Xojo is usually pretty tight-lipped about future releases with good reason. We, as users, usually hold them to features that they mention (even when they throw out the usual disclaimers about things might change) so it’s pretty unusual for them to offer any information on future releases. In the past month or so there has been information leaking out through the forum that says that Web 2.0 is in the later stages of development and they are pretty confident on the feature set.
We already know that Web 2.0 is using API 2.0. One thing we did not know until recently is that Web 2.0 is going to use the ill-fated new event names that so upset the community in the 2019 R2 release. We don’t know exactly what the events are going to be in Web 2.0 but we can safely assume the standard Open and Close events are now going to be Opening and Closing. I (naturally) have several thoughts about this.
First, I think the event name changes are needless. Opening is not more clear than Open. Closing is not more clear than Close. I think the new names are as meaningless as the originals. So I think using the new events names is a complete waste of time. Instead of the twenty plus years of institutional memory we all have with event names, not to mention documentation and example code we have to learn new event names.
It won’t matter for Web 2.0. Probably. I say probably because we don’t know for sure but the hint is that ALL of the Web 2.0 classes and controls will have new names and thus not affect the 3rd party market as much (although we can presume that anyone selling 3rd party controls for Xojo web has a big task in front of them updating them for Web 2.0). Does this class name change extend to WebApplication and WebSession too? Only time will tell.
Another reason why it might not matter is that subclassing controls in Xojo web apps was hard. Maybe non-existent? Regardless in our really big web projects we NEVER subclassed web controls.
If indeed every control in Web 2.0 is using a new name it eliminates much of the griping that we had with Xojo 2019 R2 because there is no existing market. It’s all new there are no naming conflicts.
Since events are added via dialog in the IDE most users will probably just roll with the changes. Since converting any Web project is a one-way process most users project won’t notice it. There’s still the possibility of Raising a non-existent event I suppose but I suspect that’s a more advanced feature many Xojo users don’t use and presumably the compiler will give a useful error message.
If the new event names are indeed the future it makes zero sense to have part of the product use Open and another part using Opening. So this means there are going to be new controls (presumably for desktop and mobile at some point) that have new unique names and therefore use the new event names. Again, same situation since if they have new control/class names there is no issue with conflicts. This is similar to moving from the old HTTPSocket to URLConnection with similar functionality but slightly different events.
This last point is the most important one. If Xojo hadn’t foisted the new events names in the old classes to begin with we wouldn’t be where we are at today. I still think the new event names offer zero clarity from the old names, but whatever. I’m just a user, don’t work for the company, and I’m not an MVP so my opinion doesn’t matter.
Okay, Xojo users. What are your thoughts on using the new event names in Web 2.0?
One last random thought: Because Web 2.0 sessions have been added at the Xojo Developer Conference (a.k.a. Xojo.Connect) I’m guessing that it will be released as a beta during the conference to attendees. I am not planning on attending so you’ll have to get your news elsewhere. This will be the first conference I’ve not attended since 2004 or so. Hope everyone has fun and gets a lot of useful information out of it.