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Something needs to be done about the help system...

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    #31
    Re: Something needs to be done about the help system...

    Originally posted by user10 View Post
    @Ken
    Ken, I have read a lot of your posts and I'm really curious why you use Alpha? Which parts of Alpha do you use?
    I did return to Alpha for some time ago( Did give up because of version 11 belly landing).

    At the moment spending time with phonegap and Alphas node intergation. So using UX with phonegap shell and Node for example for figuring howto live sync identical forms between different users and forms running in Node express server.

    I have noticed that also the destop part has new life because of Node. Now you can use desktop to support mobile, thats something special. I am also using Developer for some tasks like emailing (using Node ).

    I am also running for development/production purpose AA server in Leaseweb (dedicated 5 IPs, 100TB, 1000Mbps Leaseweb highly recommend ) using Abyss server as reverse Proxy but not interested anymore for Alpha server.

    So in short I try to find new solutions to use Alpha commercially without the need of Application server (iis or not).

    Comment


      #32
      Re: Something needs to be done about the help system...

      I have resisted the urge to rant about the same topic. There have been times when I
      wanted to fly to Boston and drag the entire team into a corner to reacquaint them with
      life as a newbie to Alpha. I have lists upon lists (and a video or two) about how things
      could be better.

      While in most cases a solution was ultimately simple and was due to some trivial but
      non-obvious bit of knowledge I was missing, I wasted days finding many of them and
      might as well have coded in a native operating system language.

      This is particularly true when you already have substantial coding, database, and general
      development skills in multiple technologies and expect your knowledge and a good RAD
      tool to make both prototyping and release of a passable version 1.0 to be relatively quick.

      It has been my experience that there are great things about Alpha and there are a very
      large number of great and well organized videos and an active and helpful forum.

      And yet... if you do anything serious (commercial) and really get into the nitty gritty
      of perfectly aligned visual elements, multiple apps and UX components, and combining
      features (e.g. PDF, GPS, multi-UX, login/security, matched websites) that you are forced
      not simply to do some code... but do spend DAYS hunting through examples, the forum,
      videos, and the google universe.

      You don't simply need to understand a few things and add a little code... you have to become
      aware of the under-pinnings of Alpha and javascript. In fact, you really do have to gain
      fluency with javascript which wasn't something I initially expected.

      So, I agree that there is much that is good in Alpha. I have been supported in a positive
      and helpful manner by people on the forum and by Alpha personnel (including and especially
      Selwyn and Bob)
      .

      If I manage to release my app in the next while I hope to take a few days and submit a few
      sample videos geared like mini Zero-to-Everything lessons
      in concise manner with all manner
      of practical warnings about Idiosyncrasies and with complete mini-project with all code provided.


      I have some pretty decent videos geared towards my own team and learning but I do hope
      to produce a couple for the general public.

      Time and resources... always the challenge!

      Perhaps one suggestion to Alpha down the road is "spread the load". Perhaps a section of the help
      could be set aside for crowd-sourced input
      . While there is some risk in this and the community
      might need some oversight, perhaps gaps could be filled those of users who have and then
      resolve issues. Just thinking out loud.

      Alrighty. I'm in the middle of my own search for specific GPS location answers that are not
      addressed by the videos. Back to it...

      Comment


        #33
        Re: Something needs to be done about the help system...

        You guys are exactly right!

        The current help system is an exercise in frustration. That’s why over the past several months
        a small team of us have been working on a complete overhaul. We have taken all of our
        materials from the existing help system, the wiki, and other sources and have combined them
        into a new system.

        The system is just about in Beta, and should be ready for you to use shortly. We’ll send an email
        to our full mailing list when it’s ready.

        Here is a quick peek at the system. It features elastic search for quickly finding pages, a breadcrumb menu, and other features.
        There will also be feedback links on each page, so users can flag items that are unclear or inaccurate.

        Comment


          #34
          Re: Something needs to be done about the help system...

          Hey Dave

          Sounds very promising but......... you tease us with a "quick peek" but no link :-)
          Glen Schild



          My Blog

          Comment


            #35
            Re: Something needs to be done about the help system...

            Thanks for the update Dave. Eyes on.

            Comment


              #36
              Re: Something needs to be done about the help system...

              Originally posted by Dave McCormick View Post
              Here is a quick peek at the system...
              Wow, that looks great Dave Took me a while to find the invisible link though
              Alpha Anywhere v12.4.6.5.2 Build 8867-5691 IIS v10.0 on Windows Server 2019 Std in Hyper-V

              Comment


                #37
                Re: Something needs to be done about the help system...

                Allan - I feel your pain - what's the GPS issue keeping you awake?
                Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
                Albert Einstein, (attributed)
                US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)

                Comment


                  #38
                  Re: Something needs to be done about the help system...

                  Here is a quick peek at the system.
                  where?

                  I see now. This could be read as Here are some highlights of the system...
                  Last edited by frankbicknell; 01-20-2016, 07:12 PM.
                  Win 10 64 Development, Win 7 64 WAS 11-1, 2, Win 10 64 AA-1,2, MySql, dbForge Studio The Best MySQL GUI Tool IMHO. http://www.devart.com/dbforge/mysql/studio/

                  Comment


                    #39
                    Re: Something needs to be done about the help system...

                    All the respect to Dave McCormick with new help system. Recent posts shows how hard it can be to get developer to undestand written text

                    Comment


                      #40
                      Re: Something needs to be done about the help system...

                      Pete,

                      Regarding your query:

                      Originally posted by peteconway View Post
                      Allan - I feel your pain - what's the GPS issue keeping you awake?

                      I started a separate thread for my GPS-related issue. I'll update that in detail later today.
                      I'll summarize quickly here partly as a relevant example of the less-than-obvious path to
                      do what I presume is (or should be) a common mobile task, "user self-registration".

                      Goal:
                      • Mobile UX to allow user self-registration
                      • Gather user location (via GPS)
                      • Save new security info (Alpha security) and additional fields (latitude, longitude, and several other fields)
                      Challenge:
                      • Watched all the relevant videos
                      • Getting an odd and unspecific "display" error in javascript when saving
                      • Able to eventually save data but lat/long were not also displaying in the UX
                      • None of the videos included downloadable samples... that would have helped
                      • The videos don't say how the on-screen lat/long fields are populated (only the table fields)... so there is something assumed or actively happening that is not explained
                      Resolution:
                      • A migration of a DBF to a SQl-Server table lost an auto-increment spec and the result was not a SQL error but this odd "display" error. Fixed now... but took a while to sort out.
                      • Per videos I presumed the there would be a place/method to name the on-screen fields for population, THEN save to table.
                      • I found that the action-script involved just saves to the record and you have to actively repopulate the UX fields at the tail end of the AJAX call with an "e.control.???" assignment in XBASIC populated from "e.rv.__location???" values populated by the GPS call. Took a while to sort that out.


                      So... between unspecific errors returning in the Chrome debugger, missing login or global errors in the UX, and often
                      no return of the UX SQL Debug results, it was all very time consuming to sort out this seemingly-simple task.

                      My mobile app needs user-self-registration, day-to-day login/logout, GPS location storage for all events,
                      user self-management of additional account details, etc. There are simple examples of all of these in Alpha (good)
                      but they are not polished or complete or demonstrated in a way that might actually work for a mobile app.

                      Of course, it could simply be that I'm not that bright and it's completely obvious to everyone else!

                      Cheers!

                      Comment


                        #41
                        Re: Something needs to be done about the help system...

                        Well you seem to be having a hard time with it - I'm working on one of my apps that does most of this - i'll try and get some time tomorrow to document this for you.
                        Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
                        Albert Einstein, (attributed)
                        US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)

                        Comment


                          #42
                          Re: Something needs to be done about the help system...

                          Pete... I have it working. It simply has left me with a set of questions about "best practice" that I will
                          come back to later (they are documented).

                          Even so, I appreciate the offer and will happily review how you're approaching things. Perhaps it's faster
                          to just connect up on a GoToMeeting session. A quick walk-through might be less time consuming than
                          alternatives.

                          I will of course share my details to the thread when I get a little further in. My app exists and works; I'm
                          simply going back and polishing up all the bits I bypassed earlier so I can release it.

                          Cheers!

                          Originally posted by peteconway View Post
                          Well you seem to be having a hard time with it - I'm working on one of my
                          apps that does most of this - i'll try and get some time tomorrow to document this for you.

                          Comment


                            #43
                            Re: Something needs to be done about the help system...

                            Alpha has been "kicking butt and taking names" in the progress of the new help system, and it has quite a way to go yet, but it is going to be a real game-changer when it comes to tackling the learning curve involved in manipulating the Alpha code-behind.

                            The deeper I get into developing with Alpha, the more I realize how difficult it must be to organize all of the different kinds of documentation for the multitude of features and combinations of scripting languages, interface/GUI features, for multiple platforms, and present all of this for developers of varying skill levels, all while the Alpha platform is evolving and improving almost daily.

                            Talk about "herding cats"; man oh man!

                            One exceptionally helpful addition to the video tutorials is the addition of a transcript which is searchable. This allows a search to target specific concepts or methods that may be included in a video tutorial, but are not the primary focus of the video. So many times I have discovered radically helpful information contained in a tutorial video that I have been working through to understand a completely unrelated topic, wishing there was a way to locate these gems without having to watch every video that I hope may hint at the solution I am seeking. The transcripts make this very easy!

                            It will be a pleasure to approach the day with anticipation of accomplishment, rather than xenophobic dread which grew exponentially every time I required days of research to perform a simple function that could have been completed in minutes with the help of a comprehensive document system.

                            Comment


                              #44
                              Re: Something needs to be done about the help system...

                              The Alpha help system is coming along splendidly, but slowly.

                              Since my company requires our application to be able to function when disconnected, and since our databases are fairly large, we have essentially bypassed nearly ALL of the convenience features provided by Alpha. This has placed my focus on writing JavaScript/Action JavaScript and CSS targeting the client side environment, which is the weakest side of Alpha development documentation.

                              The learning curve has been exceptionally steep, particularly when learning how Alpha "wraps" user-written JavaScript within its own DOM, and how to traverse its nodes and manipulate elements, which usually must be done using one of a large number of poorly documented methods.

                              My main task, as a starting point over the last year and a half, has been the development of an on-screen keyboard that is easy to use, and will not cause the same problems as the native OSK. Due to the lack of comprehensive documentation, this task has taken, without exaggeration, over a THOUSAND times the development time required in other environments (not strictly Alpha's fault, but they were large contributors to my angst...), but I finally have a useful OSK that can be called into view from any UX component, appearing in several selectable "modes" such as "pin-pad", "phone keypad", "phone alphabetic", "tablet alphabetic", calculators of several types, and the list goes on.

                              It currently exists as a UX component that contains one window container wrapping one viewbox, one hidden text field, and 7 pre-configured orientation rules for "phone", "tablet", "desktop", and one "spare". Its mode and other selectors are stored in its "state" object, and since the keyboard and keypad "keys" are constructed in hand-coded HTML and CSS using "em" units, they render in exactly the same way on every platform without doing weird things like the native Alpha control styles do (which is the fault of the devices and how they render elements, not Alpha). All I have to do to use it is to copy the window control and its contents out of its UX project and paste it into the one I am working on, and then set its parameters from the control that launches it.

                              I plan on spending the next two years trying to figure out how to make this OSK into a custom component. The pittance of information provided by Alpha concerning this topic is about enough to create a "Hello World" custom component, but not much more (How's that for "RAD"!)

                              We bought Alpha Mentor time, but I felt like I was abusing it since it is not really meant for "basic training". Morris Porter and Selwyn Rabins pointed me in the right direction during our second session, so I decided then to get "back to basics" and work through Alpha from "the bottom up".

                              What I discovered was that despite the fact that Alpha's documentation is exceptionally developer unfriendly, I would have had difficulty anyway because I wasn't familiar enough with JavaScript and CSS. After spinning-off into the W3 help pages for JavaScript and CSS, I eventually learned more about the way it is implemented in an Alpha mobile UX, and finally gained control over programmatic manipulation of DOM elements.

                              Of course, this still can require a look into the Alpha documentation when some Javascript function doesn't quite work as expected, and of course, there is rarely enough information to be found there (it's sloooowly getting better), so I am then forced to "try everything" until something works, which is not the most efficient development path.

                              For me, the steepest part of the learning curve involves understanding the internals of the mobile devices, and discovering how to produce consistent results on multiple devices, for landscape and portrait orientations, from a single Alpha Project.

                              This task would present the same difficulty no matter what programming solution was being used for development.
                              Last edited by mbunds; 09-28-2016, 12:39 PM.

                              Comment


                                #45
                                Re: Something needs to be done about the help system...

                                Well A5 is using it's own DOM [ Jquery style] as u say, perhaps might they consider in time to move a way from that take a peek a angular2 or Aurelia but that again is up to theme not me and i don't judge, check people on the forum about movement to towards Node.js

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