MobiOne Studio 1.2 EA1 Release Notes

1. Introduction

MobiOne Studio is quickly becoming recognized as an essential product by enterprises, business developers, UI designers, and mobile developers for rapid creation of mock-ups, prototypes and testing of  world class mobile web applications and websites. This first early access (EA1) version of 1.2 introduces a number of new innovative features including iPad(tm) design and test modes and a new capability to design in both portrait and landscape device orientations. See the Highlights Showcase for an overview of the key improvements provided by this release.

1.1  Your Feedback Needed

Our early access program provides a community preview to new and improved features. We strongly urge you to share your experiences and suggestions for improvement with us. Please contact us on the MobiOne 1.2 Early-Access Technical Support forum.

1.2 Early Access 1 (EA1) Program Limitations

MobiOne Studio 1.2 EA1 installs and operates in full feature mode until the expiration of the program on July 1, 2011. After the expiration date, EA1 will require upgrade to continue operation. Please visit www.genuitec.com/mobile/download.html for the most recent version of MobiOne 1.2.

2. Downloading and Installing

2.1 System Requirements

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

Minimum Hardware
Pentium 500 MHz or greater
1 GB RAM or greater
150 MB hard disk 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

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 iPad Design Mode

In addition to iPhone user interface design, MobiOne 1.2 Design Center now includes visual design of iPad user interfaces. User interface designs are specific to a device form factor. Thus iPhone and iPad user interface designs can not be interchanged or converted from one device form factor to another. If your user interface must operate on both iPhone and iPad devices then design for the smallest device, i.e., iPhone, and set the appropriate resize properties on the UI components to enable them to rescale to fit iPad devices.

3.1.2 Designing for Landscape Orientation and Better Layout on Other Devices

MobiOne 1.2 provides Auto-Resize layout properties for all UI components. Consider placing the components that may overflow their container when the device orientation changes in a scrollable panel.  For example, if your user interface layout in portrait mode is taller than the display height in landscape mode then you must place the components in a scrollable panel to avoid content near the bottom of the user interface from being clipped.

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

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

3.1.3 In-line Text Editing is misaligned when scale is not 100%

The in-line text editing mode renders text at 100% scale regardless of the Visual Designer’s current scale. This results in text appearing slightly misaligned at times. We expect to fix this bug before the 1.2 production release.

3.1.4 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.

3.1.5 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.

3.1.6 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.

3.1.7 Media Icon Redistribution

The new 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 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.

3.2.2 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.

3.2.3 Can Not Rearrange Homepage (Springboard) Icons

You can not yet rearrange homepage icons.

3.2.6 tel: and sms: URLs

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.

3.3 MobiOne AppSync - Send To Phone

3.3.1 MobiOne AppSync - a Google AppEngine Application

The MobiOne AppSync Service provides a quick and easy way to provide access to runtime versions of your designs directly on your iPhone/iTouch device or to share access to your webapp with others. AppSync is free to all MobiOne users. When a user runs the "Send to My Phone" action in the Design Center or the Test Center when emulating a design, MobiOne Studio uploads an HTML version of the design to the MobiOne AppSync cloud service and makes it available via an obscure semi-private URL. As part of the upload process you may provide an email distribution list for parties including yourself that you wish to receive a notification of the uploaded webapp's URL. The intended use of this feature is to send this URL via email to your iPhone email client or by SMS through an email2SMS gateway, e.g., <your-iphone-number>@txt.att.net. When the iPhone receives the notification with the AppSync URL you simply click it to launch your mobile webapp. You may update your AppSync webapp at anytime using the Send to My Phone feature to sync design changes to AppSync.

3.3.2 5-day WebApp Hosting Limit

When a mobile webapp is uploaded to AppSync the URL assigned to it is valid for 5 days. Thereafter the mobile webapp is automatically deleted from AppSync and you must use the Send to My Phone feature to rehost it for another 5 days. We will provide additional options in the near future for longer host periods

3.3.3  2.0 Mb WebApp Upload Limt

The maximum total upload size of a webapp to AppSync has been expanded to 2.0 Mb. We will provide additional options in the near future for uploading larger webapps.

4. 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
16256 Select List Menu looses Underlined and text shadowproperty while exported
17053 "+" and "-" buttons do not reset cursor
17152 Component coords miscalculated for scroll panel on scroll panel
17179 Smart guides not shown on panel if scrolled
17193 Rounded list item returns to default height after moving
17925 Bad quality of faceplate elements in "Fit window" scale mode
17985 No online iPad templates
18080
List width snaps to overlap panel border
18100 When scale != 100% selected component outline is renedered misaligned on bottom and right
18156 Scrolled Panel does not clip content that extends outside of its viewport, e.g., long text
18176 Component Drag-n-Drop fails in Turkish lang settings
18319 List, Rounded-list, Select-List auto-resize height property should be immutable
18341 "Run in TC" button doesn't work when horizontal scroller presents


  

General/AppSync/Update Issues
N/A Can not generate native iPhone app (Objective-C, appstore ready binary)
N/A MobiOne can not install into path with non-ascii chars
N/A Can not install into read-only privileged directory, e.g., c:\Program Files on Win7 & Vista
N/A NTLM proxy not supported
N/A Update Test Center proxy settings requires MobiOne restart
N/A 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
11875 While stopped at a JS breakpoint, CPU is at 100%
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
N/A
kinetic scrolling (flick scrolling) not available
N/A
Flash is enabled when N/A on iOS devices
N/A
Persistent page caching not supported, only session cache available
N/A
Some proxy settings not support such as NTLM proxies
N/A
UI does not refresh correctly when overlapped by other app window that is moved
N/A
UI corrupt layout when moving app window over TC repeatedly,e.g., Exchange
N/A
Emulator browser does not report cross-domain access violations
15377 jqtouch swipe event not processed correctly
16409 Ctrl+PrnScn causes controls to disappear rather than print the screen
17204 Start flick scrolling over linked component, selects component on touch-end


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 1.2 Early Access Feedback forum.