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@tbuschto tbuschto released this 19 Mar 16:09
· 211 commits to master since this release
v3.4.0
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Developer experience

New developer toolbar

The existing developer console has been replaced by new development tools. The main element is a persistent toolbar akin to a browser URL bar, sitting atop the screen and above the application UI. It provides quick access to essential development utilities. Most importantly it informs you where the application code is loaded from, allows to insert a different URL (also scannable via qr-code on Android), lets you reload the app and open the console logs.

As with the previous developer console, the new developer tools are only available when your app is build with the EnableDeveloperConsole flag. The developer tools can also be explicitly hidden when not required. This can be done via its the developer tools menu entry or by using the new devTools service API.

New and improved debugger support on Android

Tabris.js now supports the V8 inspector protocol on Android platforms. This means you have a fully-featured step-by-step debugger available to use in your favorite IDE. Source maps are applied automatically (when sideloading the code), meaning you'll see your TypeScript or JSX code when debugging and not the JavaScript output.

Project templates updated

When generating a new Tabris.js project via tabris init it can now be pre-configured for debugging via Visual Studio Code. The tslint configuration also has been replaced with similar eslint configurations, complete with TypeScript and JSX support. The questionnaire itself has been trimmed down a bit, with the option to generate Tabris.js 2.x apps no longer being available.

CLI "serve" updates

The serve command has received various improvements:

  • The new --qrcode-renderer option allows to choose a different formatting for the QR code. The default is utf8, but some terminals may not display these characters as expected. In this case setting the option to terminal will produce a larger-but-safer version of the code.
  • The colors and formatting of the printed output has been tweaked for readability.
  • The stability of the debug-connection (handling logging and auto-reload) has been improved significantly.
  • You can now have a variety of key shortcuts available to interact with the running app, such as CTRL+R for reload and CTRL+U for printing a UI tree. It is also possible to backup and restore the localStorage content.

API

Extended file system API

The fs object has some new methods, mostly for handling directories:

  • createDir(path) creates a new directory at the given path
  • removeDir(path) removes an empty directory
  • remove(path) removes any file or directory, empty or not
  • isFile(path) checks if the given path points to a file
  • isDir(path) checks if the given path points to a directory
  • appendToFile(path, data) adds data to a new or existing file

On Android, paths to external storage are made available via the externalFileDirs and externalCacheDirs properties.

Data binding in JavaScript/JSX

The data binding capabilities of Tabris.js rely on the TypeScript compiler (tsc) to transform non-standard syntax and include type information in the compiled code. So far this meant that only .ts and .tsx files could use data binding. This has been changed so that .js and .jsx files are also supported, as long as they are still processed by tsc. Due to the missing type information an "unsafe binding" warning will be logged in certain cases, which can be fixed by adding some type data in code.

In future releases it may be possible to suppress these warnings entirely, as well as using the API entirely without the TypeScript compiler, i.e. in "vanilla" JS.

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