Happy new year, everyone! We're kicking off 2012 with a LiveCode Meetup during Macworld in San Francisco, January 27, and hope you can join us!
Macworld Expo takes place January 26-28 at Moscone Center in San Francisco and the RunRev team is bringing LiveCode customers, partners and fans together for a fun San Francisco Meetup. RunRev CEO Kevin Miller will be in town from the UK to host the Meetup, held at a local pub, so if you're in the Bay Area or attending Macworld, it's time to get together with other LiveCode users to dig into the platform, share ideas and talk projects. RSVP at http://livecode.eventbrite.com.
LiveCoders at Cirque du Mac Party
Another great reason to get together is that you'll have a chance to nab one of 50 tickets to the coveted Cirque du Mac party held Friday, January 27, from 8:00-11:30 pm. The annual invite-only Mac Observer bash (open to non-Macworld attendees) will have free drinks, live music and an opportunity to party with other LiveCode fans and industry VIPs. RunRev is an event sponsor this year!
Whether you’re attending Macworld, live in the Bay Area, or just want an excuse to meet the LiveCode community, we hope you’ll join us.
More on Macworld
Macworld is the world’s ultimate fan event for those who use, create and love Apple products. Attendees will experience a unique celebration of Apple technology-infused products, music and film. There will be lots to look at and play with, and lots to learn. The exhibition hall promises to house a shopping mecca filled with products and services for Apple users of all skill levels and interests. From home users, to artistic hobbyists and professionals, as well as the ture technorati, MacWorld 2012 gives you the chance to experience all that the world of Apple-related tools can offer.
When Princess Diana wanted to send her sons, Princes William and Harry, to weekly musical storytelling sessions as part of their education, she chose Ann Rachlin. Ann created many wonderful characters which went on transcend storytelling to become books and later CDs. But her best loved character, a green faced witch called Heckerty, stayed on paper for over 40 years. The evolution of mobile phones and tablets has set Heckerty free – finally there is the perfect medium to introduce a new generation to this inimitable, 409 year old witch and her mad adventures. And now the world is being given the opportunity to vote for Heckerty in the Mobile Apps Showdown of 2012.
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Heckerty is a zany, 409-year-old, upside-down-on-her-broomstick, green-faced witch. Happy, hilarious, helpful – Heckerty enchants and educates kids everywhere.
Bored in the car? Fidgety in the bank? Fractious in line for the TSA? Let your kids tune into Heckerty’s adventures and while they laugh at her mad antics and help her put things right, they learn words, vocabulary and spelling while their little fingers learn precision and coordination.
Love From Heckerty is designed with LiveCode for iOS, Android and Amazon Fire. Rich and interactive, kids follow Heckerty and her cat, Zanzibar, to magical places filled with stories, games, puzzles, as well as dinosaurs, wizards and dozens of cousins.
From Broomstick Productions Inc, Heckerty is the creation of Britain’s Royal story-teller, and comes from a long, literary heritage of wizards and witches. She may have a green face but her heart is pure gold.
Now you can vote for this great app in the Mobile Apps Showdown 2012, a fast-paced contest where you're asked to weigh in on the apps you think have what it takes to make it. The top ten apps will join us at CES 2012 for an action packed event hosted by Jon Hein and Gary Dell'Abate from the Howard Stern Show.
LiveCode 5.0.2, a free update to LiveCode 5, was released yesterday. This update reflects our commitment to continually upgrade and improve the platform and to constantly listen and respond to end user feedback. LiveCode 5.0.2 is available for free to anyone who purchased LiveCode 5.0.0 or LiveCode 5.0.1.
So, what’s new in LiveCode 5.0.1.
AcceleratedRendering property
A new stack property has been added to make using the new accelerated rendering features much easier to use. Instead of setting the compositorType, compositorCacheLimit and compositorTileSize, you can simply set the AcceleratedRendering property of the stack to true. Internally, LiveCode will set the three compositor properties to the best defaults for the platform.
Persistent layerMode property
The layerMode property of objects is now saved as part of the stack and can be configured using the property inspector.
New folder properties
New folder syntax provides readable ways of accessing special folders on the various platforms.
the documents folder
the temporary folder
the engine folder
the desktop folder
the home folder
See dictionary for full details
Player Fixes
A number of desktop player fixes were made as part of the 5.0.1 release. Further fixes to both the desktop and iOS 5.0 player have been made in this release.
Android OpenGL Improvements
A number of OpenGL improvements have been made for Android.
General Bug Fixes
A range of other bug fixes have been made.
More information can be found in the release notes, iOS release notes and Android release notes.
Existing customers who have purchased LiveCode 5 can download 5.0.2 by logging into their account. If you are using an earlier version of LiveCode you can upgrade to LiveCode 5.0.2 in your account. New users of LiveCode can download a free trial here.
Congratulations to Trevor and Greg DeVore. Their Clarify App has been listed as one of the “10 Best Mac Apps of 2011” by Mashable.com.
There’s been lots of buzz lately about how great LiveCode is to make mobile apps and games and the LiveCode Game Academy has received lots of attention from budding developers seeking to try something new. But let’s not forget our roots. Right from its beginning, LiveCode was and is a professional development tool that allows you to make applications for lots of different platforms and purposes.
So we’re really proud to announce that Clarify, by LiveCode users BlueMango Learning Systems has been listed as one of the “10 Best Mac Apps of 2011” by Mashable.com. “Clarify from Blue Mango Learning is a great app for individuals that frequently need to create and annotate documentation using screenshots or photographs” the website says. “Like it's older brother ScreenSteps Desktop (also built in LiveCode), Clarify is easy to use and has powerful built-in annotation and resizing tools.”
How Clarify Works
Capture imagesCapture screenshots, import graphics or add photos. Capture multiple images to create clear communications. |
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Turn them into communicationsAdd annotations and text to you images
Annotations include:
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Share online or via email.It’s easy to share your communications online via clarify-it.com (a free sharing service offered by Blue Mango) or by email. |
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I asked Trevor DeVore, Director of Technology at BlueMango, why he chose LiveCode to make Clarify.
“Clarify will be released for both Mac and Windows. I need to be able to share as much code as possible between the two platforms if I’m going to be able to provide a quality product for our customers at release as well as going forward. Being able to use 98% of the code on both platforms without modification makes this feasible.
In addition, the ability to instantly test Clarify on Mac and Windows during development without any need to compile allows me to quickly iterate over features and fix bugs.”
- Trevor DeVore, BlueMango Learning Systems
Read all about Clarify’s journey from idea to app in this article from Trevor DeVore: “Clarify, A Fresh Start. How to learn from previous successes to make an even better app!”.
Clarify costs just $29.99, starts with a free trial, and is available here.
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We’ve been delighted this week and last with how much media attention the LiveCode Game Academy has received.
Dave Hamilton got the ball rolling a couple of weeks ago in his MacGeekGab podcast. Dave was telling the story of how he and his son made their iPhone app the previous day. The made the whole app between the time his son woke up and when he had to go to school. How did they make it so fast? Yup, you’ve guess it, using LiveCode of course. Even though he wasn’t familiar with the environment, they still had a simple hello world built in about ten minutes, ready to deploy to his son’s ipod nano after school. Dave’s son is now really excited about the academy, and “at the ripe old age of ten” he will be joining Dave on the course so that they can build their first game together. Our heartfelt welcome to both father and son – I'm really excited to see how they get on.
Todd Bernhard in iPhone Life Magazine said that if you’ve always wanted to create your own apps, but didn’t know where to start, LiveCode and the LiveCode Game Academy, are an easy way to get started. And in his 4 Star Review of LiveCode in the Cult of Mac magazine David Martin says that “LiveCode 5 is a quick and powerful package for app design”. He encouraged his readers to give the Academy a try, saying “You’ve got nothing to lose but your time. Time that might turn you into the next big game or app developer!” Adrian Bridgewater, writing for Computer Weekly tells us just how big a game can be. “We invest three billion hours a week playing online games. So games, as we know, have become mainstream big business and now enjoy as much publicity hype as new movie releases.” You never know, that publicity and hype could belong to one of the apps made during the next two months. It might be even be yours!
Kelly Guimont in TUAW agrees. “If you want to be a mobile developer” she says “you have a prime opportunity to make it happen”. She’s talking about the Academy of course, and tells her readers about how you can learn to make a mobile game: "nothing fancy, just a little fun thing to help you learn your way around LiveCode".
And it's with a quote from Kelly Guimont that I will finish up:
"I'm excited about it, and already signed up. Will you be there?"