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Monday, September 12, 2016

Installable Web Applications

Hi Everyone;




    Here is another interesting new feature in the Appeon 2016 product released on September 9, 2016 - called the Installable Web Application or IWA for short! The IWA feature is automatically available when you upgrade your Appeon Server to the 2016 release. Once your PowerBuilder application has been deployed to the Appeon Server as a Web Application, you can now also deploy this directly to an MS-WIndows desktop user. The deployed IWA application runs like a locally installed WIn32 application. The benefits of an IWA are:
  • The deployment of your Appeon Web app should be more straightforward and reliable as you eliminate a key environment dependency
  • No longer require configuration of the Web browser plug-in.
  • IWAs are easier to launch since they are resident on the user’s machine and have shortcuts.
  • In terms of performance, response times are similar to the web browser model but IWAs will consume less client-side memory.

    Before you deploy the IWA application, you can complete the new IWA properties found in the Appeon Developer tool that is integrated with the PowerBuilder IDE, as follows:






  Once the IWA properties are completed, you can simply install the IWA from you web browser, as follows: http:////IAWRunner.html. The IAW Runner application will install like a any Set-up.exe into the client machine and become a launcher for your PB based IWA application. For example ...

           





When you update the PowerBuilder application on the Appeon Server, all the IWA desktop deployments are automatically updated as well the next time they start!

And basically, that's IWA in a nutshell! 

Regards ... Chris

Friday, September 2, 2016

Appeon Mobile - Split Screen

** Hot News **


   While testing the new Appeon 2016 product's Appeon Work Space (AWS) installation on my mobile devices, I was also able to these this the new Android O/S release 7.0. There is an interesting feature of the new Droid 7.0 O/S known as the Split View (Screen) feature. This means that you can have two mobile applications displayed and interact with them simultaneously. To my delight, the new Appeon 2016 AWS worked the first time I tested this new Android feature!





  Using the new Split View mode is a little non-intuitive though. So here are the steps you need to use:

1) Open up any Android application - like the Web Browser for example.
2) Press and hold the Recent Apps (minimize) button for at least 2-3 seconds.
3) A split request dialog will appear.
4) Now press (tap) the Home button.
5) Launch AWS (or any other application) and start a mobile PB application.
6) Now ... Enjoy split mode!

Example of Browser & AWS running a mobile PB application in split mode ...



  (Actual PB 12.6 mobile application on my Nexus 9 tablet in Split mode)

Note: Once in split mode, you can swap out any number of applications in the split area.

Regards ... Chris