Although most of the NetTalk examples compile and run ok in Clarion 5.5, overall support for C55 is dropping. Some of the examples won't run on C55, and some of the more advanced techniques may not work as expected in 5.5. Web apps in particular are not recommended for C5.5 because of the threading limitations, and the inability to turn the server into a Windows Service. Because of these limitations it is expected that support for Clarion 5.5 will be dropped completely in the short-to-medium term.

You no longer need to manually copy the web folder after NetTalk updates. The IDE will detect the change, and copy the current web folder (from \Clarion8\Accessories\Libsrc\Win\NetWeb or \Clarion6\3rdparty\libsrc\netweb) to your application folder when you next compile your application. You still need to deploy your web folder when you deploy your application.

The GZipAll.Bat file is automatically created, and maintained, by the template in the application folder. It will be automatically run if NetTalk is updated in the app, or if a new theme is added, however you are free to run it at other times (after editing any files in the Styles, Scripts or Themes folders.)

The default page (typically index.htm) can now exist in the Web folder, and all sub folders. the default page name is used when the user enters a URL with no page name. For example http:\\127.0.0.1:88 will open the default page in the root folder, http:\\127.0.0.1:88\styles will open the default page in the styles folder.

You can now have multiple menu extensions on a single NetWebSource or NetWebPage procedure. The menus can be of different types. (Tip: The nt-menuright style can be used in place of nt-menuleft to create a menu on the right side of the page.) It's very important though to make sure all the menus have a unique "Menu Id".

In the past you could only nominate one procedure as the Form procedure for a Browse. You can now nominate a different form for the various different actions (Insert, Copy, Change, View, Delete) and you can also specify different Forms based on the data of a Row.

Some Menus (Double-drop & Chrome for example) let you create a clickable "menu item" on the menu bar itself. Other menus (Accordion, TaskPanel) don't because the click on the header there determines that the menu Opens, or Closes. In these cases an extra menu item is generated so the user can still get full navigation of the site.

In NetTalk 5 the browse-row colors (greenbar, selected and highlight) were done using settings in the APP file. This made it hard for a non-programmer (ie a designer tweaking just CSS) to change these values. In NetTalk 6 these values are now set in CSS. The default settings are in the nettalk-ui.css file, which is in the theme folder. So you can override it there, and do it on a theme-by-theme basis. The styles in question are;

.nt-browse-gb1{background-color: #FFFFFF;}
.nt-browse-gb2{background-color: #F8F8F8;}
.nt-browse-mouseover{background-color: #DDDDDD;}
.nt-browse-selected{background-color: #CCCCCC;}

(see here for more information if you have styled the colors using the template in NT5)

In addition to the existing s: (SessionValue), v: (Parameter), f:(file), and c:(Code) tag identifiers, a new tag identifier, d: has been added. The d: tag allows you to access various current date and time values and include them in html.  The following identifiers are recognised;

tag	meaning
<!-- Net:d:today-->	Display today's date, format using  p_web.site.datepicture.
<!-- Net:d:clock-->	Display the current time, using @T4 as the format picture.
<!-- Net:d:day-->	Display the day number in the month
<!-- Net:d:month-->	Display the number of the current month in the year
<!-- Net:d:monthname-->	Display the name of the current month (January, Feburary and so on)
<!-- Net:d:year-->	Display the current year value.
<!-- Net:d:dow-->	Display the day number in the week, (Sunday=0, Monday=1 etc.)
<!-- Net:d:weekday-->	Display the week day name, Monday, Tuesday and so on.
<!-- Net:d:dayname-->	Display the name of the day of the month, eg 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on.
<!-- Net:d:hour-->	Display the current "hour" part of the time.
<!-- Net:d:minute-->	Display the current "Minute" part of the time.
<!-- Net:d:second-->	Display the current "second" part of the time.

In NetTalk 5 you had the option to wrap a NetWebSource in a <div> tag. This was necessary if you wanted the NetWebSource to be updateable via an Asynchronous call.

In NetTalk 6 this option has been removed, and a <div> tag is automatically wrapped around all NetWebSources. This brings the CSS setting for the tag into play, and since this has (in the past) defaulted to 'adiv' or 'nt-left' this can have an effect on your existing NetWebSource procedures. Specifically this will most likely have an effect on the Header and Footer procedures. You will likely need to inspect these procedures, removing the 'adiv' or 'nt-left' CSS setting on each of these.

If you plan to keep your header exactly as it was in NetTalk 5, you need to include the "NetTalk 4 styles" in your app.
Go to the WebServer procedure, Extensions, NetTalk extension, Settings, Styles, Files, and tick on Include CSS from NetTalk 4 .
You also need to manually run the Gzipall.Bat file (located in your app directory) if you do this.

Optionally - As an alternate setting for the header and footer CSS you may want to use the ' ui-widget-header ui-corner-top' for the header and 'nt-left nt-width-100 nt-margin-top nt-site-footer ui-widget-header ui-corner-bottom' classes for the footer.

In addition to the CSS change you also need to explicitly set any header procedures as a header, by ticking on the option This is a HEADER. Footers will need the same, this time ticking on This is a FOOTER.



Important - If you have used NetWebSource procedures in your application a lot, then read the section NetWebSource vs Source carefully as well.

Important - A lot has changed since the NetTalk 4 days, but headers created then have tended to endure. A new document here discusses the header, and possibly ways of changing (dare I say improving) it.

A number of Tab styles were supported in NetTalk 5. Since the XP-Tabs style stopped working around build 5.23, and since a suitable technique was found to use the normal Tab as a replacement, the support for XP-Tabs has officially been dropped with this release. If you are upgrading from a version of NetTalk 5, prior to build 5.23, and you currently use XP-Tabs, then you will need to make the following changes;

Globally:
1.) Go to the WebServer procedure, to the NetTalk extension, to the Settings / Styles / Form tab. If the Form Type there is set to XP-Tabs change it to Tab.
2.) Set the Tab Title CSS field to 'nt-tab-title nt-xptab-title'..



Locally, most of your forms should have the tab type set as Default. So the above global change should be sufficient. However if you do have any local style set to XP-Tabs then change it to Tab.

The XP-TaskPanel and Chrome menus  have been deprecated with this release. They are however (optionally) included in the JavaScript and CSS if you want them to be.  While the temptation is to default these settings to on, to improve backwards compatibility, it's better for them to default to off thus encouraging people to change their menu type, and also not to penalize folk who are building new apps from scratch.

The preferred approach here is to change the menu type of your application from Chrome to Double-Drop, or from XP-TaskPanel to TaskPanel.

If however you want to remain on the old menus for now, include the Scripts and CSS for one, or both, of these menu types.
Go to the WebServer procedure, to the NetTalk extension, to the Settings / Scripts tab. Tick on support for one, or both, of the menus.



Then go to the Settings / Styles / Files tab and turn on the same for the CSS files

There are new defaults for the TaskPanel and Accordion menu styles. Set the Menu Div CSS field to ' nt-menuleft' for both these menu types.

NetTalk 5 offered template options to set the Greenbar, Mouse-over and RowSelected colors. In NetTalk 6 this is now done via CSS Styles - which gives the site designer a lot more flexibility, without having to recompile the code. Unfortunately there is no easy way to convert these custom colors into known styles, so if you have used this technique a certain amount of manual adjustment will be required.

If you create custom classes to use, then you should set the background-color property of the class. For example, the contents of the default classes are;

.nt-browse-gb1{background-color: #FFFFFF;}
.nt-browse-gb2{background-color: #F8F8F8;}
.nt-browse-mouseover{background-color: #DDDDDD;}
.nt-browse-selected{background-color: #CCCCCC;}

Global Settings

Local Settings

In NetTalk 5 and earlier there was some inconsistencies with regard to the naming of internal parameters. Some parameters had a leading underscore, some had a leading and trailing underscore, some had neither. In NetTalk 6 this has been consolidated somewhat and most parameters [see note 1] now have a leading and trailing underscore. Since these parameters are mostly used internally, this should not affect your application.

The exception to this is where you have made use of the parameters to manipulate the procedure to behave a certain way. For example, when calling a browse from a menu you could pass the parameter Refresh=Last and this causes the browse to jump to the end, displaying the last page in the current sort order. In NetTalk 6 this becomes _refresh_=Last where the name takes both a leading, and trailing underscore, and (by convention) is written in lower case (although it could be written as _Refresh_ as parameters in NetTalk are case insensitive.)

Note 1: Earlier I said most parameters had changed. There are a few that have been left alone, most notably the value and newvalue parameters passed to the server when a form field completes. These have been left alone because of the extensive use of these parameters in existing embed code.

The planner class has undergone a revamp, and although most of the changes will not affect your existing code, there are some changes you will need to make;

• The top-axis has changed from being specified on the Layout tab, to being a Data set. To have the same as before you will need to add a new item to the Data Tab, set as Loop Through Dates, and "this is the Right Column Headers" ticked on. the FromDate and ToDate can be set as before.
• On the Layout tab, if the column width is set to less than 100, then you probably want the option "show times on background" turned off.

The following items may cause compile errors in your embed code if you have used them;

• In the NetHeaderQueueType the Day field has been renamed to Column.
• In planner procedures, the loc:days variable has been renamed as loc:columns.
• GenerateMonths Routine renamed to GenerateCalendar. (This should only affect you if you've called the routine from hand-code.)

In Nettalk builds up to 6.36 the SessionId has been a long. In builds from 6.37 this has changed to a string. Allowing for a string allows for a stronger session id to be created. This should not affect you unless you are using the session id in your own tables (especially temporary In-Memory tables). If you are using the session Id then you can force the session id to use a number in the Web Server procedure, Settings then Security tab.
Other common security options are also on this tab, and should be considered carefully.

Auto-complete functionality has been added to Fields of type STRING, in build 6.18. It works on fields that have a lookup, or on fields that don't have a lookup. More information to follow.

Sliders are an alternative form of accepting numeric user input. They allow you to set the minimum and maximum values of the number, and also set the step value to determine the granularity of the slide. this is done on the Validation tab.

A normal numeric field can also optionally be displayed, allowing the user to both see, and set, the value to an exact number.

The default width of the control is 20em, however you can adjust it here if you like.

Progress Bars work in conjunction with a Button control. They are designed to be used when a task is started (by a button) that may take some time to complete. This task is almost always the creation of a file, perhaps a PDF Report file, or an Excel spreadsheet, or something like that. For a full discussion on how to add Progress Bars to your application see here.

 

The option to add Styled (jQuery) radio buttons has been added to the Radio form field type.



This results in the radio options being placed together, and uses color and shading to indicate the selected item. For example

The option to add Styled (jQuery) Checkboxes has been added to the Checkbox form field type.



In addition to the background color of the control changing slightly when in a "checked" state, you also have the option to display different text and/or icons based on the field state.

While I try and keep changes, which could affect your hand-code, to a minimum, there's also a strong place for cleaning up code, and occasionally, making a change that will affect you. On the up-side the compiler will notice these changes, and complain, prompting you for a fix.

loc:Class now loc:FieldClass in Comment::Fieldname routines

A new IMAP Client class, (NetImap) has been added. Please note that the IMAP class requires StringTheory.

One common misconception is that the NetWebSource should be called if the procedure will use p_web. This is not the case. p_web is just a parameter, and any Clarion source which has the prototype, and parameters, set to
(NetWebServerWorker p_web)
can access p_web.

1. Open the procedure properties, and click on the Ellipsis button to the right of the Template field;



2. Select "Source" from the list of templates and click on the Select button



3. Inspect the embed tree to make sure there is no Orphaned embed code - if there is then move it into the Processed Code embed point.