What is your favourite add-in?

What is everyones favourite add-on for Xojo and most importantly why?

Hmm, I’ve never thought of add-ins (I assume you mean plug-ins) in that manner. Sort of like asking what is your favourite wheel on your car ;).

Anyway, my daily driver plugins are Einhugur and MBS. They’re written by pros, regularly updated, and save me a gazillion hours of research and coding.

Thanks Tanner,

I typed plug-ins but then realised the forum here calls them Add-Ons so changed it.

PiDog DataView. Reason being, it is everything that ListBox should have been from day 1, and more

MBS, Einhugur, and Bob Delaney’s math plugins for some of our more complex apps.

For me, there is no single answer.

If you want a learning experience on how others write in Xojo, I highly recommend https://www.jeremieleroy.com/ https://www.pidog.com/wp/dataview/ and https://graffitisuite.com/ as well as anyone else that writes their controls in pure Xojo.

For me, my first instinct as a programmer is to not necessarily just copy-and-pastes code modules into my projects - I prefer to review every line and try to understand what the other programmer was doing first.

Reviewing the code written by others (mentioned above), there have been many illuminating moments, when I realized just what some Xojo features and/or functions are meant to do (and see it running live or debug mode), then realizing how to take bits of this new knowledge and make something new.

But as often is the case with programming there has to be a balance between learning, creating and saving time (and performance). There is where the MBS Plugins come in. They are also great of course, because MBS often deliver something extra, or a bit more speed out of something that could otherwise slow down your learning/coding process - when you don’t have that time to spare.

My apologies for not listing everyone that I have purchased from or downloaded free source or examples from. Thank you.

When distributing macOS Software outside of the Mac App Store… Then for the user’s best experience and confidence, macOS applications have to be Notarized by Apple. Unfortunately, Xojo doesn’t provide that functionality built-in their Xojo IDE…

Since this is kind of required nowadays, one needs to do that somehow. Either figure out and do all by oneself. Or use an “Add-In / Add-On”. My two favourite options then are:

  • App Wrapper (a commercial, very good and most complete solution by @Sam Rowlands)
  • Xojo2DMG (an example Xojo Post Build Script (full disclosure: that’s provided by me) which shows how one can do that oneself, but just for rather basic needs)

We’re a bit of a special case since we do nothing but consulting but here are our most used add-ons:

• Monkeybread Plugins
• Einhugur Plugins
• ARGen/ActiveRecord (this is our database ORM tool/classes) that makes using database object-oriented
• Shorts (this is our reporting classes that work on desktop and web. Desktop apps can have a report designer)
• App Wrapper for code signing and helping with Notarization
• DMG Canvas for disk image creation (with code signing and Notarization too).
• Inno Setup for creating windows installers
• KSign utility - Windows code signing
• Smart JSON Editor - Mac tool for viewing/editing JSON strings
• Base - SQLite database tool
• Navicat - MySQL, Postgres, and SQLite database tool

My favorite add-on is the Formatted Text Control from BKeeney Software. Unlike TextArea, it is very flexible across platforms, had a lot of display options, you can modify the code, create your own export formats and use it to display reports. The price is absolutely fair.

MBS Chartdirector is my jam

@Roger Meier 's Open Source DataPlot classes is fantastic. I have donated to his projects for him to keep them going and this works for Xojo 2019 r1.1.

I use a large amount of Win32 API declares to extend Xojo’s functionality with the Windows OS.

WiringPi was my favourite GPIO electrical project access for Raspberry Pi, but this is now no longer supported.

InnoSetup for creating Windows Installers.

And the database tool plugins that Xojo creates for SQLite and PostreSQL for versions up to Xojo 2019 r1.1.