The story behind 4D’s new Markdown-based documentation site
by Arnaud Schmitt, Head of Technical Documentation at 4D SAS
As many of you know, doc.4d.com has long been managed using an in-house 4D application. However, 4D’s documentation is currently in transition to a new architecture: a Markdown-based documentation site.
This was the topic a few weeks ago during a 4D Method meetup, where I shared our experience about creating and maintaining the new documentation site. You may find this information useful when you are browsing the 4D documentation site, or if you need to create your own documentation.
Apply naming conventions with Form macros
by guest author Michael Höhne, 4D developer (Munich, Germany)
There’s a feature in 4D v18 R5 that may have been overlooked, or at least hasn’t gotten much attention so far: Form macros. To be honest, I hadn’t spent much time on them either, until recently. In this blog post, I’ll show you a macro that saves a lot of time when applying naming conventions to list box columns, column headers, and footers. You can easily change it to fit your needs. A dedicated repo is also available on Github.
Scalable sessions for advanced web applications
Nowadays, web applications are essential modern tools. As machines and processors become more and more powerful, your web applications must constantly meet performance requirements. This is why with 4D v18 R6, the 4D Web Server offers a new kind of web session: the scalable Web session.
Let’s find out more!
Code editor: Write more code in less time!
With 4D 18 R4, we announced the availability of the suggested functions for classes (4D and data model). With 4D v18 R6, we’ve got more great news to simplify and facilitate the writing of code in the editor: The prototype of a function and a short description are displayed in the code editor!
Speed up your development process and avoid typos. Now, information about class functions is displayed in the code editor, helping you to write more in less time while making sure that you’re on the right track!
Let’s find out more!
Your data live … in a web interface
As a 4D developer, you may have dreamed of visualizing your data immediately and easily while you update/create it. Or maybe you’re a 4D administrator and you need to quickly find a record that causes an error due to inappropriate data. This has been possible with 4D’s built-in query interface and output form, but it can take time to customize this form and you may need a more responsive tool.
How about a modern and user-friendly web interface to view your data? And for a cherry on the top, what if this interface comes with a powerful query engine? Dream no more! All this is now a reality thanks to Data Explorer, a new tool provided as a Preview for you to evaluate it and give us your feedback.
Of course, it will be enhanced in future versions.
Let’s discover it now!
2020 in review: Our top 10 blog posts!
It’s that time of the year where we take a look back at ten of our most-read posts. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the topics that grabbed your attention in 2020:
Latest news about 4D on Silicon
Since Apple’s first announcement about Silicon, we’ve been keeping you informed through a series of blog posts and this post is no different!
So what’s going on? Well, the first Silicon Macs equipped with the brand new M1 chip are now available on the market. Here are two important pieces of information we need to share with you:
Sharing leads to performance
Following this blog post about the new concept of shareable entity selections and the subsequent discussions on the forum, we’ll now take the time to explain how ORDA fits into the future.
6 practical examples on how to use macros
4D 18 R5 introduced form macros. They can be incredibly useful, for example, by providing an ideal way to save time on repetitive tasks. In this blog post, we’ll show you some basic examples to learn more about how macros work and the possibilities they offer. All of the following examples are available on GitHub.
Automate repetitive tasks and more with form macros!
If you’re a fan of macros in the code editor, then 4D v18 R5 has some good news for you … because now macros are also available in the form editor!
Let me start by telling you how useful macros can be for you. Have you ever needed to use formatting or naming rules in your application, then apply them to each new form? Or maybe you’ve had to work on existing forms created by someone else, and always need to do the exact same checks and analyses before getting started. If you’ve ever encountered one of these scenarios, then 4D v18 R5 is for you because it gives you the ability to create macros and save time on predictable, repetitive tasks.
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