Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

Use Web Templates with Alpha!

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Use Web Templates with Alpha!

    Hi All,

    I am always excited to see what everyone else is building using Alpha and I have come across some great apps. But I have to say that the "marketing pages" of the the sites range from excellent to lets be polite and say could use some improvement. By marketing pages I mean the pages that help sell your product, such as the splash page, feature page, about us page, blog etc.

    Good design is difficult no matter what tool you are using and personally I suck at it! But fortunately you can download web templates and install them on your web application on Alpha.

    For example, take a look a this site: https://wrapbootstrap.com/, and in particular this template: http://wrapbootstrap.com/preview/WB0412697 (one of my favorites)

    For only 16 bucks you can download this template and customize it for your needs. In the end its just html pages, css and some javascript files. Your site will look like you spent a million bucks on it and you will definitely make more money selling whatever you built.

    As a techie by nature personally, I tend to dismiss out of hand the importance of good marketing/design but it really is just as important as your app. I plan to upgrade my own site with one of these templates soon.

    Cheers,

    Scott

    #2
    Re: Use Web Templates with Alpha!

    How would you map out the css?
    NWCOPRO: Nuisance Wildlife Control Software My Application: http://www.nwcopro.com "Without forgetting, we would have no memory at all...now what was I saying?"

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Use Web Templates with Alpha!

      Hi Charles,

      The templates come with the CSS files. You definitely would not want to try and integrate the template CSS files with the CSS files for your application (i.e. one of the built in Alpha CSS styles) - both would overlap so much it would create a mess.

      Instead you would create a new CSS folder on your project and add the template CSS files to this new folder. Then on the "marketing pages" that have the template you would reference the template CSS files, and on your actual application you would use your other CSS files (i.e. the Alpha one).

      Because your marketing pages won't have any Alpha components there should be no issues.

      Does this answer what you were asking?

      Thanks,

      Scott

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Use Web Templates with Alpha!

        Yes it does, I thought you were suggesting we use it for the application.

        As far as templates, etc. I use Serif WebPlus - it comes with alot of very modern templates, sliders and it is very easy to incorporate just about anything, even an alpha 5 app (just as you would add alpha5 into any html page editor really).

        It would be so nice to see an updated css editor for alpha 5 - I would pay for one. Alpha 5's seems very buggy - it freezes and yesterday I "copied" a style only to realize it was NOT a copy at all, tried it twice same thing. You have to edit the css manually to use rounded corners in things, or box shadows, etc. The styles that come with it are basically color variants of the same style, so really alpha seems to come with 2 styles not including the new slate one - which for some reason doesn't seem complete using a drag and drop.

        I guess it will all work itself out in time, Alpha 5 is the first program I have been able to use to get what I wanted a SAAS app.

        Back to the topic though - it would be great to see a website that offered templates and css that would work with Alpha 5 with a few drag and drops into a folder!
        I was hoping that was what you found. I am sure with A LOT of work it can be done...
        NWCOPRO: Nuisance Wildlife Control Software My Application: http://www.nwcopro.com "Without forgetting, we would have no memory at all...now what was I saying?"

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Use Web Templates with Alpha!

          I agree with you guys 100%, it is really odd Alpha Five is so weak in the html/css area.

          Question, have you had any success with the A5 "Import External HTML Form" (file or string) function when creating an a5w page ? I assume it is intended to allow us to create a fancy / modern page externally, and then import it into Alpha as an a5w page. I have tried it many times and had zero luck and haven't found any useful documentation on the wiki or videos (always a chance it is there but am not finding it).

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Use Web Templates with Alpha!

            I agree. I think Alpha has, and is, missing the boat on this one. They should hire an HTL/CSS design expert or "artist" and create a few dozen, better yet, a few hundred different aesthetically pleasing styles for Alpha web apps.

            As far as an editor goes, the existing one is too complex imo. Morfik (RIP) used to have a point and click CSS updater. Just click on an element (in WYSIWYG) and change its attributes.
            Peter
            AlphaBase Solutions, LLC

            [email protected]
            https://www.alphabasesolutions.com


            Comment


              #7
              Re: Use Web Templates with Alpha!

              I agree as well. I posted a question a while back in the forums asking if anybody had Alpha Themes available for sale. Alpha is absolutely missing the boat on this. The current views are functional but certainly not modern in appearance.

              While I am aesthetically challenged with regards to creating my own themes using the built in editor, I certainly can recognize a theme that looks appealing and modern. Hopefully somebody (ideally Alpha) will recognize this need and address it.

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Use Web Templates with Alpha!

                Originally posted by Peter.Greulich View Post
                I agree. I think Alpha has, and is, missing the boat on this one. They should hire an HTL/CSS design expert or "artist" and create a few dozen, better yet, a few hundred different aesthetically pleasing styles for Alpha web apps.

                As far as an editor goes, the existing one is too complex imo. Morfik (RIP) used to have a point and click CSS updater. Just click on an element (in WYSIWYG) and change its attributes.
                Absolutely agree 100% with you Peter, Alpha would do very well bringing in CSS artists.
                My suggestion is that they create a marketplace for templates. I for one would pay good money for really good templates.
                So it could be a low cost to zero cost project for them but provide developers with a much enhanced product.

                Bruce

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Use Web Templates with Alpha!

                  Hey All,

                  Take a look at this template - it will absolutely knock your socks off - http://wrapbootstrap.com/preview/WB0573SK0. Instead of a marketing template its an "application template". All that needs to be done is to modify this template for Alpha and leave a spot to insert dialogs and grids. A full integration would probably involve customising the component CSS to work with the template and paying a license fee to the template creator, but imagine having this as a starting point for an app!

                  Steve Wood - this could be a new product you develop..

                  Scott

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Use Web Templates with Alpha!

                    A follow up on my previous post...its important to note that you could build the template I referenced from scratch in Alpha (http://wrapbootstrap.com/preview/WB0573SK0) - remember that these templates are just creative uses of html,css,jquery and javascript. But these templates are built by professional template designers and it shows. So it really wouldn't be that hard to integrate something like this into Alpha...at least I think

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Use Web Templates with Alpha!

                      I have the same issue now. I have a perfect login interface in html code. And a separate login screen i created in UX component. I did not use alpha predefined login framework. I have my own login logic. I tried to use create a5w page by importing external html page...which works horrible...i do not understand how can I make html code working with my UX Component code....

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Use Web Templates with Alpha!

                        I have been converting my Framework to Skeleton CSS Responsive Grid for layouts. Skeleton is a grid system that makes laying out content much easier, and means content conforms to the device size and orientation. Not a "template" itself but there are plenty of HTML templates made for Skeleton.
                        Steve Wood
                        See my profile on IADN

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Use Web Templates with Alpha!

                          The {wrap}bootstrap stuff looks great, but I'd rather have the depth and flexilbity of the tools that Alpha offers to get the job done. The CSS and HTML stuff can be hooked into Alpha. I'm terrible at design, but it can be done. Try taking a web template and add all your own code making it data driven with jQuery sliders and JS lists and grids and embedded objects and absolute layout containers and then send it off to PhoneGap Build. I haven't tried... but I bet you won't get too far. However, take a system built with Alpha and you can add html and css for landing and splash pages and anything else. Just because I'm terrible at building css doesn't mean it can't be done or is even hard to do if you know css. I'd rather build a strong responsive app and then worry about making it pretty than start with a pretty template and and deal with jQuery, ruby, php, or whatever else to get the real job done.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Use Web Templates with Alpha!

                            The bootstrap (or grid in my example, they are different) is not a replacement for Alpha's UX and responsive mobile elements. Alpha has nothing built in to take care of the WEBSITE portion of the application, the A5W page layout, in terms of responsiveness. My Skeleton Grid goes on the A5W pages and provide NOTHING other than layout control -- no widgits, ux, controls or anything else (unless wanted). Alpha provide all of that. My Framework with responsive layout allows the Home Page (for instance) to be Mobile, not just the UX component. I do include Font Awesome if the user is on V11 (Alpha built this in to V12 recently).
                            Steve Wood
                            See my profile on IADN

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: Use Web Templates with Alpha!

                              I prefer Joomla at this point or ms expression web(no longer sold) for free. You can do amazing things with them and there are thousands of themes for both. Css is easily editable in both of these. That is just 2 and I know there are plenty more available.

                              Web Plus has some drawbacks(in fact a lot), but it does hav a lot of toys as well and plenty of themes. I just downloaded a new free theme that came with 3 different css files that change all the colors or I can go into one of them and make it the way I want it. That goes to font(color/size), lines, backgrounds and other.

                              Why would we want, or want alpha to reinvent the wheel. Get your choice of website tools(making sure you have css editing support) and have at it for the front end. You can get free or low cost themes for about anything if you look a bit. Well, maybe not alpha. LOL
                              Dave Mason
                              [email protected]
                              Skype is dave.mason46

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X