InForm Beta 7 is out now

[FellippeHeitor]

Update (November 2018): Beta 8 is now available


InForm for QB64 Beta 7 brings a redesigned interface for an enhanced user experience as well as a handful of improvements, new functionality and bug fixes. Check out some of what's new:

(Check out this video to *see* some of what's new: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIKjCM4eNNE)

- Major interface overhaul, with control properties more easily accessible.

- Snap to edges feature improved to have controls detect each other snap by proximity.

- New auto-size feature for labels at design time.

- Right-click a button to "Set as default" so it can be triggered with Enter at runtime.

- New NumericTextBox control to get numeric input from your users without having to worry about validating its contents.

- The mask property can now be set and tested at design time so you can get user input in a specific format.

- Clipboard operations rewritten from the ground up: controls can now be copied, cut and pasted much more reliably. Copied controls now remain in memory even after a form or even InForm itself is closed, so that you can transfer controls between existing files easily.

- New SetFocus to change the focus to another control programmatically.

- InForm now attempts to preserve your existing code when you make edits, which makes it easier than ever to edit existing programs.

- To select multiple controls you can now click them while holding down the Ctrl key. You can now also use Shift to select a range of controls (click the first control, hold shift, then click the last control in the range you'd like to have selected at once).

- Menus items can be set to have a Bullet marker. Groups of menu items (separated by a hyphen) behave just like a group of Radio buttons in a form, allowing you to have options that mutually exclude each other in your menus.

- Right-click the form preview to "Add menu bar control".

- Beta 7 now includes an online updater. Whenever a new version is made available at our server, you will be notified and asked to update; That means that Beta 7 is the last version of InForm you will have to manually download. Auto-updating can be disabled in the Options menu.

Grab the latest version at qb64.org/inform

[bplus]

That is one awesome list of improvements! Got to check it out!

[_vince]

Very nice, one could say Steve-esque

[bplus]

Quick question, will InForm Beta 7 require anything newer from QB64 than version 1106, last version before 1.2 switch?

[FellippeHeitor]

InForm beta 7 requires QB64 version 1.2

However, the way we were developing QB64 until we changed the version number to 1.2 was by adding new things without changing version numbers until we thought there was enough change to justify the version bump. Now we changed that as we have the stable and development builds you can get at the landing page at www.qb64.org.

You already have 1.2, you're just lazy to download the official update

[bplus]

Lazy? yes, I've already confessed... If I weren't, I'd be programming in C or Masm maybe... if I really weren't lazy, maybe even Java, ha!

It is not just a matter of another download of QB64.exe and it's required supplements. It is also a matter of all those dang samples that I already have and have in various stages of change or thrown out because allot don't work. I am lazy because I do not want to keep different sets of samples or attempt to manage them. I also want to keep my own code developed under a version in that time zone. Lazy and not wasteful of space, though I probably have plenty to waste.

Yeah, why not just another QB64 folder? I could just load old files from the other folder... oh wait, that dang old file manager system the IDE uses, I can't see the files in the folders or see the whole path I am using or have used... Oh yeah, and I tried that with Walter's version and first ORG version I downloaded... what a nightmare trying to find something you remember doing in one of those versions.

Talk about lazy, who do I blame for out of date samples?

S'OK though, JB is just as bad about keeping samples current to download version and your Inform is starting to overtake and really outshine their version specially if we can move controls around and save code already written. You are catching up to what VB was doing in 1995. ;-))

Well enough of being lazy and cranky, back to coding...

[bplus]

OK let's see if I can properly distribute my first test code with InForm beta 7.

Just a simple coder and decoder of a short text string.

I had trouble loading another text box with text code/decode from the other textbox*, so I went back, made the form bigger and added labels. The code for the event subs was saved but the code I had copy/pasted before all that was lost.

* Trying to change contents of textbox through code had 2 bad results either the previous text would not clear or the correct text would appear but in faded color?

Append: OK everything worked for me from the downloaded zip folder. Now I have to figure out why I have X's on many of my desktop folders???

[FellippeHeitor]

Good to see you and InForm are getting along, bplus!

InForm attempts to preserve all the code below the line that reads:

Code: QB64: [Select]

1. ': External modules: ---------------------------------------------------------------
2.  

Anything above that is prone to be lost in this version, as that's the area where control IDs are initially defined, and that must be rewritten when you overwrite an existing module, as controls will probably have changed names or even have been deleted. Sorry you lost some code, but glad you found your way to get it back (the IDE's Ctrl+Z I assume? Because it goes back even across sections, it has saved me a bunch of times).

The problem you describe with the textboxes sound like a simple solution: you probably changed their Caption() instead of their Text(). These are two separate arrays and the editable text of a textbox is stored in Text(), while Caption() is for other types of controls (like Labels, CheckBoxes, Radio Buttons, MenuItems, etc). For a TextBox control, caption is what's shown when the box is empty, signaling what type of input that box is expecting.

[FellippeHeitor]

What do you mean with "I have X's on many of my desktop folders"?

[bplus]

I mean after a longish session with InForm, I discovered a light gray X on maybe half my desktop Folders when I went to test an extraction of a zip file and running code before trying it over the Internet.

They were in the bottom left corners of the folder and about half their height.

They were all cleared when I turned off and then restarted my laptop, and still are gone.

Maybe I should have taken a snapshot. It was peculiar!

PS I did not notice the external modules line, there was so much to see the first time but I will be looking for it from now on, thanks.

Confirmed: I was changing the Caption property not the Text. It does work as I originally intended. The message goes into the coded box with button press and vice versa. BTW, for some reason I did not think of control(handle) as an array item, I was thinking it was a function for some reason. dah!

[TempodiBasic]

Hi Guys
Fine to meet you here.

I can never  believe  my eyes....in this evening I have read the mind of Bplus.... :-)
What? Why? When? I don't know!
That is what it is happened:
while I'm reading this forum... waiting that the master forum wakes up itself... I have looked at section programs.... so I see evolution of Inform to version 7beta.... well I have said to myself: let's go to see what's news... so I have looked  the  youtube video and I have decided to download this last version of Inform... and to try to do something of simple but interesting like crypting a simple text.
So with so poor efforts I drew the interface of the program and I have had to become familiar with Inform's structure of code and Inform's items....
I find very nice improvements from the last time I used it!

But by the hell!!! I go down to this thread and I find Bplus that already is making a similar program! :-) 
It seems that the Jung's collettive uncounscious is a reality! Or it maybe the telephaty?

Good Coding
And great job Fellippe!

[FellippeHeitor]

Thanks TempodiBasic! I hope you have a good experience with this latest version of InForm.
Please let me know if you need any assistance with it.

[bplus]

Hi TempodiBasic,

I was going to say, "Great minds think alike.", but then I wondered from where that expression came.

And found this:

What it actually means
The original saying is as follows “Great minds think alike, though fools seldom differ.” Unlike the other sayings, this phrase isn’t used to teach a lesson, rather it is a humorous expression. The second half of the expression, “fools seldom differ.” suggests that the people that came to the same conclusion aren’t so smart after all.

https://mystudentvoices.com/4-quotes-that-you-have-been-terribly-misquoting-6b2233d3212d

I have to say, for me, the original saying is "Great minds think alike." since I learned it originally and liked it. I can see why the thing about fools might have been long forgotten (if that truely was the original which I doubt because how can one make a joke about fools with an unknown saying?)

Yikes more useless thoughts, got to respect the fools part. ;-))

I would like to see your program to compare just how close we were thinking (or not thinking).

[bplus]

BTW this is why I made the bonehead mistake of trying to modify the caption property in the text box control (see attached wiki snap).

The wiki does not speak of a Text property in the list of editable properties for Textbox and it wasn't listed in the Frm maker either (but I can understand that).

I did see this:

Var$ = Text(ControlID)

but as I said, I had the impression Text() was a function, not an array.


So, it was a huge hint to me (from very old VB experience) it is not
Control.Property = value in question

but
Property(ControlID) = value in question

So about Control arrays?
VB was Control(Index).Property   (I think)

So InForm is?
Property(ControlID(Index)) ? or no arrays of controls?

BTW, I noticed a VB for DOS reference in the code which I found very interesting.

[FellippeHeitor]

There are four arrays you manipulate directly: Text(), Caption(), Mask() and Tooltip().

For all other properties you use the Control() array with the control ID you want to manipulate like:

Code: QB64: [Select]

1.     Control(TextBox1).Disabled = True

There are no native arrays of controls but there's nothing to stop you from creating one with a group of similar controls you may want to manipulate in a loop for example. Control IDs are of type LONG.

About VBDOS, I included an utility in InForm that will take a legacy VBDOS 1.000 form (provided it was saved as plain text and not binary) and output an InForm native form. Support is limited but some old projects may end up seeing new light with QB64 with less effort by using the converter.