Wow, I've been slow getting back to this non-blog. Sorry for the long silence, and I
do intend to post more often again.
In the last couple of months, much has happened and, unfortunately, a few things have not.
For one thing, we don't have our PlayBooks yet, as of this writing. Nor do we have
a 1.0 SDK and a decent simulator. Nor, for that matter, has the PlayBook even been released,
except to a few lucky members of the press.
Nevertheless, information does ooze out, be it ever so slowly. A few things
contradict or outdate things I said earlier. I'll summarize the changes here:
Top-Swipe Menu:
I believe my design was flawless for the simulator up to 0.9.4, but reports from someone
at RIM who tested my app suggest that the SWIPE_START behaviour is different
in 1.0. He describes my menu as being usable only once... he can open it,
change settings, and close it, but after that the menu doesn't respond any more.
If you used the design in that post, your menu stands a good chance of not
working and I suggest you switch to SWIPE_DOWN until the problems are sorted out.
I will post an update as soon as I get something with 1.0 on it for testing.
Application Lifecycle
describes invoking, exiting, and activate/deactivate, but only in the context of the
simulators before 1.0. Now there will be three modes for multitasking,
only one of which acts the same as the current simulator. In Showcase
mode you will not get any ACTIVATE/DEACTIVATE events. The simulator is
currently representative only of the Default multitasking mode in the real thing.
(The Paused mode basically freezes an app when inactive, so it probably looks
like a DEACTIVATE followed by a long pause with no scheduling of the app before
it later gets an ACTIVATE again.)
Font List noted the fonts
from an early simulator. In more recent ones, several fonts have been added,
but more importantly the default font was quietly changed to "Myriad Pro".
This can mess up formatting
compared to "BBAlpha Sans", the previous default font.