BCD Tech Blog

This is a followup to our October 19, 2011 Minimum OS/400 Release Level Notification for BCD products.

As of later this month V5R4 will be the minimum OS/400 release level supported by most BCD product releases as well as any software updates we create.

The following versions of our products are the last releases that can be installed on OS/400 V5r3:

• WebSmart ILE 9.0
• WebSmart PHP 4.0
• Clover 3.0
• Presto 3.8
• Catapult 7.71
• Nexus 4.03
• ProGen Plus 9.6
• Spool-Explorer/400 4.52
• File-Flash Plus 4.5
• DbGen 2.5
• Docu-Mint 6.6

If you have any questions or concerns please contact Technical Support.

Presto 3.5 was made available for download a couple of weeks ago and includes many new exciting features listed below.  The new features focus a lot on dynamic, database populated elements in the Visual Editor such as the new autocomplete. They also expand on the SQL Query feature to access DB2 data that was introduced earlier this year in Presto 3.0.

Here are the key new features in Presto 3.5:

• Autocomplete: The Visual Editor has a new autocomplete element that you can add to input fields. Autocompletes make it faster for your end users to enter data and are often a better choice than drop down lists. An autocomplete predicts the value the user is typing and allows them to choose their desired value without having to type it in completely. It uses the SQL Query feature in Presto and has many customization options.

• ExecuteSQL API: This is a very powerful new feature that makes it easier to include DB2 data that isn’t part of your original program into your web enabled screens. You can do this without needing to touch the underlying program and without needing to call any other web apps. This gives you the ability to add new data to a screen such as displaying additional information and adding new input fields.

Read more…

As part of our ongoing development strategy and planning efforts here at BCD we are scheduling future internal IBM i system upgrades. This will affect the minimum OS/400 release level supported by BCD products. Our product line currently requires a minimum OS/400 release level of V5R3. As of January 1, 2012 V5R4 will be the minimum OS/400 release level supported by most BCD products and updates released after that date.

As our products continue to evolve and new products are introduced it is generally our intention to keep in step with IBM OS/400 release levels, while also giving our clients enough time to plan for this change. This allows us to develop using current technology and to make this technology available to you in our product family.

IBM discontinued support for V5R3 on April 30, 2009.

If you have any questions or concerns please contact Technical Support.

Join us for a webinar on new Presto 3 Thursday, April 21st, at 1:30 EDT.

You’ll learn why Presto’s the most flexible and powerful web enablement solution. You will see how Presto:

• Web enables all your screens including third party and system screens (even those without source code)
• Provides you with the most possibilities to further enhance the look and functionality of your screens
• Is significantly more advanced with these new features: charts, dynamic drop down lists, JavaScript events…

You will also see a technical demonstration of Presto 3 to see how easy it is to use.

Register now!

I spend a fair amount of time worrying about performance. Within the Professional Services group I work with one of our clients, MedAxiom, developing an increasingly large and complex web application. Yet at the same I want to improve the user experience by speeding things up. One of the simpler ways to make a site faster is enabling gzip compression.

Gzipping components is one of ySlow’s recommendations and Steve Souders also recommends it in his book “High Performance Web Sites”. It’s an Apache module that applies gzip compression to certain output before sending it to the client. Once at the client, the browser unzips the content and displays it to the user. The end result is we’re sending less bytes which takes less time.

I set up a few benchmarks before enabling gzip so I could get an idea of the effect it has. I used Firebug’s Net panel to load each page five times and record the total size of the page and load time, I then took the average of the five loads.  Here are the results:

I was blown away by the improvement in load times!  MedAxiom has some pretty heavy Nexus pages so that’s where we saw the greatest improvement.  Yet even on smaller pages we still saw an improvement of 15%-34% in page load times.

Setting up gzip in Apache is pretty easy, you can do it by adding these directives to your Apache config in the appropriate place.

# Load the module that performs the compression.
LoadModule deflate_module /QSYS.LIB/QHTTPSVR.LIB/QZSRCORE.SRVPGM

# Compress all output by default.
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

# Disable gzipping for images and pdf documents.
# Gzip compression has no effect on these types.
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI (gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.pdf$ no-gzip dont-vary

Presto 3.0 is now in General Availability.

You can download Presto 3.0 from the software download link in myBCDSoftware.com. The Version 3.0 User and Upgrader’s Guides are available from the Presto developer resources page.

The User Guide has new sections describing how to modernize your pages using custom scripts. The Upgrader’s Guide includes a list of the latest features and some specific upgrade recommendations for this version. You can also find an illustrated list of the most important new features at our web site.

If you have any questions please email or call Technical Support at (250) 655-1766.

Join us for a webinar on Presto today at 1:00 EST.

The effort and time required to web enable your IBM i green screens depends on the level of modernization you want to accomplish. A modern Web GUI may be all that you need, or it may just be the first step of your web enablement project.

With BCD’s Presto you can web enable your green screen applications to different levels including adding new functionality and further enhancing the presentation. You will see greater improvements with end user productivity and satisfaction the higher the level that you modernize your screens.

Attend this webinar to find out which level of IBM i web enablement is right for you and what skills and effort are required for each. Register now!

To learn about the new features included in the recently released version 2.4 of Presto be sure to sign up for the New Features webinar happening this Thursday at 1:00 EST.

You will learn about:

1. Adding links, buttons, divs and iframes using the Visual Editor.
2. Specifying CSS classes in the Visual Editor allowing you to reference your own style sheets much more easily.
3. Support for global transformations that mean you can easily add event handlers at the skin level, affecting every page on your site.
4. Page rendering speed improvements.
5. Improved custom page and transformation management.
6. Custom page field mapping improvements for display fields.
7. Designer UI improvements.

Register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/451893120.

Let me now if you have any questions!

I’m pleased to announce the general availability of Presto 2.4. Sign up now for the December 9 webinar to see what’s new in Presto 2.4!

You can download Presto 2.4 from myBCDSoftware.com, where you can also get the new Presto 2.4 User and Upgrader’s Guides with a complete list of the changes in this version.

About Presto 2.4
Presto 2.4 includes a number of highly-requested new features while also addressing many issues reported by our customers over the last couple of months. In myBCDSoftware.com you’ll find a complete list of the changes, but just a few of the highlights include:

• Significant improvements to Presto’s automatic field recognition.
• Better visual editor support for inserting new elements, as well as support for several new element types: links, iFrames, buttons and images.
• Visual editor support for class and style attributes, allowing you to reference your own style sheets much more easily.
• Presto 2.4 is much faster, with compression now part of the Apache HTTP configuration, and several changes to further streamline the generated HTML.
• New support for global event handlers means you can easily add event handlers at the skin level, affecting every page on your site.

If you have any questions about any of these features please email or call Technical Support at (250) 655-1766 or review the additional details in the Presto 2.4 Upgrader’s Guide.

Please let us know if you have any questions or comments!

If you are evaluating Presto or are already using it I recommend reading this article written by Duncan Kenzie, our CTO and President of Technical Services. It helps you build a strong business case for using web enabling solutions and it also gives you a list of examples of the types of screen enhancements that are possible with Presto.  Here is the first paragraph and you can read the full article on the System iNetwork website.

Why Web-Enabled Screens Need to Look and Function Like Standard Web Applications

Many IBM i shops consider implementing web-enabling solutions with the initial goals of giving their green screens a Windows look and of making them accessible in browsers. Most web-enabling solutions do provide modern looking screens that are more accepted by users, easier to access, and easier to deploy. However, these are often not strong enough reasons for you to purchase web-enabling software. To build a stronger business case, web-enabled screens need to make users more productive, reduce training costs, and provide new functionality. This means they need to look and function as much as possible like standard web applications.

Read Full Article…