Now the final test is in progress, we can announce that we will release PHsPeed version 2.3 shortly. As written before, this is a major maintenance release, and the focus was to make the product more future-proof. The applied changes allow us to update parts of the software without creating the full package. Thus making it possible to have more intermediate updates when applicable.

An overview of the new release can now be found in a new section of our website: release notes.

PHP 8.2

Version 2.3 also deploys an initial release of PHP 8.2. Because PHP 8.2 is in development, and the same goes for XDebug you can expect issues. Currently, you can select PHP 8.2 and test your application(s). But PHPMyAdmin, currently does not run under PHP 8.2, and XDebug is not functional. But we will update the modules when they come out. Formal support of PHP 8.2 is expected in the release in January.

Customer Portal

Soon we will deploy our customer portal. This will enable you to view your registration and licenses and to buy/upgrade PHsPeed. In the near future, we will add more functionality.

Roadmap

In the bug tracker are a number of feature requests. We will move them into a separate section, and try to address them. The fact is that we will continue to work on the wizards that allow you to create code-less applications. It is well known that our policy remains to work on applications that require as less code as possible, but that we still believe that developers are needed to finetune and model an application around the business rules. Yes, many managers believe that the users have to learn to adapt to what the application brings, and that software development is too expensive to maintain. But when end-users are not working efficiently, or in an 80-20 model, this will easily lead to less motivation, complaints, ill employees, and can lead to increasing costs. With PHsPeed we try to increase the productivity of developers, with full focus on your end-users.

Customer connection

We are very interested in your opinion about PHsPeed, the good and the bad. We welcome ideas from our customer pool to make the product better. Our increasing customer pool is a real motivation to continue improving the product. If you are a customer and reading this, our forum is a good place to communicate. Consider using the forum if your question could help the community. For fast response, the service desk will always be available.

Happy coding!

With the increasing number of users, we have to focus on the stability of our website and ecosystem for updating our software. This will mean that, although we will have improvements, bug fixes, and some enhancements, we will introduce new features that will enable us to improve our update process.

What does it mean for you?

It became clear that we needed a mirror location to host our software. Although untouched, our website has been under attack and could have taken down our environment. Thinking about that possibility, we have decided to set up a new mirror site that is only accessible from within the PHsPeed IDE. If the connection to our leading site is lost, you will still be able to maintain your development environment with updates, etc.

Another thing that was on our list for quite some time was that we were not completely satisfied with updating Xampp. To implement new PHP releases, MySql / MariaDB, etc., we had to deploy a full Xampp release. The disadvantage was that updating this way would overwrite the sample databases, which could contain your databases. Although there was a procedure in the software to overcome this disadvantage, it would still be necessary to perform a backup and restore procedure just in case.

In the upcoming release, you will get an additional module that enables us to release Xampp en PHsPeed modules separately. It will allow us to update the PHP releases without the need for a full Xampp install, and it also means that you will be able to keep up with the latest versions of the PHsPeed modules without a complete installation procedure. All these updates will lead to an incremental update of PHsPeed from time to time, the regular releases.
Setting ports for XDebug, MySQL/MariaDB, and Apache is now done from one place, used by the installer and IDE. The process of deleting duplicate functions continues, and the IDE gets smoother at every new release. We will also move some of the preferences into the new configuration module.

As a Dutch company, we comply with the EU privacy regulations. We have received questions about why we don't update fully automated like some other products. Sometimes, we are unsure if that aligns with the EU regulations. We have decided that our end-users should initiate the update procedure to avoid discussions and procedures around this regulation. The software informs you when a new release is available, you decide if and when you upgrade. It also avoids issues with virus scanners that detect automatic updates and marks the software as a potential threat. Especially Symantec is a well-known problem, as they do not look to the digital signature of our software and don't respond to our questions. But most other virus companies have white-listed PHsPeed, Microsoft, and Google have accepted it so that you can install the MSI directly from our website. But if you run into issues, then white-list the folder you are installing PHsPeed into and let us know so that we can contact the anti-virus company that is giving you trouble.

In the near future, we will open up a new customer portal. The access to the website, service desk, and bug tracker will be centralized and bound to a valid PHsPeed license. We see a lot of registrations on our website without an underlying use of PHsPeed. We consider that a 'threat' as we have no idea why those users registered. To our current customer pool, we ask you to change your account and that you enable 2-factor authentication. If you want to use the new customer portal later this year, it will be required.

Besides the upgrade of our ecosystem, we will also make some internal upgrades. Initially, the new release will be as we always do. We will deploy a new Xampp release containing the latest Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, and PHP versions (7.4, 8.0, and 8.1). This time you will have to upgrade the regular way. As of that date, you will be able to keep up the Xampp environment separately.

The Chromium version in PHsPeed will be upgraded and will support downloading files. We have had reports that some videos do not play. However, that is a known issue. Due to license issues, the Chrome package lacks particular codecs available in the 'full' browsers. So if you need to create software with videos and run into this issue, set the IDE preference to use an external browser for debugging. The webform will be displayed in the external browser while the IDE keeps working. It is also an excellent way for developers with two monitors, they can split the output: a monitor for the ide and a monitor for the output.

Happy coding!

Today (24th of June), we released version 2.2. In addition to the documentation we have sent to our customers, here is a summary of solutions if you run into issues:

1. Make a backup of your project folders
   It is not mandatory, as PHsPeed maintains all kinds of backup files, but once loaded into the new IDE and saved, the file will not be loadable in older versions.
   
   
2. Project corrupt error
   This error message is usually caused when an older project is migrated. But easily fixed, at least in 99% of the cases. Go to the project source tab, and locate for double quotes: "You will see something like ^somekeyword=" this is some text", ^someotherkeyword... The solution is to replace the double quotes with a single one and/or remove the text. Save the project file and then reload the project.
3. RegisterOwner not found
   This error is generated when the deployed runtime is not refreshed. The first step is to go to deployment and purge deployed files. If you are using private libraries, redeploy the libraries. Then regenerate the code.

Release notes

Bugfixes: see bug tracker.
Full release notes: see this post

IDE

• Much cleaner interface, removed duplicate functions
• Upgraded XDebug client for higher performance and fixed a bug that could cause crashes
• New (context-sensitive) help function based upon HelpNDoc, removed Wiki
• Displays changed modules in the project tree
• Upgraded Chromium and homepage
• Setup for easy PWA applications
• Additional options in the application wizards

Components

• Grid component enhanced.
• More features like fixed header, events, recordable headers, etc.
• Modal forms enhanced, allows suppression of refresh events. Improved 'free use' outside Crud functionality
• New components for PayPal, YouTube, Vimeo, MP3, MP4, Database Export, Vertical menu
• Improved and upgraded components for Charts, DBTable, DB(Simple)Query, and DataSource

Note about PWA

All visual applications built in PHsPeed can be migrated into a PWA, using the PWA setup module found under projects. There are some misunderstandings about what a PWA is and how you can use them.

First of all, Apple is not fully compliant with the PWA standards. If you want to 'install' a PWA configured application on IOS, you must manually add the application to the homepage. That has nothing to do with PHsPeed.

If you create your application with a desktop in mind, you might need to redesign your forms so that they will look good on a mobile phone. For instance, a mobile is not quite capable of showing massive data grids. This doesn't mean that you cannot use PWA for these types of applications, but for the best usability, you must design your forms so that Bootstrap can resize them properly to display them right on smaller mobile screens.

PWA applications build in PHsPeed are still web-based applications that will only run when there is an active internet connection. If there is no connection, the home screen will notify and the application will continue to run once the connection is established.