall back on the supported languages ​​as described above with the same matching. System texts are translated by the way the same way as in the Apps: There exist Multilanguage cards in a hidden system app.

The date format is separately set on the user profile. At the moment English and German is supported, many more will follow (we use a standard component, we only need to include more of it).

https
Communication with web browser and iPhone clients goes now encrypted.

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