That is one reason why I only sell an unencrypted version of my listbox subclass.
I personally am very hesitant to use encrypted clases (even if free) or compiled plugins from single person operations.
- Karen
I must confess that I’m guilty of the same as Christian, many many moons ago, I was selling the “Audio Meta Data Suite” and the “Image Meta Data Suite”, as time went by, demand dried up and system changes broke the code repeatedly; so I faced the same issue. I no longer used either of these of these classes myself, and I tried to find someone to who did to take over the project.
I do not think a third party developer is supposed to jump no matter what the hoops of system changes so drastic it renders their technology incompatible. If you had no way to keep the thing alive under the current versions of the system, I think it was fair to discontinue it.
I cannot recall at this time third party tools written for RB that cannot work for Xojo, but there are. If their developer did not have the resources, time or inclination to move them to Xojo, I do not think they should be faulted for not continuing them.
I was not aware of the meandres that lead Christian to abandon his product, but reading a few of his blog posts shows both a difficulty with the transition to Xojo, and a growing interest into Objective-C, combined with apparent miscommunication with Geoff. That seems like a lot. Whatever the reasons, he decided to drop Elastic Window and that is his privilege. He could have done it in a softer and more serene way, but that is now history.
Maybe read this thread to get a bit of a feel for the demand
https://forum.xojo.com/14616-elastic-window-up-for-grabs/0#p118691
[quote=180048:@Dirk Cleenwerck]Maybe read this thread to get a bit of a feel for the demand
https://forum.xojo.com/14616-elastic-window-up-for-grabs/0#p118691[/quote]
Amazingly enough, that thread ends with James Redway mentioning big issues with issues with cocoa buttons, popupmenus and comboboxes. Seems the product was already a bit destitute.
If I recall, the “problems” are OS related. Popup menus and combo boxes have an enforced height limit. You can try that yourself by trying to make a 50 pixel high popup menu & run. Same with buttons. Pushbuttons of a certain height lose their 3D effect and look flat.
OS X restricts certain controls and how tall they can be.
Its not just Xojo - Xcode dislikes letting you alter their height as well.
For some controls they ship ONE set of graphics as they are basically fix size (height, width or both)
In OS X, you can used for some controls NSControlSize. (NSRegularControlSize, NSSmallControlSize, NSMiniControlSize)
(PushButton, RadioButton, CheckBox, UpDownArrows, Slider, ProgressWheel, PopupMenu)
In Windows, all controls resize at any height.
Indeed under Cocoa PopupMenu, ComboBox, SegmentedControl and regular buttons do not size up vertically. In RubberViews, there is an option that allows to prevent content resize for specific controls, to avoid awkward big fonts inside the controls that cannot take it.
I am working on providing a SegmentedControl, PopupMenu and ComboBox that resize vertically. For buttons, Rounded Bevel provides a decent replacement that resizes nicely.
BevelButton or PushButton ( Button Type = Gradient or Square or Bevel)
Thank you. I am trying to come up with solutions for RubberViews users. Already your example provides a nice way of having a ProgressWheel larger than 24 points. Now I have to find a way to manage that transparently.
Jon Ogden started this thread and related his concern (as I have done in another thread) that Christians Elastic Window is no longer being worked on. I was a customer of Christians, and he was always extremely helpful when I asked for support for Elastic Window. He was great. Christian has moved on, but fortunately for all of us who need to have controls resize automatically to any screen size, Michel is providing us with a solution. Im pretty excited about it.
As others have stated AutoLayOut can be rather tedious to work with - especially when you have scores of controls on a single window. It has not been determined when it will be released in Xojo desktop and how well it will work with desktop apps. I develop apps for customers who are running anything from a 1024 x 768 laptop to a 5120 x 2880 iMac. As it is now, simply anchoring controls to one edge just does not cut it for those users. It all comes down to the customer experience.
I have tried Michels RubberViews and I think it shows a lot of promise and the way Michel is talking here, he wants to take it to a higher level than Elastic Window. I think it will be a great asset to this community. I plan on buying Rubber Views when Michel gets it all set.
I started a new thread about RubberViews at https://forum.xojo.com/21657-rubberviews-resizes-windows-controls-for-you
If you do develop RubberViews (and sell it for something reasonable) i’ll be there with my wallet! I use mostly canvases, labels and a few listboxes, and i’d like something that adjusts stuff automatically if they elect to change resolutions within my product (from 1366x768 to 1920x1080 is my typical range for my users).
Just download the demo, and you will see these controls are perfectly managed within the window sizes you mention. The demo window is 1280x800, which you can maximize to 1920x1080. On the window of the demo, there is a listbox where the rowheight varies with the size of the screen and the text. The package also provides RubberCanvas, a drop-in replacement of Canvas (just change the Super to it) which resizes also the drawing done in Paint.
this is one of the major reasons why I have not entered into it. I am glad for those that have entered into it and I buy the add-ons when I see a fit for me. But for many buying an add-on is like asking them to give up their first born child.
thank you to all of you that write add-ons to Xojo!
[quote=180582:@scott boss]this is one of the major reasons why I have not entered into it. I am glad for those that have entered into it and I buy the add-ons when I see a fit for me. But for many buying an add-on is like asking them to give up their first born child.
thank you to all of you that write add-ons to Xojo![/quote]
In two decades of selling fonts, I may have sold a couple to developers. Whenever I get inquiries, I know providing a quote is a waste. For some reason, developers seem to expect font designers to give their work for free…
It should be noted that in general, I do not try to sell specifically to developers. They usually approach me, especially for MICR fonts where I happen to really have an excellent product. But when I see yet just another one saying ‘I want to develop a check writing application’ with a Yahoo address, I know the guy will never come up with any money to purchase his tool. I guess most of these guys end up pirating something.
[quote=180582:@scott boss]@Karen Atkocius Yes the Xojo add-on market is very price sensitive
this is one of the major reasons why I have not entered into it. I am glad for those that have entered into it and I buy the add-ons when I see a fit for me. But for many buying an add-on is like asking them to give up their first born child.
[/quote]
I have been using RB,RS,Xojo for almost 14 years. While I have have bought some add-ons over the years they have been few and far between.
The main reason for that is that in those almost 14 years I have not made any money from any APPLICATION* I have written. Most have been for work that i did on my own initiative, mostly on my own time (and paid for my tools myself)… 1
Obviously I don’t make my living coding. If I did I would have purchased a to more … But as it is it very hard to justify spending a lot to buy and keep current a lot of add-ons. And for those like me (where time is often not a factor) doing it oneself helps one become a better coder.
Maybe having a lot of uses like myself is a problem for the Xojo ecosystem… but Xojo’s approachability along with being Xplatform I think naturally draws users like myself. I suspect that unless they are pretty well off financially, users like myself will usually be very price sensitive.
*BTW I have made a little money from my listbox subclass, but obviously for things like that, one can not use commercial add-ons.
- karen
ElastiControls v1.7 (web edition is almost ready for a stable release). It was originally part of the XTeTiC Framework for Xojo, but was separated into its own entity shortly after Christian announced ElasticWindows up for sale.
Indeed it makes sense as you cannot write them, commercial add-ons be difficult to afford. They compete with all your personal expenses, in the computing realm or not. However, the Xojo ecosystem is rich enough to provide at least a couple superb add ons that are free : MacOSLib and Windows Functionality Suite.
[quote]*BTW I have made a little money from my listbox subclass, but obviously for things like that, one can not use commercial add-ons.
[/quote]
If I may make an observation, as a potential buyer as well as a colleague software vendor , I am not surprised you do not sell a lot. Your class is probably impressive, given your expertise, but last I tried to see if I could use it, your site was down or something. I had previously tried, but there was little or no documentation, and I found no evaluation software. That is making it awfully difficult for anybody to buy your creation. You really want to create a real page for people to see what your class is all about, with screen shots, description, if possible a demo app, and of course the “buy me” Paypal button at the minimum. It can be done on a shoe string, no need to rent a host. A personal page does quite fine, or some of the gazillion free hosted sites.
Also, I am sure given the probable quality of your class, Xojo would favorably consider adding it to their third party store at
I am sure you will get a lot of assistance from other members of the forum as well.