VA Smalltalk V8 Beta 1 is available

[wembley]

The files for the VA Smalltalk V8 Beta have been uploaded to our FTP server. The V8 Beta contains the following new features as well as many fixes:

TABBED BROWSERS
When VA Assist is active, the class, class hierarchy and application browsers use tab controls for viewing of public and private method lists and to switch between class definition, method definition, comments and notes. These browsers also have the new theme-aware toolbar buttons on Windows; these toolbar buttons will be propagated to all the VA Assist browsers, inspectors, and workspace windows.

DOCUMENTATION
VA Smalltalk on-line documentation now has improved formatting, search, and navigation capabilities. It is available on the Instantiations website and is installable locally.

SEASIDE
This web application framework is based on the OpenSource Seaside version 2.9 alpha 1 release which focuses on flexibility, portability and understandability. It is implemented using underlying capabilities of the Server Smalltalk (SST) framework. Base Seaside and Scriptaculous AJAX support are provided.

You can download the beta code from our FTP site by using the following instructions:
1. In a command window, execute the command ftp www.instantiations.com
2. Supply the username and password when prompted
username: client1
password: upload4us
3. Execute the command cd from-instantiations/V8Beta
4. Execute the command asc (ftp should be able to figure this out, but it sometimes gets it wrong)
5. Execute the command get V8Beta1.txt
6. Execute the command bin (ftp should be able to figure this out, but it sometimes gets it wrong)
7. Execute the command get <filename> where <filename> is the name of the file you are receiving from Instantiations (see below)
8. Execute the command bye

You may need to disable your firewall, setup your browser options to use Passive FTP, and/or add www.instantiations.com as a trusted host in order to successfully transfer files.

Available V8Beta files:

V8Beta1.txt -- Readme

va800_ca.zip and va800_ma.zip -- AIX files
va800_cl.zip and va800_ml.zip -- Linux files
va800_cs.zip and va800_ms.zip -- Solaris files
va800_cw.zip and va800_mw.zip -- Windows files

FEEDBACK ON V8 BETA
===================

You can use the vast-support@instantiations.com e-mail address or this Community Support Forum to provide feedback on the beta code. Please include V8 BETA1 in the subject line so we can easily separate your feedback from other support requests.

John O'Keefe [|], Principal Smalltalk Architect, Instantiations Inc.

[louis_andriese]

John and the rest of the VAST team,

thanks for all your hard work and congratulations with this milestone. It represents a major step in proving the commitment of Instantiations to smalltalk.

best regards,

Louis

[PhotonDemon]

Hi John,

Congratulations on this very important release of the VA Smalltalk V8 Beta with Seaside.

I followed the command line ftp instructions and had a little trouble, so I went to my Opera browser and let it do the ftp work. It seems the file names listed start with "v800..." and should be "va800...". Opera shows the files available and downloading them was easy.

Again, thank you very much and congratulations, Lou

[wembley]

Lou -

Yep, typo -- thanks for letting me know. I've fixed the post.

John

[TriSebastian]

Hi John!

First app already ported! Way faster than on Squeak, awesome!!!
Excellent job!

Editors are looking great!
Big step forward!

Applause to the team!

CU -
Sebastian

[PhotonDemon]

I have the VA Smalltalk V8 Beta installed but I'm having a little trouble testing a simple Seaside #TestRootComponent subclassed from WAComponent. Can someone please give me a few hints on how to test it from a web browser or any other way.

Thanks, Lou

[PhotonDemon]

With a little help from Joachim, I have an answer to my own question. With a Seaside servlet running in the development environment, entering:

http://127.0.0.1:8788/seaside/browse

in a web browser will get you to sone very nice goodies

Lou

[marten]

The files for the VA Smalltalk V8 Beta have been uploaded to our FTP server.

The feature ENVY/QA can not be loaded - the configuration map "OTIML SGML Support" is forgotten.

Marten

[wembley]

ENVY/QA will load properly in V8 Beta2 -- fixed by the fix to 37389: 2 versions of app SgmlSupport 5.5 [16] in V7.5.2 manager.

[marten]

ENVY/QA will load properly in V8 Beta2 -- fixed by the fix to 37389: 2 versions of app SgmlSupport 5.5 [16] in V7.5.2 manager.

You may also have noticed, that the feature "ST: Widget/Controls" can not be loaded - because some prerequisistes are not fullfilled.

[wembley]

Marten -

You are correct that WidgetKit/Controls won't load because of missing prerequisites. It appears that the WbApplicationFramework has subapp config expressions that are intended to handle this situation, but each of them has AbtBaseOleApp as a prereq (even on *nix). This is clearly broken. I have opened case 39109 -- fixed in V8.0.0.

[marten]

Marten -

You are correct that WidgetKit/Controls won't load because of missing prerequisites. It appears that the WbApplicationFramework has subapp config expressions that are intended to handle this situation, but each of them has AbtBaseOleApp as a prereq (even on *nix). This is clearly broken. I have opened case 39109.

This has been introduced in 7.5.3 - right ? Because even GF/ST is not loading correctly in 8.0 Beta 1