Some blocks have undergone small changes, for example the Share button has been moved to the top-right corner. Other blocks have undergone big changes in the background, for example a more advanced block such as the JavaScript block.
This article will describe the differences between the existing blocks and the new blocks.
Please note: these changes will only become visible when you publish your apps in the stores starting mid May. For now, you will only see these changes in the previewer in the Web browser. First we will describe some general changes, after that the changes per block will be described.
Your customers will not be impacted yet by these changes, as they will only be visible in the Web previewer when you are working on your app. This will become visible after you have republished your app in the app stores after mid May.
Your app might look a little bit different in the new Flutter version, because of small differences between the old and new technology. For example, sometimes fonts are not supported in the old version, but are in the new version.
Before you will publish this new version of your app in May, we advise you to check your app in the Native Android Previewer to make sure everything looks perfect.
Generic remarks
For now, In the Web Previewer all standard texts are in English.
This means for example that the default texts like for example the word “Phone” in the Contact block will be called “phone” instead of for example “Telefonnummer” when your app is in German.The Web previewer currently doesn’t support more than 1 language yet.
Remarks per block
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Modernised POI, Products, People, Events, Photos & Videos blocks
We have modernised these screens by making the following changes:
The order of the items in the screen is adjusted, so that the image is shown first and the title below it.
Previous New Detailpages: We have replaced the ‘Next’ and ‘Previous’ buttons with a generic ‘share’ button. In modern apps users are much more used to swiping to a new item.
Previous NewWe have also improved what is being shared when someone uses the share button:
4. The 'Show Route' button from the bottom bar is removed.
When customers click on the red dot on the map, a contextual menu will be shown which will enable the
customer to show the route on Google or Apple maps or copy the coördinates.
Limited showing of URLs, Webpages or links in Web Previewer
The new App Designer Web Previewer is based on web technology. The X-Frame-Option setting is preventing us from showing internet pages from other websites directly in the web previewer. Sites can use X-Frame-Option to avoid click-jacking attacks, by ensuring that their content is not embedded into other sites, this includes our web previewer.
That’s why the previewer will show the message below and a button to open the link in a new tab in your browser.
X-Frame-Option has no effect for your native apps, in your native app the links will be shown in your app directly.
Twitter
The new Twitter block uses the new Twitter API V2 which means that you need to create new Twitter API keys and save them in your AppMachine designer in Settings > Advanced > Twitter.
You need to fill in the first two fields. In this document you need to do step 1 to retrieve the API key and the secret.
https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api/getting-started/getting-access-to-the-twitter-api
You don’t need to fill in the third and the fourth field.
Web page
The Webpage block had a setting “Page Refresh” with the options “with each block visit” OR “first time visit”. This setting will not be supported anymore. The default behavior in the new mobile client will be “with each block visit”.
Photos
If you had an Instagram photos block in your app, it is now replaced with a webview of your instagram page, as Instagram doesn’t have any API support anymore to show images directly.
Products
In this first version, the “Add to cart” functionality will not be supported.
Maps integration
We have rewritten the integration with maps. This involves changes in the following blocks: Screen, Contact, POI and Events. We don’t show a “Show route” button by default, but when you click on the red dot on a map, you will see this bottom menu appear.
This is an example on iPhone:
On Android devices the option “Open in Apple maps” will not be shown.
User management
We have rebuild the screens for user registration, in order to prepare for the future and improve security. The screens are built with different technology and now have a whitelabeled design, which means they don’t use the colours or background images from your app anymore.
These new screens are only visible in the previewer for now, your live app will be unaffected and still have the old screens until we make the flutter app available for publishing to the stores.
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We have removed support for LinkedIn and Salesforce. If you have any users who logged in with LinkedIn they will need to create a new account using one of the other available options.
Login with both Facebook and Google is working again. And you can now specify your own Facebook API keys to use your own Facebook app to let users login.
The functionality that is dependent on User Registration will keep working as it did.
We are also in the process of adding support for “Apple Sign-in”.
Web services block : Support for Auth providers
The new Flutter app will have support for the next 3 auth providers:
Basic
Custom
Oauth 2.0.
We found some issues with the current OAuth2 integration which we improved in the Flutter app. This means that you can start publishing apps with this in May
We are also in the process of adding the OpenID integration as a new Auth provider.
This means we have stopped supporting OAuth 1.0a, OAuth 1.0a one-legged, Static Login, Salesforce of SHA1 signature.
If you are using one of these auth providers, you will need to change your app before you can publish your app with the new Flutter version after mid May.
Custom JS and PWA
We will not be able to add PWA support for our existing Custom JS block. We needed to make bigger changes to support the Custom JS block in our new Flutter Apps and Progressive Web Apps. Therefore we are introducing a new version of the Custom JS block, which will be called “Javascript V2”. This block is not ready yet, so it’s not available in this first Flutter Web Previewer release. This means that customers with a Custom JS block will have to use the Android Previewer to test changes to their JS code. In this release you won’t be able to view the Custom JS changes in the Web previewer. As soon as we release the new Javascript block, customers will have to make minimal changes to their JS code to migrate to the “Javascript V2” block. We will provide documentation for this process at that time.
Logic
The flutter app supports a subset of the Actions and Conditions you can define in our Logic tab. For Logic we support the following actions: Call, Email, Share, Find Route, Goto, Open Website, Show Message, Set Property and Web Service, for Conditions in our Logic we only support the “if'' condition for now. https://support.appmachine.com/support/solutions/articles/80000978421-logic-script-examples
Music - Soundcloud block
This block has been removed because Soundcloud changed its APIs and this integration is not supported anymore. Every Music - Soundcloud or Soundcloud playlist block stopped working a while ago.
Please remove this block from your app.
Menu / Design changes
Removed support for custom images for buttons.
You might have uploaded custom images in the green Design block > Tab Images.
Those will not be used anymore in the app, instead default lean icons will be used, for example this simple back button and share button:
Before you publish your app with Flutter after Mid May, please check your app and your icon colors, to make sure the default icons will be visible against the background color.
Removed support for Browse and transitions.
For the generic design, the Browse and transition options are deprecated, the previously provided options were not supported on every OS, to ensure the app feels similar on every formfactor we choose to remove these options. We have also removed the option to set transitions when browsing through detail screens.
Tabbar menu
Sometimes the longer words won’t fit on the tab bar menu anymore:
Please also check your Tabbar menu’s to make sure the default color, selected and hoover color work like expected. You might need to make some change to those colors if you have a rather old app.
Removed Settings
We have removed the following menu settings which were not supported in the Green Design block :
For the Tabbar, support for Icon menu background has been removed.
For the Sliding menu support for “Text above menu” has been removed.