BrightForms on Windows Phone and Store Appendix
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Introduction
This document details what features are currently unsupported in BrightForms on Windows Phone and Store Apps, and also which features behave slightly differently compared to previous Windows/Windows mobile platforms. Please consider these differences with cross-platform applications and Windows Phone/Store development.
At the end of the document, there is also an explicit list of unsupported methods for reference.
Form Controls
Tabbing/Focus Properties
Focusing/Losing Focus not applicable for controls in BrightForms iOS.
Input Methods
Show/Hide SIP not supported for edit/combo. The SIP will always appear when a writable field is selected, and may be hidden once the keyboard's hide button is tapped on the device, or a non-editable area of the form is tapped.
Input methods offered in Windows Mobile are not supported by edit/combo.
Scrolling is performed by tapping and scrolling within controls - there are no scroll bars.
Edit Control
Horizontal scrolling is not supported.
Mask is not supported.
There may be rendering issues for this control for sizes under 30px.
Button
Default button is not supported.
Hovering over buttons when an application is run on Windows Store will highlight the control.
Combo Boxes
On phone, the drop down component of combo boxes will open full screen for the user to make selections. For store apps, a looping list will appear in the control, with selectable options on display.
Typing a value in the edit portion of the control which is not present in the list of items in the combo box will set the selection of the combo box to 0, however, if selecting a different item, the value selected in the list of items will remain the last selected.
For store app version, the picker selection will always open in the middle of the list, as opposed to the top for other platforms.
'Drop Down Size' has no effect on the control on either platform.
There may be rendering issues for this control for sizes under 30px.
DateTime
Up/Down Button property is not supported.
Custom date format will display both date and time pickers for selection/modifications in a sub-form.
String representation of DateTime objects is based off Windows locale defaults.
ListView
Listview may not be edited in real time – showing, hiding, inserting and deleting columns not supported.
Listview vertical scroll positions cannot be set/retrieved.
Only single selection of listview items is available.
'Headers - Drag to re-order' property not supported.
Checkbox columns will not display for query with table aliases.
Data Grid - Edit does not obey numeric, minimum or maximum values.
Listview row height is determined by font size. If smaller font sizes are used, a minimum height for the row will be applied to the control.
In Windows Mobile, row values may be retrieved even when there is no row selected visually. For example, if a row is selected in the listview, but then Refresh() is called with no subsequent selection, GetCurrentRowColumnValue() will still return its values. This is not the case for BrightForms on Windows Phone/Store; these methods will return NULL if there is no visible selection in the listview.
Scribble
Scrolling and marking up in scribble controls are facilitated by two modes, toggled by tapping and holding within the scribble bounds. Scroll mode is signified by red border.
Scribbles’ saving to BMP format is not supported.
Image
Image binary data will be re-scaled to size of control.
Centred images will not be centred if contents are larger than bounds. It is suggested to use scrollbars in this instance.
Image will be centred if style is 'None'.
Transparency will be rendered in black for images on Windows Phone.
Forms
Navigation
Closing forms is handled by the top left 'Back' button for Windows Store, or the device's 'Back' key on Windows Phone.
Calling Form.Close() will have no effect on BrightForms when on the project's main form on Windows Store App.
The system menu, user defined menus, and/or cursor navigation may be accessed by the application toolbar on either platform. This may be done by tapping the ellipsis at the bottom of a form on Windows Phone, or right clicking/up gesturing in the Windows Store App.
Pressing the device’s home button or locking the device with BrightForms active will suspend BrightForms' processes on Windows Phone.
For the Windows Store Implementation, switching out of BrightForms will keep it running in the background, accepting push, timer and synchronisation events.
The user may terminate BrightForms at any time, using the swipe down method of dismissal in Modern Windows Apps. BrightForms will then restart when its tile is tapped from the start screen or programs. Strongly consider any logic or application states which may be affected by this form of termination.
Properties
Forms by default, will have their title displayed. This may be disabled for Windows Store Apps via the 'Hide Title Bar' option.
Forms always appear maximised.
Forms always have the help menu activated.
Notification events and actions are not supported.
Tiled backgrounds are not supported.
If a form's 'Help' property is not populated, there will be no 'Help' option displayed in the application bar.
Display
Forms longer or wider than the screen area will be clipped. Having the soft keyboard open will allow vertical scrolling of the available space, however.
Default form and control colours will result in BrightForms abiding by the light/dark theme set by Windows Phone.
The default form background, and form text colour in the Windows Store App is black and white respectively.
If a background is specified, controls without colours assigned will render contrasting to the background of the form.
In conjunction with tabs, the Colour, Colour Background and Text Colour properties will also dictate the form title font colour in Windows Store.
Forms which are larger than the screen area will not be scrollable.
Snapping the Windows Store App BrightForms will constitute an aspect/orientation change, with expression run accordingly.
MessageBoxes
On Windows Phone, messageboxes will be unable to be displayed if either the title or message is empty. If an empty string is supplied, an error will be logged, and the message box will not display.
Message boxes will also fail to display if there is currently already one open in the application.
If a message box is unable to be shown, BrightForms will log an error in the trace file, and return -1 as the message box's result code.
Menus
Menu items are listed when the application bar is expanded for both Phone and Store Apps. On Windows Phone, all menu items and sub-items will be displayed in-line to one another
Sub-menu items are displayed in-line with menu items, with their captions as-is.
On Windows Phone, only menu items are listed, not the menu headings themselves.
Menus may not be edited in real time with Form object methods.
Tabs
On Windows Phone, tabs are represented using a pivot view which the user swipes or taps to switch to adjacent tabs. As such, non-adjecent tab access via default UI is not supported, however, the Form.ShowTab() may be used to provide this within projects. Tabs will also loop.
On Windows Store, tabs are situated adjacent to one-another, with the user also able to swipe or tap tab headings. If the form size is smaller than the screen size horizontally, tabs will display simultaneously in a row, replicating Store App experience. Specific tabs may be accessed using the tab menu at the top of the application toolbar.
For more information, please refer to Tabbed Forms on Windows Phone and Store Apps .
Project
Settings
After a fresh install (i.e. 'No Project' to load), BrightForms displays a form that contains entry fields to edit server, user name and password settings.
Dialup functionality is not supported.
SQLite is the sole supported database type.
Trace files may be deleted via BrightForms Settings > System screen.
Projects' controls and/or fonts may be scaled manually via the Scaling functionality in the Settings > System screen (Phone only).
Saving the Device ID to file via the About screen will write the device's ID to the file device_id.txt in BrightForms' documents directory.
Trace
Application tracing must be performed via Client Log Requests in BrightBuilder (Phone; may access local package directory for Store App).
Deployment
When deploying files to the ‘My Documents’ folder, it is considered to be the local ‘BrightProjects Folder’.
Specifying ‘BrightForms Engine Executable’ and ‘BrightForms Upgrade CAB’ options for attached files will have no effect for Store or Phone App BrightForms.
Synchronisation
BrightForms for Windows Store/Phone may only sync to BrightServer instances which are version 8 or above. Previous versions of BrightServer are not supported.
The "Send server system clock for clients to synchronise" setting of BrightServer will have no effect the system clock.
Objects
Camera
SetPath() is relative BrightForms' local storage for Windows or Windows Phone (see 'File' behaviour below).
Calling an email will populate a compose screen for the default Windows Store/Phone email application, with fields populated by BrightForms. BrightForms cannot determine whether the email was sent successfully by the user after this point, and therefore, the result code will always be 0, provided the email was successfully constructed.
When constructing an email, AddAttachment() is not supported on Windows Phone or Windows Store. For Windows Store, only a Single 'To' address may be specified to launch the mail application. If an email is attempted to be sent with these restrictions, the email send will fail, and error code logged.
Furthermore, calling the Send() method does not suspend expressions on Windows Phone and is thus recommended to use at the end of the calling expression.
File
Files for Windows Store and Phone Apps are sandboxed, with any BrightForms saved files stored and accessed relative to its Windows Store/Phone App install directory. As such, paths and references to files are all specified relative to this directory; for example, a directory named 'temp' created by the file object with CreateDirectory("temp"), and 'file.txt' written to this directory via SaveText("/temp/file.txt").
For Windows Store BrightForms, these files may be accessed via the 'BrightSoftware.BrightForms' (with suffix) directory in the local user's AppData/Local/Packages/ folder. The BrightForms project directory is the 'LocalState' folder. There is currently no way to access these files outside of BrightForms on Windows Phone, due to the OS's handling of files via isolated storage.
GPS
Communicating with the GPS object via COMs port is not supported, and therefore the Open() and SendMessage() methods do not apply to Windows Store/Phone Apps. Instead, use the OpenIntermediate() method, and other GPS methods to retrieve information.
Due to system limitations, the methods GetFixQuality() and GetSatellitesInView() are not supported, and will not return correct values to assess the GPS read state. Instead, the HasValidRead() method must be used to determine if the GPS has captured valid values to read.
Location cannot be immediately found after opening the GPS object; it is recommended to open the GPS object prior to accessing any values required (such as on Form open).
In order for the GPS to open and retrieve values successfully, the Windows Store version of BrightForms must have user permissions. For more information, please refer to the Application Permissions chapter of the Windows/Windows Phone documentation.
Magnetic StripeCard
Currently not supported.
NFC
Currently not supported.
Report
Currently not supported.
Scanner
Currently not supported.
Security
MD5Digest method is supported. However Encrypt, Decrypt, SetAlgorithm methods are currently not supported.
SMS
Currently not supported for Windows Store App. For Windows Phone, constructs an SMS to the values specified by BrightForms, with success code based on construction. Will not suspend system on call; any subsequent lines in an expression will execute immediately after.
Phone
Currently not supported.
System
GetProjectPath() will return a value relative to BrightForms' local file directory (see 'File' behaviour above).
The method GetBatteryStatus() is only supported by Windows Phone, and will return a value containing a number of flags describing the battery status. For example, if the battery level is high and the device is charging, the codes BATTERY_CHARGING (8) and BATTERY_HIGH (1) will be flagged bitwise, resulting in the code 9. This behaviour is as defined by prior Windows spec, but is not necessarily adhered to in all Windows devices. It will always hold true for Windows Phone.
RunProgram() operates on URIs to launch and configure applications on the device. The OS will determine the default application to launch in these instances, else will prompt the user to select and/or download an application from the store. For more information, please refer to the BrightForms on Windows Phone and Store > Launching Applications via URI chapter of this document.
List of Unsupported Object Methods
Calendar
(all methods)
Camera
CaptureVideo
ImportImage
ImportVideo
SetImageQuality
SetResolution
ViewVideo
ConnectionManager
Connect
Disconnect
DLL
(all methods)
AddAttachment
SetAccountName
SetFromAddress
SetFromName
SetHost
SetPort
Form
GetFilePath
HideBusyHourGlass
SetFilePath
ShowBusyHourGlass
ShowFileOpenDialog
ShowFileSaveDialog
EnableMenuItemByPosition
EnableMenuItemByIndex
ViewDocument
GPS
Open
SendMessage
GetFixQuality
GetSatellitesInView
GetSpeed
GetTrackAngle
MagneticStripeCard
(all methods)
NFC
(all methods)
Report
(all methods)
SerialPort
(all methods)
SMS
(all methods - Windows Store App)
System
GetDeviceName
GetDiskFreeSpace
GetOSMajorVersion
GetOSMinorVersion
GetBatteryLevel (Windows Store App)
GetBatteryStatus (Windows Store App)
IsBatteryCharging (Windows Store App)
RunProgramAndWait
GetUserAgent
Controls
SaveBitmapFile
GetVertScrollPos
SetVertScrollPos
ShowSIP
HideSIP
SetInputMethod
ShowColumn
InsertColumn
DeleteColumn
DeleteAllColumns