VisualNeo-Newbie Starting-Best Practices
Quote from David Pegram on September 14, 2021, 2:21 pmHello everyone,
I am a very experienced desktop application developer with strong database experience. In my 20+ years of development, I have mainly used .Net, since its beginnings, and others even before .Net was born, with SQL Server, MySQL, and a few others in the backend. I have made a decision to now move to more mobile/web based development. Actually I have made this decision like a smoker decides to quit smoking, starting and stopping, 1000 times over a few years lol. Every time I start to learn mobile/web development it seems languages have grown, or new languages are now the focus, so I never really felt comfortable focusing the majority of my time making the transition. I must say, I have a better feeling about this move to mobile/web development after finding this software, VisualNeo, which I still do not remember how I even found it to begin with, but, I am very glad I did!
I have looked through the forums, help material, and looked at the sample apps. There is a wealth of information, material, and helpful users within these forums that leads me to believe in this software. I am someone who will try very hard to figure something out before I post a question to the forum, even though I know everyone loves reading those questions that have been asked, and answered, over, and over, again :)
Here are a couple questions I have tried to figure out. They may be very basic to experienced mobile/web developers and my goal is to be one of these experienced developers within the next couple years. I am also trying very hard to stop thinking in terms of the .Net structure of things to more of a "mixed bag" of languages and methods, which I am finding very challenging in the beginning of my learning process.
Question 1. Is it better to have separate applications for device types or have one application if the functionality needs to be the same? For example, I am wanting to build an application for one of my companies to streamline customer orders. I will need this on mobile devices and desktop/laptop computers. The overall functionality of the application will be the same but the layout of the views will differ because of screen size. So, would you recommend 1 application or separate applications for each targeted device type?
Question 2. If you do want to build a multi-resolution application in VisualNeo, what is the recommended way of doing this? Or is it not recommended at all? I do not see how to adjust page sizes after the initial selection has been made on the Workspace / Device Size property selection. I know there is a auto-size option but that would only be recommended for small resolution changes, not going from a mobile view to a HD laptop view. Maybe its this way because its not recommended to do this.
Question 3. Are there any examples around adding controls from runtime? For example, if I want to build an application with my company name at the very bottom using a label, if I do this in design time the customer can remove the html but if I can create the label and populate the label from runtime this would better protect the code so it would make it a lot harder to remove. What is the recommended way of protecting controls and information you want to present?
Question 4. I really want to understand API calls from a mobile/web perspective. I have several external systems I need to connect to and pull data from. Most of these systems use Auth0 security and the data is in JSON format. One of these systems uses SOAP calls. I have seen the examples around JSON data within VisualNEO but for some reason I am having a difficult time putting the code together for my needs. Is there a VisualNeo expert in this area I can work with? I am more than willing to pay someone for their time helping me understand how I can achieve my goals doing this from within VisualNeo.
I really appreciate any feedback anyone can give me. I will try to shorten any future post so it doesn't turn into a book :)
Thank you!
Hello everyone,
I am a very experienced desktop application developer with strong database experience. In my 20+ years of development, I have mainly used .Net, since its beginnings, and others even before .Net was born, with SQL Server, MySQL, and a few others in the backend. I have made a decision to now move to more mobile/web based development. Actually I have made this decision like a smoker decides to quit smoking, starting and stopping, 1000 times over a few years lol. Every time I start to learn mobile/web development it seems languages have grown, or new languages are now the focus, so I never really felt comfortable focusing the majority of my time making the transition. I must say, I have a better feeling about this move to mobile/web development after finding this software, VisualNeo, which I still do not remember how I even found it to begin with, but, I am very glad I did!
I have looked through the forums, help material, and looked at the sample apps. There is a wealth of information, material, and helpful users within these forums that leads me to believe in this software. I am someone who will try very hard to figure something out before I post a question to the forum, even though I know everyone loves reading those questions that have been asked, and answered, over, and over, again :)
Here are a couple questions I have tried to figure out. They may be very basic to experienced mobile/web developers and my goal is to be one of these experienced developers within the next couple years. I am also trying very hard to stop thinking in terms of the .Net structure of things to more of a "mixed bag" of languages and methods, which I am finding very challenging in the beginning of my learning process.
Question 1. Is it better to have separate applications for device types or have one application if the functionality needs to be the same? For example, I am wanting to build an application for one of my companies to streamline customer orders. I will need this on mobile devices and desktop/laptop computers. The overall functionality of the application will be the same but the layout of the views will differ because of screen size. So, would you recommend 1 application or separate applications for each targeted device type?
Question 2. If you do want to build a multi-resolution application in VisualNeo, what is the recommended way of doing this? Or is it not recommended at all? I do not see how to adjust page sizes after the initial selection has been made on the Workspace / Device Size property selection. I know there is a auto-size option but that would only be recommended for small resolution changes, not going from a mobile view to a HD laptop view. Maybe its this way because its not recommended to do this.
Question 3. Are there any examples around adding controls from runtime? For example, if I want to build an application with my company name at the very bottom using a label, if I do this in design time the customer can remove the html but if I can create the label and populate the label from runtime this would better protect the code so it would make it a lot harder to remove. What is the recommended way of protecting controls and information you want to present?
Question 4. I really want to understand API calls from a mobile/web perspective. I have several external systems I need to connect to and pull data from. Most of these systems use Auth0 security and the data is in JSON format. One of these systems uses SOAP calls. I have seen the examples around JSON data within VisualNEO but for some reason I am having a difficult time putting the code together for my needs. Is there a VisualNeo expert in this area I can work with? I am more than willing to pay someone for their time helping me understand how I can achieve my goals doing this from within VisualNeo.
I really appreciate any feedback anyone can give me. I will try to shorten any future post so it doesn't turn into a book :)
Thank you!
Quote from luishp on September 14, 2021, 9:54 pmHi @david-pegram and welcome to the forums!
Question 1. Is it better to have separate applications for device types or have one application if the functionality needs to be the same? For example, I am wanting to build an application for one of my companies to streamline customer orders. I will need this on mobile devices and desktop/laptop computers. The overall functionality of the application will be the same but the layout of the views will differ because of screen size. So, would you recommend 1 application or separate applications for each targeted device type?
It depends very much on your project. You can try both approaches. Anyway, once you learn how to create responsive designs it's usually better to work with a single project as it will be easier to maintain. VisualNEO Web has many options to resize the screen to the appropiate screen size or even to show the appropiate page within a single project.
Question 2. If you do want to build a multi-resolution application in VisualNeo, what is the recommended way of doing this? Or is it not recommended at all? I do not see how to adjust page sizes after the initial selection has been made on the Workspace / Device Size property selection. I know there is a auto-size option but that would only be recommended for small resolution changes, not going from a mobile view to a HD laptop view. Maybe its this way because its not recommended to do this.
There are many options here. Please take a look at this video tutorial and don't miss out our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbuuwUMPR0Y
Question 3. Are there any examples around adding controls from runtime? For example, if I want to build an application with my company name at the very bottom using a label, if I do this in design time the customer can remove the html but if I can create the label and populate the label from runtime this would better protect the code so it would make it a lot harder to remove. What is the recommended way of protecting controls and information you want to present?
I don't understand this question very well. Why do you think the customer can remove the HTML? Anyway you can inject HTML on design time very easily and even create content structures from a database.
Question 4. I really want to understand API calls from a mobile/web perspective. I have several external systems I need to connect to and pull data from. Most of these systems use Auth0 security and the data is in JSON format. One of these systems uses SOAP calls. I have seen the examples around JSON data within VisualNEO but for some reason I am having a difficult time putting the code together for my needs. Is there a VisualNeo expert in this area I can work with? I am more than willing to pay someone for their time helping me understand how I can achieve my goals doing this from within VisualNeo.
If you need athentication then you will probably need some server side code to get the information (PHP, NodeJS...). Note that all code within a VisualNEO Web application is client side and thus easily visible by the user. Server side code may be quite simple. The included neoPhp plugin does something similar but for working with databases. What you will probably need is a server side script to get the information from the server and send it to your VisualNEO Web app in JSON format.
I hope it helps :)
Hi @david-pegram and welcome to the forums!
Question 1. Is it better to have separate applications for device types or have one application if the functionality needs to be the same? For example, I am wanting to build an application for one of my companies to streamline customer orders. I will need this on mobile devices and desktop/laptop computers. The overall functionality of the application will be the same but the layout of the views will differ because of screen size. So, would you recommend 1 application or separate applications for each targeted device type?
It depends very much on your project. You can try both approaches. Anyway, once you learn how to create responsive designs it's usually better to work with a single project as it will be easier to maintain. VisualNEO Web has many options to resize the screen to the appropiate screen size or even to show the appropiate page within a single project.
Question 2. If you do want to build a multi-resolution application in VisualNeo, what is the recommended way of doing this? Or is it not recommended at all? I do not see how to adjust page sizes after the initial selection has been made on the Workspace / Device Size property selection. I know there is a auto-size option but that would only be recommended for small resolution changes, not going from a mobile view to a HD laptop view. Maybe its this way because its not recommended to do this.
There are many options here. Please take a look at this video tutorial and don't miss out our YouTube channel:
Question 3. Are there any examples around adding controls from runtime? For example, if I want to build an application with my company name at the very bottom using a label, if I do this in design time the customer can remove the html but if I can create the label and populate the label from runtime this would better protect the code so it would make it a lot harder to remove. What is the recommended way of protecting controls and information you want to present?
I don't understand this question very well. Why do you think the customer can remove the HTML? Anyway you can inject HTML on design time very easily and even create content structures from a database.
Question 4. I really want to understand API calls from a mobile/web perspective. I have several external systems I need to connect to and pull data from. Most of these systems use Auth0 security and the data is in JSON format. One of these systems uses SOAP calls. I have seen the examples around JSON data within VisualNEO but for some reason I am having a difficult time putting the code together for my needs. Is there a VisualNeo expert in this area I can work with? I am more than willing to pay someone for their time helping me understand how I can achieve my goals doing this from within VisualNeo.
If you need athentication then you will probably need some server side code to get the information (PHP, NodeJS...). Note that all code within a VisualNEO Web application is client side and thus easily visible by the user. Server side code may be quite simple. The included neoPhp plugin does something similar but for working with databases. What you will probably need is a server side script to get the information from the server and send it to your VisualNEO Web app in JSON format.
I hope it helps :)
Quote from David Pegram on September 18, 2021, 6:43 pmThank you @luishp! There is still a lot to learn for me. I really appreciate your guidance!
Thank you @luishp! There is still a lot to learn for me. I really appreciate your guidance!