I know the burning question on many people's minds is how we are getting along with LiveCode Next Generation, in all its versions. We reported some time back on the way the development had been split into three threads, 6.6, 6.7, and 7.0 during the development stages. I'm pleased to be able to report that we are starting the task of merging threads now, so the next big release will be a 6.7 dp release that incorporates the functionality from 6.6. This is being built as we speak so all things being well you should get your hand on it for testing in the next few days.

Roadmap Overview

There is an extensive blog post from Ben, our Product Manager, here, discussing the current state of the roadmap and where we are going next. From his post:

2013 was a big year for the LiveCode technology if not the biggest to date. The Kickstarter campaign allowed us to not only take LiveCode open source, but provided us with the funding we needed to completely refactor the way the LiveCode language was processed internally. You're starting to see the fruits of that work with LiveCode 7 and transparent Unicode support, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. 2014 looks set to be an even bigger year for the technology with team members being committed to some of the most exciting projects I've seen in my 9 years working on the technology.

In the year since the Kickstarter campaign we've put out 15 new releases of LiveCode spanning versions 6 and 7. New features include:

• Core Refactor: Modernise 500,000 lines of code paving the way for another decade of innovation
• New Graphics Layer: Modernise the graphics to pave the way for 'Resolution Independence', 'Fullscreen Scaling', 'Stack Scaling' and other scheduled projects.
  
• Resolution Independence: Apps takes advantage of high DPI displays
  
• Fullscreen modes: Apps scale to any device for you with just 1 line of code
  
• Stack scaling: Helps you work on your projects on small laptops
  
• Unicode: Seamless easy Unicode in any app on any platform
  
• Cocoa / CoreText: LiveCode on Mac OS now works with the latest API's
  
• Image Cache: LiveCode apps are now smoother and faster on mobile and desktop
  
• OpenSSL: Apps can now be as secure on mobile as they are on desktop
  
• Proxy Support / Secure sockets: Your apps can now work seamlessly from behind proxy servers
  
• WebKit Browser: New webkit browser helps you make better cross platform apps
  
• Integrated Fonts: Apps load and use fonts with no hassle
  
• Server Graphics: Create graphics using LiveCode on the server
  
• 9 way image stretch: Create skinned apps even more easily

You can read the rest of his post here.

Widgets and Themes

The next big exciting chunk of delivery of our Kickstarter goals is the Widgets and Themes project, outlined by Kevin in this video:

We expect to have a lot more of this ready to demo at our conference in San Diego. Some of the comments from the community on this blog post show just how excited you are by this.

"I was excited about the HTML/JavaScript project and all it’s possibilities…but…WOW! this will make developers who use the so called main stream languages sit up and take a serious look at LiveCode. One of the often heard complaints is how hard it is to hook into the lower level stuff of the OS and API’s of third party vendors, this changes all that.

Dragging and dropping Widgets onto the tool pallet…been waiting for this ever since I stopped using Delphi.

A BIG thumbs up and thank you to all of the LiveCode team for this." ~ Andy Piddock

 

"So this is the widgets and themes stretch goal!
Really blown away.
Speechless in fact.
Well done." ~ James Hale

 

"This looks like a VERY powerful addition and a well-architected approach to a sticky problem. The more LC is written in LC, the more portable it becomes. And even if only 10% of LC coders are able to mangle the lower-level code, at least most of us should be able to read and understand what is going on.

Bravo, Team LC!" ~ Dan Shafer

Open Language

If you haven't already read Mark Waddinghams post "Eating our own Haggis", or even if you have, it's worth a revisit in the light of the video above demonstrating the concept. "LiveCodeish" might be a little difficult to get your head around, but the idea of writing LiveCode in LiveCode is going to make life for everyone much easier, once it comes to fruition.

Multimedia Player

Panos meanwhile has been working steadily on the new player object, and brings you an update here. We may not love his choice of colour for the interface but happily you'll be able to set your own!

Speeding things up

In his blog post Ben references the extensive work being done now to speed up the new graphics architecture in LiveCode. Ian brings you more detail in his post on how this is being done, and where we are at now with this important aspect of the rework. It involves adding threading to the engine, and ensuring that only the pixels that really need to be redrawn, are redrawn. Ian reports considerable success in achieving better performance. You should all be able to try this for yourselves in the next 6.7 test release - please do let us know what you find!

Overall, the office is a hive of activity and we are all excited at how far along the Next Generation project is. Only a handful of the stretch goals are now untouched, most have at least some progress towards them, and several of the largest are nearing completion. Pretty soon we are all going to be reaping the benefits!

We've said this before, but I'll say it again. None of it would have happened without you, our community, and your backing of this gamechanging project on Kickstarter last year. Thank you all so much. Together we can take LiveCode even further with HTML5 and web deployment!