Version 2014 in development

New release and update announcements

Version 2014 in development

Postby Karlis » Fri Sep 28, 2012 6:57 pm

Just wanted to update those not using twitter.

If you are not following us on twitter, you can simply save our twitter link and check it on a regular basis, because from now on our twitter account will be the main source of new info on our products: https://twitter.com/blumentals

We are working on WeBuilder/Rapid PHP/HTMLPad/Rapid CSS 2014 which is to come in the first half of 2013.

Why so late? What happened? Why did we stuck?

Product was build using Delphi 7 - really old development environment. Software compiled with Delphi 7 has various problems on modern Windows versions, so we had to switch to more modern development environment. We decided to port the product to a newer version of Delphi, the problem, however, was that newer versions had made big changes to the programming language (all strings became unicode strings and a lot of string processing operations changed). So the challenges of moving code from the ancient Delphi 7 to more modern Delphi 2010 turned out to take more time than we anticipated. The good news is that in the future we will be able to easily move to even more modern Delphi (and hence have 64-bit support and other great opportunities), because after the big move to unicode, the programming language we use (Object Pascal for Delphi) is no more to changed radically.

The porting was done this year, because before that I simply did not have enough help, but since January, Aivars has joined the team and become part of the business. Basically we have spend over 7 months just to port the code. If we factor in other external challenges, basically we have invested a whole year just to make the code better and easier to maintain in the future (that excludes any fixes or features). Now everything seems more or less stable, so we are adding new features and fixing problems for a while now.

What happens now?

We are adding new features and fixing problems. So if you suggested a feature in like 2009 and it was never implemented, chances are, it will be now, also this is a good time to ping us with new and old suggestions. I am ashamed that a lot of parts of the software are just too slow, so we will be fixing these. Also a lot of things are obsolete and not modern - these will be updated.

What features will come?

Cannot say yet, if you follow us on Twitter, you will catch a glimpse of some of the new developments. Currently there are over 100 items to do, we will try to add as many as we can and balance between the number of new features and release date. One thing I can say, this will be the biggest update ever and product will become faster, so no worries about it becoming big and overloaded with useless stuff.
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Re: Version 2014 in development

Postby phpaddicted » Mon Oct 01, 2012 11:23 am

Dear Team at Blumentals,

It would be nice if you could fix the bug in the code that handles code snippets in the Library.

I submitted this some time ago.

It slows down typing and occurs when the library is too large.

Keep up the good work!
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Re: Version 2014 in development

Postby Karlis » Mon Oct 01, 2012 9:08 pm

Yes, I well remember that one, and it is definitely in the list. In fact, we will eliminate a dozen of slowdowns.

But, please post and remind bug reports in appropriate forums.
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Re: Version 2014 in development

Postby mxs » Wed Oct 03, 2012 11:32 am

We all really appreciate Webuilder and I have been a user ever since I gave up using Nick Bradbury's Homesite.
However, the continued development of this product for Windows alone will surely see its demise.
The migration to Apple Macs is growing apace and with the launch of a new range any time now will surely see the end to the viability of using this program on a Windows PC.
Most of our office now use Macs and by the end of the year all employees will use Macs. I use Webuilder on my my iMac using "Wine" because I just don't have the time to be switching on a Windows PC that is continuously updating itself and requiring so much maintenance.
Many domestic users of Windows PCs are finding that an iPad is all they need so the Windows PC is loosing a big part of its market.
Please Karlis - look at the editors that are available for the Mac and you see that none of them have anywhere near the power of Webuilder or the thought and expertise behind it.
As a user of both Webuilder and an iMac I beg you to use your expertise to satisfy the growing market of PC users.

Kind Regards
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Re: Version 2014 in development

Postby chechnyan » Sat Oct 13, 2012 9:13 pm

any news , information, idea yet , about what to expect in the next version,
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Re: Version 2014 in development

Postby Karlis » Sat Oct 13, 2012 10:46 pm

I try to tweet about new bits now and then...

Speed and memory management
Basically we have started with a big housecleaning, optimized a lot of code, so a lot of lagging is gone. Auto complete is now instant under all conditions, program loads much faster (by 25% - 30% to be exact), a lot of memory issues have been fixed, so everything should be faster. Another example - find in files is almost 2 times faster for example. Also we have managed to remove the new doc opening flicker at least on most computers.

A lot of tiny bits
Then we have implemented already some 30 user suggestions regarding smaller improvements that have ling been neglected and this is just the beginning. One example is improved bracket auto complete or quicker access to current project properties or possibility to change the unfortunate keyboard shortcut for "delete line", there will be hundreds of these things and release notes will include more info.

Bigger features
I already mentioned on the Twitter that we will support inline todo (with special TODO:, FIXME: etc markers). All HTML wizards (e.g. FONT tag) will be updated to support modern coding, namely CSS. Also we will have the most up to date CSS 3 and CSS Real Life (vendor prefixes etc.) specifications and also all CSS features will support modern CSS. IE9 preview. HTML Tidy for HTML5 is already in. Not yet 100% confirmed, but we will try to add Chrome preview and plugin platform (developers will be able to write their own text-processing plugins in JavaScript, C++ or whatever), also Zen coding is on the list. And more.

Eye candy
New, modern icons (but not those ugly from Office 2013). New interface design (with a choice to have old designs and even special choice for those who loved the ridiculously electro-blue XP style toolbars) and style up to date with Windows 7/8 desktop apps. A tiny bit bigger tabs. New and really cool icon and probably even separate new icons for various associated file types. Oh, and improved toolbar and side panel docking.

Docs and info
We are dropping the ancient CSS reference and replacing it with a modern up-to-date online resource (most likely MDN). We are putting our help system online. And we have updated and compacted CSS browser compatibility info, so now it reads like IE8+ FF4+ OP10+ and is up to data even with IE10, OP12, FF16 etc. Also we will have a new website.

I'd not prefer to brag or promise anything in particular, but we do work hard every day and try to do do as much as we can. In fact most of what I mentioned (except Chrome preview and plugin platform) is already done and we hope to release some mid-development preview within the following months.
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Re: Version 2014 in development

Postby chechnyan » Sun Oct 14, 2012 12:01 am

impressive !
Keep up the good work guy's .
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Re: Version 2014 in development

Postby xtom » Wed Oct 17, 2012 1:11 pm

Sounds really great! Please give the file explorer some love, there are a lot of good improvement suggestions posted in the forum and it's the part of the program that everybody uses.
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Re: Version 2014 in development

Postby chechnyan » Wed Oct 17, 2012 1:21 pm

xtom wrote:Sounds really great! Please give the file explorer some love, there are a lot of good improvement suggestions posted in the forum and it's the part of the program that everybody uses.

+1
totally agreed , most of the time i need, to browse the file by windows explorer.
another nice thing would be if the (new file) would give me a various of file types . or a default extension depending on the project type.
with a ready doc-type and default HTML structure .
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Re: Version 2014 in development

Postby Aivars » Thu Oct 18, 2012 6:44 pm

xtom wrote:Sounds really great! Please give the file explorer some love, there are a lot of good improvement suggestions posted in the forum and it's the part of the program that everybody uses.


Some love has been given to file explorer already in the development version.
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Re: Version 2014 in development

Postby Emulman » Sat Oct 20, 2012 12:48 pm

Great Karlis! and to improve the new version of webuilder i suggest you a menu voice to insert automatically the urls of javascript frameworks like jquery and jquery-ui and relative css stylesheets. Besides the possibility to experiment the pages in incorporated safari, chrome, opera (not only explorer and firefox). I would add also a new, more modern toolbar. Ah and update the wizard of html tags correspondingly to the version (for example if i choose XHTML 1.1 the tag SCRIPT uses parameter type, with HTML5 there is no need of this).
If you can do these, webuilder will be the best web editor of the web!
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Re: Version 2014 in development

Postby falk » Wed Oct 24, 2012 1:25 pm

I own WeBuilder 2010 and want to upgrade to the next version. Is there an offer, to buy the 2011 version including the upgrade to the comming 2014 version?
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Re: Version 2014 in development

Postby Aivars » Wed Oct 24, 2012 1:45 pm

We haven't announced it yet (I think) but everyone who buys or upgrades to version 2011 during October or later has automatically qualified for free upgrade to the upcoming version 2014.
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Re: Version 2014 in development

Postby Steve(spt) » Sat Oct 27, 2012 5:19 pm

This great news on Version 2014.

One thing that bugs me is the file renaming in WeBuilder File explorer. When you select a file, the selection is highlight in blue, as it should be. Right click to bring up the context menu. Select rename option, now if you click in the selected file name you do not have 'I' bar cursors. You cannot judge where you are in the characters in the file name which makes change names a bit hit and miss. Try it! If we could have an 'I' bar cursor in there would be a hole lot easier.

To the Twitter front, not all of us use Twitter please don't for get us!
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Re: Version 2014 in development

Postby Aivars » Mon Oct 29, 2012 10:23 am

I just tested renaming in the dev version and the cursor is visible while renaming. But so it is in version 2011 on my PC.

Twitter is not the only option, Karlis cross-posts in FaceTube or whatever it's called, also you can subscribe to twitter by RSS.
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