1. Introduction

MobiOne Studio 1.5.0 release improves the visual design and code generation capabilities with special emphasis on forms submission & results handling.

1.1 Highlights

Following are the key improvements in MobiOne 1.5. See the Highlights Showcase for more details and screen-shots of these features.

• Design Center improvements
• New View>Device menu enables switching between iPhone and iPad form factors
  
• Combobox widget: added multiple selection support
• Form properties configuration improvements
• New Form result types: Data-XML, Data-JSON, Data-JSONP, Data-Text, Data-HTML
  
• New OnClick actions: Submit Form and Reset Form
  
• New code-generation options: jQuery version, cross-platform spinner widget
• Improved architecture and code-gen for remote screens
  
• Improved memory management
  
  
• Test Center improvements
• Corrected onChange actions activation for combo and select-list menu widgets
  

2. Downloading and Installing

2.1 System Requirements

Operating Systems - Windows Only
Windows 7 (32/64 bit)
Windows Vista (32 bit)Windows XP (32 bit)
Windows XP (32 bit)

Minimum Hardware
Pentium 500 MHz or greater
1 GB RAM or greater
300 MB hard disk free space
Display resolution: 1280x960 or greater recommended

2.2 Installation

Genuitec provides a Windows installer based on Genuitec’s OneInstall technology.

Recommend uninstalling former versions of MobiOne 
While the MobiOne installer is capable of upgrading existing MobiOne installations we recommend that you uninstall any former version before running the MobiOne installer.

3 Special Notes and Changes

3.0.1 Documentation

For the latest MobiOne user documentation and FAQ visit our online documentation at genuitec.com/mobile/learningcenter.html.

3.1 Design Center

3.1.1 Designing for Landscape Orientation and Better Layout on Other Devices

When laying out a user interface that must render well on multiple devices or in both landscape and portrait orientations, we recommend that you place all widgets that must adjust their size or location to the form factor into a panel widget. For each widget on the panel use the Auto-Resize layout properties to configure how the widget will be positioned and sized for the current display. Also you may need to enable the containing panel's vertical scrollbar so that no content will be clipped when the user interface is rendered on a display that is shorter than the form size for which the user interface was originally created on.

Note: List, Rounded List and SelectLists do not support vertical auto-resize properties

Note: You can not enable fixed left and right margins when a component's width is fixed. A similar restriction applies to fixed top and bottom margins for component's with fixed height. This behavior applies to toggle and checkbox components.

3.1.2 In-line Text Editing renders at 100% scale

The in-line text editing mode renders text at 100% scale regardless of the Visual Designer’s current scale. This may result in text appearing slightly misaligned at times.

3.1.3 Round-trip Design to Code - Not Supported Yet

MobiOne does not keep designs and their corresponding HTML synchronized. Therefore if a user exports a design as HTML and then edits the HTML layout files and repeats this process the former HTML files can be overwritten. To support customization of generated code MobiOne generates a customizable JavaScript file named after the source design file. You may modify this file without concern that future code-generation will overwrite it.

Example: for the design file, Foo.mobi the file Foo_custom.js is generated once and never regenerated

We are working to increasingly improve your ability to customize MobiOne generated HTML and CSS layout code in a manner that future design exports will not overwrite.

3.1.4 Undo/Redo Issues

The Undo and Redo edit commands do not function correctly in all scenarios. Redo is a little sketchy and in some context is a NOP.

3.1.5 Design Components must have unique IDs

For HTML generation to function correctly each component in a design must have a unique id. During the export process, id conflicts are automatically resolved to enable the resulting application to render properly in the Test Center and on iOS devices. The id conflict resolution process prepends a simple prefix to all ids.

3.1.6 Media Icon Redistribution

The Media palette includes almost 60 icons for use with in your design. When a design containing any of the preinstalled media is exported as HTML its images are included in the generated source code. You are free to redistribute these icons as part of the original design, as a design template or as a derivation of that design. The icons are not provided for general reuse and redistribution outside of  of the MobiOne design and development process.

3.2 Test Center

3.2.1 iPhone device mode does not support scaling

The iPhone emulator mode only provides 100% scaling.  More flexible scaling similar to the iPad mode is planned for a future release.

3.2.2 Default iPhone web page scaling not available

The iPhone emulator does not automatically scale an unoptimized website to fit its viewport. We are developing a new viewport management and rendering model that more closely emulates that of the iPhone.

3.2.3 Mouse events generated

The iPhone emulator converts mouse events to touch and gesture events. Both the original mouse events and the corresponding touch events are dispatched to the DOM. This differs from the iPhone and iTouch which do not propagate mouse events to the DOM.

3.2.4 Can Not Rearrange Homepage (Springboard) Icons

You can not yet rearrange homepage icons.

3.2.5 tel: and sms: URL emulation

The emulator is unable to make telephone calls or send SMS message. When the emulator encounters a URL with the tel: or sms: schema a pop-up window is presented with a simple mock message.

3.2.6 Emulated Alert Dialog

Due to a quirk in the Test Center emulator the Design Center's Popup Alert action creates HTML code that will render a custom alert dialog on the Test Center emulator. The native JavaScript alert will appear when the user interface is rendered on an iOS device.

3.2.7 Panel with Scrolling Background Issue

There is a known WebKit bug that prevents the Test Center or Mobile Safari from being able to clip a scrolling background of a panel with rounded corners. Thus you should limit use of the new Panel property "Scroll background" to panels that have square corners (i.e., 90 degree corners).

3.3 MobiOne AppCenter

3.3.1 MobiOne AppCenter

MobiOne AppCenter provides a quick and easy way to build, install and share native iOS applications and optimized mobile web applications.

3.3.2 Only iOS 4 & 5 Supported

Apps created by AppCenter are compatible with iOS 4.X and 5.X.  iPhone 3.x OS compatibility is not supported at this time due to an instability in the Phonegap framework. We are researching this issue but have no timeline for if and when creation of iPhone 3 compatible apps will be available.

3.3.3 Security/Confidentiality

AppCenter hosted apps and webapps are accessed using obscure semi-private URLs, e.g., http://gl1e4z.gl, provided by  AppCenter.  While such URLs are publicly accessible, they are difficult to guess. Additionally, iOS apps may only be installed on devices defined in the provision profile you provided during in build configuration

3.3.3 No AppStore Submission

AppCenter does not provide automated services to assist with AppStore submission of your iOS applications.  We are exploring options for providing a fee-based AppStore submission service in the near future.

3.3.4 PhoneGap/Apache Callback Framework - LIMITED SUPPORT

MobiOne iOS apps are built using the open source PhoneGap 1.1 framework. Ownership of this framework is being transferred from Nitobi to the Apache Foundation where it will be renamed the Callback project. This 1.4 release is concentrated on providing you the ability to create iOS applications from your MobiOne generated webapps. Therefore Genuitec will not provide Test Center emulation of PhoneGap apps, nor will we provide technical support for PhoneGap api usage until a later release. You are free to use PhoneGap apis as you choose.

3.3.5 Hosting and Data Transfer Limits

The maximum total upload size of a webapp to AppCenter has been expanded to 20 Mb. We will provide additional options in the near future for uploading larger webapps.

5. Known Issues

Design Center Issues

13227	Tab key not supported for component navigation
13236	problems with tooltips on multi-monitor configuration
14349	EFS logs an Exception on start - not effect on MobiOne
14860	Press "del" btn while entering text in TextArea deletes component not text
15083	Designer becomes very slow, when moving several components
14305	HTML for Image buttons & tab bar buttons does not provide select feedback
16214	Making small button causes it's title to shrink while exported
17925	Faceplate image in very large or small "Fit window" scale needs improvement
18100	When scale != 100% selected component outline is rendered misaligned on bottom and right
18156	In some cases scrolled panel does not clip content that extends outside of its viewport, e.g., long text
18363	Undo not available for alignment operations
18364	Rounded corner panel does not clip scrolling image background (see #17052)
18519	Text formatting does not match iphone rendering in some cases due to diff between Windows font metrics and iOS font metrics
20625	Invalid form properties are ignored and not reported for correction

  

General/AppCenter/Update Issues

NA	MobiOne can not install into path with non-ascii chars
NA	Can not install into read-only privileged directory, e.g., c:\Program Files on Win7 & Vista
NA	NTLM proxy not supported
NA	Update Test Center proxy settings requires MobiOne restart
NA	Duplicate proxy authentication required when update system starts after Test Center emulator

 
Test Center Issues

10871	iphone meta tags for user scale/zoom/viewport are not supported (yet)
10872	popup windows are not support
10098	viewport indicators are not visible during mousewheel scrolling
11020	inaccurate font sizing on some sites
11116	odd "try{__injected}catch(e){}" in debugger
11784	iPhone 2.2 should not have access to geolocation API of iPhone 3
11811	No support for 3D CSS
11914	no prompt shown to user to ask permission to let html app access geolocation
12307	all mouse events still fired on touch/gesture events
14376	Close dirty editor does not warn to save contents
15377	jqtouch swipe event not processed correctly
16409	Ctrl+PrnScn causes controls to disappear rather than print the screen
17052	Rounded corner panel does not clip panel contents - WebKit bug
18553	Native json api not supported
18572	Spinner control does not automatically close on page transition or form submit
NA	native kinetic scrolling (flick scrolling) not available
NA	Flash is enabled when N/A on iOS devices
NA	Some proxy settings not support such as NTLM proxies
NA	UI does not refresh correctly when overlapped by other app window that is moved
NA	UI corrupt layout when moving app window over Test Center repeatedly,e.g., Exchange
NA	Emulator browser does not report cross-domain access violations - use Local Web Server to resolve
16409	Ctrl+PrnScn causes controls to disappear rather than print the screen
18533	Native JSon api not available

5. Contact Us

We welcome your feedback. Please share with us your opinions on what we are doing right and areas for improvement on the MobiOne Feedback forum.