Alpha Software Blog



Improved Mobile Login, Super Fast Deployment and More in v4.4.4

alphaLaunchAlpha Software has just released Alpha Anywhere 4.4.4 - with AlphaLaunch! AlphaLaunch offers developers an alternative way to publish and deploy their mobile applications that does not require any PhoneGap or App Store accounts. AlphaLaunch can also be used with the trial version to deploy and test mobile applications out of the box without any additional third party tools. Applications published to production environments using AlphaLaunch is a premium feature available only to Alpha Anywhere Enterprise Edition customers.

In addition to AlphaLaunch, we have also made the mobile experience better with new features that make it easier to build beautiful, offline-capable mobile applications.

 

 

 

Persistent Login for Mobile Apps

northwindLoginA common pattern in mobile applications is to not require the user to login to the application after they have successfully logged in for the first time. The login should be persistent until it is explicitly revoked by the action of an Administrator, or until the end of the persistent login period is reached. In Alpha Anywhere 4.4.4, JSON Web Tokens (JWT) can be used to build mobile applications with persistent login.

A JWT is a special encoded token containing the user's credentials and expiry information. This token is provided to the server as part of every Ajax callback from the application to validate the user's credentials. The user does not need to login again until the token expires or their access is revoked, allowing them to remain logged in even if their session expires.

To learn how to add persistent login into your applications, see  How to Build a Mobile Application with Persistent Login. For new applications built in Alpha Anywhere 4.4.4, you can also take advantage of the new UX Component template with persistent login which has persistent login built-in to the component out-of-the-box.
 

Endless Design Possibilities with Style Tweaks


tweaks

Version 3 and newer styles (including the iOS7, AndroidLight, AndroidDark, and Alpha styles) can be modified or extended without copying the original style sheet using style 'tweaks'. Tweaks are adjustments to the style definition that are stored in a separate file in the Web Project folder. Sub-themes, CSS classes, and style overrides can be defined using style tweaks instead of modifying the core style sheet. This gives you the freedom and flexibility to modify styles that ship with Alpha Anywhere without needing to modify the core style sheet.

Before style tweaks were added, modifying a core Alpha Anywhere style required copying it to the development workspace. If the style is modified in a release of Alpha Anywhere to fix a bug or add support for a new control type, the local copy of the style in the development project is not updated. Using style tweaks lets you to modify a style without needing to create a local copy and eliminates the possibility of missing out on feature updates to the style sheet.

See the UX Component's Style sub-theme and CSS 'tweaks' property to start styling applications.

Unrestricted Offline Data Storage for List Controls


When building a mobile application that requires offline support, developers use List controls with Detail Views and to turn on the option to persist the List data to storage. The data in the List are persisted to the browser's Local Storage, which is limited to about 5mb of data.

Now, if a mobile application is run as a PhoneGap application, List control data can be persisted to the device’s file system rather than local storage. The file system can store significantly more data than local storage.

persistFS

Optimized TextArea Editor


editorTextArea_small

A new pre-defined editor for a FormView control is now available in the Defined Controls section of the UX toolbox. The [Editor-TextArea] pre-defined control creates an editor for a FormView value. The editor uses a TextArea control and it has a vertical scroller so that long text can easily be scrolled on touch devices.
 

Upgrade to Alpha Anywhere 4.4.4


In addition to these great features, the following features are also available in Alpha Anywhere 4.4.4:

    • Enhanced support for using and creating Node.JS services and modules


    • New functions and functionality in Xbasic


    • Updates to the Standard Application Server to add support for seamless transition between the Standard Application Server and Application Server for IIS



Download the latest release from within Alpha Anywhere to start using these new features today!

Not an Alpha Anywhere Customer? Get the Trial!
Download the trial of Alpha Anywhere to explore these features and more. Get started.

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About Author

Sarah Mitchell
Sarah Mitchell

Technical Writer and Documentation Expert at Alpha Software


The Alpha platform is the only unified mobile and web app development and deployment environment with distinct “no-code” and “low-code” components. Using the Alpha TransForm no-code product, business users and developers can take full advantage of all the capabilities of the smartphone to turn any form into a mobile app in minutes, and power users can add advanced app functionality with Alpha TransForm's built-in programming language. IT developers can use the Alpha Anywhere low-code environment to develop complex web or mobile business apps from scratch, integrate data with existing systems of record and workflows (including data collected via Alpha TransForm), and add additional security or authentication requirements to protect corporate data.

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