About change log of the AMS7...

[Solmos]

What’s New in AutoPlay Media Studio 7.0?
October 29th, 2007 by Brett Kapilik

Well, we are wrapping up our beta testing of AutoPlay Media Studio 7.0 this week and hope to release the product early next week (week of November 5, 2007). Here is a list of features that have been added to AutoPlay Media Studio 7.0:

Rich Text Object

The new rich text object allows you to display rich text (.rtf) in an object. It supports background transparency as well as design-time and runtime character and paragraph formatting.

Slideshow Object

The slideshow object allows you to show a series of images in a set area. It supports automatic resizing and scaling as well as transitions between images.

Checkbox Object

The new checkbox object wraps the standard Windows checkbox control but takes it to a new level by allowing transparent background and mouse state text color changes.

Radio Button Object

The new radio button object is great for quiz and test applications. Radio buttons support transparent backgrounds and changing text color as the mouse passes over them. Radio button selection and grouping is also handled automatically.

Multiline Text on Button Objects

Button objects now support multiline text. You can have multiple lines of text with word-wrap and specify custom left and right margins.

Thumbnail Support in File Browsers

The file browsers in the product now support thumbnail view, making it much faster and easier to locate files.

Print Pages at Runtime

The addition of the Page.Print action allows you to print pages at runtime including options for whether or not to show a print dialog and whether to scale the pages to fit the paper.

Automatic Sizing and Positioning of Objects

The new Auto-Resize options for each object allow you to control how each side of the object responds to the page being resized at runtime. This makes it very easy to have resizable applications look right at different sizes.

Page Keyword Searching

Specify a list of keywords associated with each page. Then at runtime use the new actions to search for keywords on pages, create an indexed table of keywords, or even show a common dialog to allow the user to perform keyword searches.

New and Enhanced Templates

Includes many new project templates that demonstrate many of the new features in version 7.0.

CD / DVD Burning on Vista

You can now burn CD/DVD projects on Windows Vista systems.

Get and Set Page Properties at Runtime

Two new actions, Application.GetPageProperties and Application.SetPageProperties allow you to query and modify page properties such as keywords, descriptions and even background colors and images dynamically at runtime.

Automatic Code Signing

Automatically have your applications code signed during publishing. This provides a more secure experience for users and helps make applications Windows Vista compliant.

MSI Actions

Over 35 MSI actions that leverage the Windows Installer service technology on the user’s system. These actions make it easy to query the state of products, features and components on the end-user’s system that were installed with a Windows Installer package.

Dynamic Passwords for Encrypted Data Segments

Now when you build to a Web/Email executable and turn on the Encrypt data segment option, a unique key is used to protect the data ensuring that your data cannot be decrypted using a common key.

Instructions for Project Templates

Now when you export a project to a project template and enter instructions in the Description field of the Project Template Information dialog, the text will be displayed for the developer to read when a project is created from that template.

Support for Alternate Templates Folder

The new project dialog now scans the “My Documents\AutoPlay Media Studio 7.0\Templates” folder for project template files as well as the “Program Files\AutoPlay Media Studio 7.0\Templates” folder. This allows the storage and use of project templates from a per-user folder.

Minimum Page Size

Added support for minimum page sizes for resizable projects. These dimensions can be entered on the Appearance tab of the Project Settings dialog.

CDATA Support for Writing to XML

The XML.SetValue action now has an extra parameter that allows you to specify whether the data should be written out as a CDATA section.


excellent change log but

No support for create only one file .exe?? (no .ccd files...)
No support for multiple windows?
No support for search multiple file tipes?
No support for File.Gettargetshorcut?
No support for File.getProperties?

and more and more..............

:huh

[bule]

Well, take it easy... those features will make it into 7 maybe few months from now, depending on the demand for them. As IR folks mentioned, from now on, updates to the product will be more often and subscription based, and many new features will find a faster way into APMS, with the release cycle being something like every 6 months. I, for example, also desire child windows and native dbgrid object, but I realize that not all of our wishes will make it into first release of the v7, since in that case we would wait for a new release much longer than now.

[goukilord10]

:(
the Automatic Sizing and Positioning of Objects is the only thing i may ever need in ams7...
and yes i wanted:
-multiple windows
-better z order or multiples layers
-and the most important thing a Virtual file system.
having all your files in a big archive and AMS read them without extacting anything.

[bule]

Well you must understand that APMS is not designed as such. It's primary an autorun and multimedia authoring tool, and the security of the files is in the second plan (but you do have encryption actions). There are other development environments that you can use to build more advanced applications, however I will not name them here. Please note that I do share all of your desires regarding the needed functionality of the APMS, but you must understand that with every software, a feature freeze is a part of the development process, and as such it limits the amount of new functionality that one new version can bring to us. APMS7 brings some really nice features, and the development team is still tweaking some newly introduced objects in it. If they haven't had made the selection of what is in and what is out, we would be waiting for those functionalities mentioned on the blog another xx months. This way, we will have these in a few days, and additional new features (most of them based on the demand from the users) will be introduced maybe half an year from now. And that is great!

[FoxLeader]

But... is it an exhaustive or non-exhaustive functions list?
(I want multiple timers!!! lol.) jking

I totally agree with bule, but wishes more anyway! But I'll wait, and get the cash I need to buy AMS 7 :)

[Buffman]

Yeah I must admit from looking at the new features list I'm pretty disappointed. Most of the new features I already had workarounds for. I too was looking for a lot of the same features you all are. I may take a look at the trial, but it mostly seems worthy of a point upgrade. Hopefully IR is working on a new release cycle, and we'll see the major stuff in the next 6 months or so... But right now, it doesn't sound like its worth a paid upgrade.

But I'm still really happy with the product & company overall. It'd be nice to hear from IR in terms of what their thinking and strategy is. One of the great advantages of AMS is how quickly and easily I can automate & develop applications that would normally take someone here 5x longer to do in VB. But I must admit AMS can be pretty limiting at times. I understand AMS was designed to be something different than a lot of us are using it for, but I believe it can become a great application development platform with the right strategy.

Speaking of which, I was hoping for a branding (name) change. People around the office always give me half-jokingly crap for writing a cool app in "Autoplay Media Studio" ;-)

Just my 2 cents. =)

[Tuberculosis]

I was fairly happy with the new features... guess I need to upgrade my standards. :)

We will always want something... hopefully, they will release the stuff to make everyone happy.

I thought it was well worth the upgrade price they asked in the email...

[srussell]

Nice job on the new version, IR guys...:yes

[Derek]

[... and more and more]

Hold on a sec, I've had a great idea!

Let's see if we can talk IR into making just one upgrade that includes everything we ever need, and absolutely everything [cross my heart and hope to die - surely not hope to die?] - plus some extra things [even if we never need them] and then we'll all be happy and have ... well, ... everything we ever need!
That way, IR will never need to make another upgrade. Mind you, it may take them about 5 years to get it out the door - and will hopefully cost less than $5000 - but what the heck. It'll be worth it right?

[FoxLeader]

[... and more and more]

Hold on a sec, I've had a great idea!

Let's see if we can talk IR into making just one upgrade that includes everything we ever need, and absolutely everything [cross my heart and hope to die - surely not hope to die?] - plus some extra things [even if we never need them] and then we'll all be happy and have ... well, ... everything we ever need!
That way, IR will never need to make another upgrade. Mind you, it may take them about 5 years to get it out the door - and will hopefully cost less than $5000 - but what the heck. It'll be worth it right?

:lol
I totally follow your idea! :D

[goukilord10]

i dont think so. i think its better to make a product to a userbase of ex:100kk rather than just 10kk with constant upgrades.

i think giving a complete product and trying to draw more users to buy it is better that saving freatures for a creating next upgrades.
and if a user dont find the features he need he will propably switch to another software.

its like the case now, even if i dont want to im forced now to switch to another developement tool rather that to upgrade to ams7 :(

[usernameCasper]

And keep in mind that computer technology is developing in rapid movement.
Think on the .NET frameworks, etc.
There will be always need for something extra's, always...
Nothing can be perfect, even if you are switching to another IDE that
does support it, it might take you years of practise and experiment to
master it, while it developing so rapidly, you will never master it all.

This IDE is so powerfull, that it not only take much time to program your needs,
but also provide the LUA language and DLL support.
So I don't see the problem in here.

Hope this will informed you enough for a while<
Casper