The Case of the Finicky Form
Recently we ran into a situation where the login form for an application we supported would fail to launch. This surprised us as this application has been running for over 6 years with no changes to the login form or the code that would call it. However, since we had made some changes (in a different module) we made the only reasonable conclusion: something we did was responsible for this problem.
The area of the application we updated manages the service that checks for updates online. As with many of our applications, this system would connect to a dedicated server for application updates, account validation, and system messages. It does this prior to allowing the user to see the login dialog, which is necessary in case the account was disabled for some reason.
The Future is Now – Form Translucency and Animation
January 2013 was a rather busy month for new OpenInsight 10 goodness: System Monitor updates, Direct2D support, Aero Glass, TASKBARID property, and improved image support (a subject that we have already commented on.) Two other new features – the TRANSLUCENCY property and the SHOW/HIDE methods – are the focus of this article.
To be honest, I did not expect to write an article about these features. First, we do not have a generic way to make OpenInsight forms translucent nor do we have a way to make OpenInsight forms appear and hide using animation. The second reason relates back to the first: we have not added these features to our own toolkit because we have never seen a compelling purpose for them, especially seeing that they usually appear as gimmicks.
Simple Math Isn’t So Simple
As I was reviewing some of the WORKS message board posts the other day, I came across a discussion that focused on the known problems of floating point arithmetic. This has been addressed over the years within the Revelation community but it continues to haunt developers (especially those who are converting R/Basic code to Basic+ and are wondering why their math doesn’t work as well…) To summarize the problem, run the following code in Basic+:
A = 1.07625
B = 1.0762
C = A - B
The result will be:
5.00000000001055E-5
Which is the same as:
.0000500000000001055
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The Future Is Now – Launching OpenInsight Applications
Our new blog article has a two-fold purpose. First, we want to review a few of the new command line switches that will be introduced with OpenInsight 10. Second, we are pleased to announce a minor enhancement to our SRP Application Launcher tool, which nicely complements our first purpose!
Command line switches are a common feature of OpenInsight. Probably every shortcut to a production OpenInsight application uses one or more of the following switches: /AP, /UN, /PW, and /DV. Without these switches it would be hard to create an application shortcut that is unique to the end user’s system. Revelation saw fit to take this further by adding even more switches that customize the way OpenInsight applications are launched.
The Future Is Now – Advanced Support for Images
Shortly after Revelation released news of their support for alpha channel images, they released a companion article documenting other improvements to their image API. This introduced seven new properties (IMAGEALIGN, IMAGECOLORKEY, IMAGEFRAMECOUNT, IMAGEFRAMENUMBER, IMAGESIZE, IMAGESTYLE, and IMAGETRANSLUCENCY) and one new method (SETIMAGE). In like fashion we will explore some of the more advanced features of the SRP Picture control and compare them to these new properties and new method that will be introduced in OpenInsight 10.
The Future Is Now – Improved Transparency Support
When we recently wrote about our excitement over the upcoming release of OpenInsight 10, we announced that we would be publishing articles that would help current and future SRP customers enjoy many of the future advances of OpenInsight 10 with their existing OpenInsight 8 and 9 systems. In other words, the future is now. In our first article in this series we will review OpenInsight 10 improvements in the area of image transparency and explain how these can be implemented today using SRP technology.
SRP Utilities Update 1.4.5
SRP Utilities was recently upgraded to 1.4.5 and now includes a new function called SRP_Trim. This new feature is like the Basic+ Trim function on steroids! You can read more about how it works in the SRP_Trim reference page. We would be remiss to not also mention the SRP Utilities 1.4.4 update that happened just a few days before 1.4.5. It included an improvement for SRP_Math, specifically the RANDOM service. Previously, RANDOM would only return a value between 0.0 and 1.0, requiring additional logic to generate a custom range of values. With this new version, you can now set a specific range you wish to receive a random number from. For more information, you can review the SRP_Math – RANDOM wiki page.
As always, the SRP Utilities are free for you to download and enjoy!
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