Embarcadero RAD Studio 10 Seattle Android Native Splash Screen

Quick Notes

• Prepare your splash image and name as splash.png (760x1024).
• Build the project, target Android to obtain AndroidManifest.template.xml
• Modify generated AndroidManifest.template.xml, change the highlighted line

    <application android:persistent="%persistent%"
        android:restoreAnyVersion="%restoreAnyVersion%"
        android:label="%label%"
        android:debuggable="%debuggable%"
        android:largeHeap="%largeHeap%"
        android:icon="%icon%"
        android:theme="%theme%"        android:hardwareAccelerated="%hardwareAccelerated%">

     <application android:persistent="%persistent%"
        android:restoreAnyVersion="%restoreAnyVersion%"
        android:label="%label%"
        android:debuggable="%debuggable%"
        android:largeHeap="%largeHeap%"
        android:icon="%icon%"
        android:theme="@style/MyTheme.NoTitleBar.CustomBackground"        android:hardwareAccelerated="%hardwareAccelerated%">

• Create styles.xml with the following content

<resources>
<style name="MyTheme.NoTitleBar.CustomBackground" parent="@android:Theme.Black">
  <item name="android:windowBackground">@drawable/splash</item>
  <item name="android:windowNoTitle">true</item>
  <item name="android:windowFullscreen">false</item>
  <item name="android:windowContentOverlay">@null</item>
</style>
</resources>

•  Deployment property
• styles.xml --> res/values/styles.xml
• splash.png --> res/drawable-port/splash.png

Google 2016 2GB Free Storage

If you finish the simple guided Security Checkup procedure, your google account will be granted 2GB of live-time extra free space.

Just click the following link and follow the procedure to earn that free space.

https://security.google.com/settings/security/secureaccount

Enjoy.

Knox allow you to have two Whatsapp in same device

Recently found an interesting app, Knox by Samsung. It help you to securely separate your personal and professional data.

For the meantime I am not quite interest in its security feature, however it does provide me an opportunity to install two Whatsapp on the same device.

The app creates a new 'layer' on your phone so that you as a device user can have a 'second' phone within your phone.

As it is being treated as another phone, like vm, you need to install a separate set of apps inside. And this is the feature that allow you to install a 'second' version of Whatsapp in the same device, like a vm inside your phone.

Hong Kong Mobile Carriers are getting worse. Which carrier would be better?

Which carrier would be better?

I used to be Smartone subscruber. But the stability degraded over the past few years a lot. In the past, though not stable, but I still can use mobile data to connect to the internet. But later, I cannot connect with mobile data in my work place and at home. The worse area is along mtr. I have tried to connect to google.com at Kwun Tong station but even when I got off at Tsuen Wan, I still cannot show the page.

So, I changed to subscribe China Mobile as I can use mobile data even in China. But this even worse than Smartone. Connection when travelling on MTR can never be achieved.  Most areas in Hong Kong cannot use mobile data, Tsuen Wan, Kwai Chung, Tsing Yi, Mongkok, Tsim Sha Tsui, Wanchai, Causeway Bay, Ap Lei Chau, Admiraty, Cental, Yuen Long, Tin Shui Wai (where I am now writing this blog, there is no data signal).

I. have heard that CSL would be the best, BUT their fee is also supreme.

So, is there any economic plan/carrier that I can subscribe? There is no need to be fast. I only want coverage.

How to show and hide android developer option for kitkat 4.4 or above

to show the developer option, click on build number for seven times
to hide the developer option, goto app seetings, all apps. find settings and clear its data.

VS2015 Community cannot build Cordova [Solved]

Recently, I'm trying Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition to build cross-platform apps with Cordova. The thing which frustrated me much is, I can never run the debugger. Whenever I hit F5, I'll got the following error:

The debugger cannot continue running the process. Unable to start debugging.

This has been an issue for quite a long time until recently, Microsoft seems partially solve the issue. You need to update VS2015.

If you still got this issue after update, you should try the following steps:

1. Close all VS instances
2. cd %appdata%\"..\Local\Microsoft\Phone Tools"
3. rename CoreCon folder to something else
4. Launch VS again.

With these steps, I can finally build with Cordova.

How to reset Whatsapp incorrect badge unread on Samsung Android Device with TouchWiz lanucher

Whatsapp does not keep the badge number, it is the device's os functionality.
For Samsung Android device with TouchWiz launcher
Go to settings --> application manager --> all
select BadgeProvider
Click Clear Data
Click Force Stop
Restart your device

WhatsApp spam messages are very annoying

WhatsApp is a convenient tool, but it becomes very annoying as more and more companies use it as an advertising tools. Many unwanted messages and advertisements come from unknown numbers sending to me, WITHOUT MY CONSENT. 

There are three things that I HATE most with WhatsApp
- Anyone can send me message WITHOUT MY CONSENT. They can just send message without knowing who you are.
- Anyone can  add me to a group WITHOUT MY CONSENT. They only need to input my number in to the group and can force me to join the group and send me message.
- I can ONLY BLOCK a sender AFTER RECEIVING THE UNWANTED MESSAGE

These makes WhatsApp a GOOD channel for advertisement and spams. Just purchase a charge card, add a bunch of numbers sequentially, send the messages out then dispose the card. You have no way to escape from these spams and it is useless to block these sender as they are using charge card and will only use once.

Why WhatsApp cannot introduce some measures on the spam controls? Why doesn't WhatsApp give us a way to accept sender before they can send a message to us?

There is a simple way that WhatsApp can help us, just give us two options:
- ONLY ACCEPT MESSAGES FROM MY CONTACT LIST
- ONLY JOIN A GROUP WITH MY EXPLICIT ACCEPTANCE

If users like me who don't like unsolicited messages, just enabled these options. For others, they may disable these options and behaved as before.


What's your opinion?

How to set XE8 FD Explorer ini file Setting location

In XE8, you can find that the ini file setting location has been set as following (you can find this in the FireDAC Explorer):

Connection definition file = C:\Windows\FDConnectionDefs.ini and 
Driver configuration file = C:\Windows\FDDrivers.ini

The problem is C:\Windows usually not allow for file write and that cause a problem, I CANNOT create any connection definitions.

These settings are readonly, though there is a checkbox for you to set default.

The only way that I can find to modify these location is by REGEDIT.

You can find the settings in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Embarcadero\FireDAC. Just modify the value for ConnectionDefFile and DriverFile accordingly and you will be able to save the settings.

Embarcadero seems targeting linux platform

It seems Embarcadero beginning to build toolschain to target linux platform. 

 [ComponentPlatformsAttribute(
    pidWin32
    or pidWin64
    or pidOSX32
    or pidiOSSimulator
    or pidAndroid
    or pidLinux32    or pidiOSDevice
    or pidiOSDevice32
    or pidLinux64    or pidWinNX32
    or pidWinIoT32
    or pidiOSDevice64
    )]

That's great but if RAD studio can be cross-platform itself, it would definitely a good news.

#embarcadero #RAD #linux #crossplatform

Embarcadero RAD XE8 support SQLite encryption on iOS but not OSX

After a quick test, I found that XE8 support SQLite with encryption on iOS, too. However, OSX seems not supported as I got runtime error when running on OSX.

#embarcadero #delphi #xe8 #sqlite #encryption #ios

Embarcadero RAD XE8 support sqlite encryption on android

Woo, cool. Embarcadero RAD XE8 finally support sqlite encryption on Android platform (originally only support Windows Platform. Not sure with MAC, iOS or Linux as I only test Windows and Android Platform). That's great news as people are now more concern on their data.

#Delphi  #XE8 #SQLite #Encryption

Embarcadero RAD XE8 Testing

Just have a chance testing with XE8. It has many improvements that make me to try it again for cross-platform development.

The most notable changes that inspire me much are:

• All supported platforms have TWebBrowser component. In the past, I always need to build to the device to check for Web Browser related stuff, which is very time consuming. With TWebBrowser supports on Windows platform let me have a quick test on the app before deployment.
• FMX version of TImageList control. Though it is quite heavy weight but it is a very convenience components to add all images to the application
• 64bit iOS support (Apple requirement :( ). I love Qt, but the progress on this is a bit ...
• Box2D Physic Engine, seems interesting though I'm not developing games
• Native HTTP/HTTPS client support, no more openssl dependent. This is great as I have no need to compile openssl for different platforms
• Static SQLite library for supported platform. It seems to be able to use the OTFE database but I need to further test with

One thing to note. If you want to try compiling the RESTDebugger, you will probably failed. It seems the team has tried to refactor the code but the resultant file is missing.

If you want to compile RESTDebugger by yourself, just save below code as "uRESTDebuggerResStrs.pas" in the same folder of RESTDebugger source folder will be sufficient. (NB. I just copy the relevant section from XE7 code plus some new stuff with my own wording introduced in XE8).

unit uRESTDebuggerResStrs;

interface

resourcestring
  RSAddCustomParameter = 'Add Custom Parameter';
  RSAddParameter = 'Add Parameter';
  RSBytesOfDataReturnedAndTiming = '%d : %s - %d bytes of data returned. Timing: Pre: %dms - Exec: %dms - Post: %dms - Total: %dms';
  RSCannotProceedWithoutRequest = 'Cannot proceed without request.';
  RSComponentsCopied = 'The following components have been copied to the clipboard: %s';
  RSConfirmClearRecentRequests = 'Are you sure that you want to clear list of the most recent requests?';
  RSConfirmDeleteCustomParameter = 'Are you sure you want to delete the custom parameter?';
  RSContentIsNotJSON = 'Content is not JSON';
  RSContentIsValidJSON = 'Content is valid JSON';
  RSEditCustomParameter = 'Edit Custom Parameter';
  RSEditParameter = 'Edit Parameter';
  RSInvalidRootElement = 'Invalid root element';
  RSNoCustomParameterSelected = 'No custom parameter selected.';
  RSProvideAuthCode = 'Authenication Code';
  RSProvideAuthEndPoint = 'Authenication End Point';
  RSProvideClientID = 'Client Id';
  RSProvideClientIDAndClientSecret = 'Client Id and Client Secret';
  RSProvideTokenEndPoint = 'Token End Point';
  RSProxyServerDisabled = 'Proxy-server disabled';
  RSProxyServerEnabled  = 'Proxy-server enabled: ';
  RSRootElementAppliesToJSON = 'Root Element, "%s" not applied.  Root Element is only applied to JSON content.  Content is not JSON.';
  RSUnableToValidateCertifcate = 'Unable to validate certificate.';

implementation

end.

 

#delphi #XE8 #Embarcadero

Embarcadero RAD Studio XE6 Test (After Thought)

After testing Embarcadero RAD Studio XE6 for sometimes, here are some findings/summary of mine.

Pros:

• great for rapid prototyping
• easy to use (for simple app)
• single code base (delphi/c++) for multi-platform (FMX), Win32, Win64, Android, iOS, OSX.
• ARC for ui components (a feature that Qt already have when I first use it)
• FireDAC for easy database app creation
• REST components
• Some eye-catching features like Application Tethering, Integration with BaaS, InApp Purchase and Advertising components ...

Cons:

• some design issue. e.g. grid assume all cells with same content alignment. (Who will use a table with contents all right-justified?)
• not fully multi-platform. e.g. webbrowser not available on Windows platform
• runtime library a bit large (>30MB in release mode)
• startup time a bit long, especially for android, may be due to the large runtime library
• issue with multi-threading on iOS, got unexpected AV
• sometimes need tweaking, e.g. reorder your code execution sequence, to display properly. The most noticeable one is TWebBrowser on iOS, you need to make TWebBrowser component visible before assigning url, otherwise, the component seems invisible. Also, you need to make it invisible before you can show your other ui components as the TWebBrowser, if visible, will cover up all other components. (may be it is due to the fact that I've placed the webrowsee on a TLayout)

Some suggestions:

• Minimize the forms used in development as starting up a form takes long time, that's why I use a TLayout with TWebBrowser in the above
• TabControl may be another choice for page navigation
• One initialize your first page and postpone all other initialization process to a later time using timer, especially for android to shorten the black screen delay during startup

Embarcadero RAD Studio XE6

There is a long time not updating this blog. As recently I have been assigned for a job to test and try developing cross-platform application using Embarcadero RAD Studio XE6.

For paid solution, it seems a great tool. But I need to investigate more.

Swiftkey 5 go free

http://m.androidcentral.com/swiftkey-5-goes-free-adds-number-row-emjoi-and-paid-themes

Windows batch to download and make a portable JDK

I am a fan of portable apps and don't like to install stuff unless there is no other choices, as installation on Windows platform usually will introduce some unexpected "side-effect".

JDK is one of the tool that I need but don't want to install during development. I want to perform some automated tasks to set up a portable development environment (for android development). But downloading and extracting the JDK in a workable state are a bit tricky. Here is what I have performed to automate the process under Windows environment.

To automate the task using Windows batch script, you will need to acquire the following command tools first.

• wget.exe
• 7z.exe and 7z.dll

To download the JDK (e.g. jdk-7u55-windows-i586.exe) from Oracle using wget.exe and extract the JDK to.\jdk_1.7.0_55, copy the following contents to a text file and save it as "getJDK.bat" in the folder where wget.exe and 7z.exe resided.

@echo off
"%~dp0wget.exe" --no-check-certificate -O "%~dp0jdk-7u55-windows-i586.exe" "http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/7u55-b13/jdk-7u55-windows-i586.exe" --no-cookies --header "Cookie: gpw_e24=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oracle.com%2F; oraclelicense=accept-securebackup-cookie"
"%~dp07z.exe" x -y "%~dp0jdk-7u55-windows-i586.exe" -o"%~dp0jdk_1.7.0_55"
"%~dp07z.exe" x -y "%~dp0jdk_1.7.0_55\tools.zip"  -o"%~dp0jdk_1.7.0_55"
del "%~dp0jdk_1.7.0_55\tools.zip"
for /r "%~dp0jdk_1.7.0_55" %%x in (*.pack) do "%~dp0jdk_1.7.0_55\bin\unpack200" "%%x" "%%x.jar"
for /r "%~dp0jdk_1.7.0_55" %%y in (*.pack) do ren "%%y" "%%~ny.pack.org"
for /r "%~dp0jdk_1.7.0_55" %%z in (*.pack.jar) do ren "%%z" "%%~nz"
for /r "%~dp0jdk_1.7.0_55" %%a in (*.pack) do ren "%%a" "%%~na.jar"
for /r "%~dp0jdk_1.7.0_55" %%y in (*.pack.org) do del "%%y"

And lastly, double click "getJDK.bat" to start the process. After the process finished, the folder "jdk_1.7.0_55" should contain a workable JDK.

Don't forget to set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to your JDK folder and also add the %JAVA_HOME%\bin to the PATH environment in order to use the JDK wherever you are.

OpenSSL Heartbleed bug updates - compile openssl 1.0.1g using TDM-GCC

Due to the OpenSSL Heartbleed issue, you should update openssl to the latest 1.0.1g. But searching the web, there is no suitable precompile version for Windows that suit my need. So I have to get my hand dirty to compile by myself.

To compile, you need the following tools on hand.

• ActivePerl-5.16.3.1603-MSWin32-x86-296746
• TDM-GCC-4.7.1-2
• TDM64-GCC-4.7.1-2
• MSYS-1.0.11

I've install the above stuff into the following folders respectively.

• ActivePerl: c:\dev\perl
• TDM-GCC: c:\dev\tdm\x32
• TDM64-GCC: c:\dev\tdm\x64
• MSYS: c:\dev\msys

Of course, you will need to have openssl-1.0.1g.tar.gz and I've placed it under c:\dev\openssl.


All the steps below should be carried out inside the MSYS prompt, so you need to start MSYS first by double-click the msys.bat inside MSYS installation folder.

export PATHBACKUP=$PATH
export PATH="/c/dev/tdm/x32/bin:/c/dev/perl/bin:$PATHBACKUP"
cd "/c/dev/openssl"
tar -zxvf openssl-1.0.1g.tar.gz
mv openssl-1.0.1g x32
cd x32
./Configure --prefix=$PWD/dist no-idea no-mdc2 no-rc5 shared mingw
make depend && make && make install

export PATH="/c/dev/tdm/x64/bin:/c/dev/perl/bin:$PATHBACKUP"
cd "/c/dev/openssl"
tar -zxvf openssl-1.0.1g.tar.gz
mv openssl-1.0.1g x64
cd x32
./Configure --prefix=$PWD/dist no-idea no-mdc2 no-rc5 shared mingw64
make depend && make && make install

NOTE: You should not extract the openssl-1.0.1g.tar.gz with any archiver, e.g. 7zip under Windows. You should extract using the tar command inside MSYS prompt instead.

The reason why I need to have both TDM64-GCC and TDM-GCC is that I cannot find a way to tell MSYS to use x32 libraries and toolchains with TDM64-GCC. The work around is to set the PATH for different toolchains folder with different architectures.

If you don't want to compiled by yourself, you may download my precompiled openssl-1.0.1g-tdm-tdm64.7z which use tdm-gcc to build with both x32 and x64 libraries included.

Name :openssl-1.0.1g-tdm-tdm64.7z
Size :3715883 bytes
MD5  :A9D23198AA4F6A41DA7954AB7CE8ABFE
SHA1 :9E225DAA6A793618009CFD729420AD5CDEB0A38D

Microsoft Office for Android is now Free

Microsoft just announce that their Office for Android is now FREE. No need to subscribe for their 360 cloud service to use now.
http://techtradition.blogspot.com/2014/03/microsoft-office-for-android-is-now-free.html?m=1

EcereSDK 0.44.09.0 Portable with OpenSSL (shared and static)

Finally have time to play with EcereSDK. In my own opinion, it is more convenience than Qt.

• Size is small
• Easier to build than Qt
• The SDK is more portable 

There already have portable versions around, the EcereSDKPortable by Ryoanji. However, it is based on 0.44 SDK two years ago without any new updates. So, I decided to build my own portable version for the latest 0.44.09.9 as of my writing. Instead of using Mingw-w64, I have chosen TDM-GCC.

Thanks to Ecere Teams' efforts, building the SDK on Windows platform is very easy and fast, no quirks needed. Just download the sdk source, the toolchains and upx. Open a command prompt with administrator right and set up the corresponding path. Finally run "mingw32-make" will do the job. As I am building a portable sdk, I did not run "mingw32-make install".

This only takes me around half an hour to build the sdk with a fully functional ide. And it only that me another half hour to build the static libraries as well. That's a big contrast with Qt.You may argue that Qt may be much more powerful, e.g. they have include QML, WebKit, JavaScript engine, ... and others. But the size and time to take for building Qt just not my cup of tea as I just want a simple tools to create cross-platform applications.

After building the SDK, it is time for me to really play with the eC language.

If you are interested to my build, you can find the final products and the corresponding tools at EcereSDK Portable.

• EcereSDKPortable-0.44.09.9_tdmgcc-4.7.1-3_openssl-1.0.0e.7z: Just extract the file (preserve folder structure) to any folder you want. After unzip, run "<FolderForExtraction>\EcereSDKPortable\ide.bat" to start using the tools.
• EcereSDKPortable-0.44.09.9_tdmgcc-4.7.1-3_openssl-1.0.0e_build_script.7z: This contains the Windows batch script, tools (7z.exe and wget.exe) and some supporting files. The batch file is handcrafted by myself and may contains errors not trapped. What the script doing is using wget to grab the files required to build the SDK from their original site (you can find the location inside the batch file with variable urlXXX. If you cannot find the files in the original web site, a copy of them can be found in the same folder as well. The script just build the x32 and x64 shared version of the SDK. Static libs and SQLCipher drivers (shared and static) required to use the IDE to build as I cannot find ways to just using command line to build all the stuff. If anyone has any idea on how to do all the stuff with Windows command line, please share with me so that I can perform some fully automated build testing stuff.

The batch file has only been tested on Windows 7 64 bit and Windows Server 2008 R2 64 bit platform as these are the only Windows boxes that is available to me. Building on 32 bit platform may not worked as the batch file assume default architecture is 64 bit. Tweaking with the batch file may help but not guaranteed. Running the batch inside VirtualBox will certainly failed, which may be due to the DirectX support is missing or incompatible.

2014/04/01
NOTE:  Due to unknown reason, in order to debug your project, you need to copy the gdb.exe as x86_64-w64-mingw32-gdb.exe under EcereSDKPortable\tdm\bin. It seems the ide cannot recognize the existence of gdb.exe (in version 0.44.08, I did not need to do this steps).

2014/04/02
NOTE: You will also need to download the gdb for x32 to debug the x32 version of your project. Save the gdb.exe as i686-w64-mingw32-gdb.exe under EcereSDKPortable\tdm\bin. This gdb.exe require libexpat-1.dll in the same folder, and jit-reader.h under EcereSDKPortable\tdm\include\gdb.