My B4J experience

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As there’s been a fair bit of talk about B4X, this thread will document my testing of B4J.

Alarm bells are going off because pi-hole has blocked shortpixel.ai so their whole site looks broken for me, lots of missing images.

So I just downloaded and installed B4J and visited https://www.b4x.com/guides/B4XGettingStarted/ for getting started.

I jumped to Getting started B4J because I had no interest in A or i at this time so I ended up on page 105

Download and install - check

Now run B4JPackager11 after you set the value of InputJar and NetFrameworkSCS, say what now?

Search for more references of B4JPackager11 to see if it was mentioned in a previous part of the doc that I skipped to get to B4J. Search doesn’t highlight the search term on the page. Nope, nothing around the doc that tells me what this is all about.

The output looks like this, where is that then?

Click on run.exe uhhhh hold up there, did I miss a step or three?

Search help document for InputJar, nothing
Search help document for NetFrameworkCSC, nothing

Then you need to configure the IDE, whoa whoa, I haven’t done the previous step yet

Not a good sign if this is the how to doc for noddies (i.e. me)

Should I progress, is that step important? I have no idea.

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never mind…

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Well, it did not say “run” B4JPackager.

But, you should follow the recomendation on page 106, ignore the book and go to Learn Cross Platform App Development IoT, Desktop & Server | B4J :rofl:

After the instalation, there is a section that says “Documentation” with a link to Learning resources

With videotutorials: B4X Programming Video Tutorials

A B4X Glossary: Glossary

And a full documentation: B4A Documentation

Note: It is true that B4X documentation is not really the strongest point of the tool

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I guess it’s an interesting introspective into an “outsiders” view of B4X.

Eh?

B4JPackager11 is a non-ui project. For now you should run it from B4J after you set the value of

InputJar (and NetFrameworkCSC).

I’m not having issues installing, I’m having issues using :slight_smile:

I went there, big bold link, programming guides, then the first link, getting started. I’m just following the cookie crumbs.

I’ll just skip that part, I’m sure it can’t be that important to be one of the first things you are asked to do when starting up B4J?

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The project is available in the SourceCode folder shipped with this booklet:

SourceCode\MyFirstProgram\B4J\MyFirstProgram.b4j

Hmm, I followed a link here, back to the website I guess, ahha, source code download, yoink.

Find MyFirstProgram.b4j and double click, oooooo something is happening.

On the screen, we will have:

Umm, nope, I have a bunch of source code.

Onwards…

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Don’t get discouraged. You don’t sound like such a person to me Julian! It would be a shame if you missed the real power of B4X because of the installation process.

Instead of creating a ‘fat’ installation, Erel has chosen to do the first time in steps so updating it (and yes, B4X releases a lot of updates with new features fast) is very easy: all you have to do then is download the small IDE installer and run it. The download link will also appear in the IDE if there is an update.

Installing is honestly nothing more than following the few steps on this page Learn Cross Platform App Development IoT, Desktop & Server | B4J
(the title of the html page should probably better just say ‘Installing B4J’ instead of the ‘Learn…’). Probably an SEO thing, but it really is that one.

  1. You download the IDE installer from that page
  2. Then follow the steps under the pictures (if you have trouble with one of them, please say so, I’ll try to help)

You can run a B4J app (debug or release mode) with the ‘play’ button in the IDE menu.

Once you’re finished with your app, you can just give the user the generated .jar file from the Objects folder if the user already has Java installed (after running in Release), or you can choose to ‘package’ it (for a Windows EXE) from the IDE menu Project → Build Standalone Package. For MacOS there is a separate tool MacSigner - Building notarized Mac packages | B4X Programming Forum, but as I don’t develop for MacOS, my knowledge is limited on that part.

I hope this gets you started!

Alwaysbusy

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I too had a similar experience.

I think the B4X Basic guide is the document you should check after the installation.

Julen

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I’ve installed it, but I’m having issues using it :slight_smile:

Success, I’ve got something running, kidneys still intact…

image
image462×728 52.2 KB

I hope I can customize that.

Onwards…

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As far as I can see you have the chance of using it. Yes, it is more complex for the developers but it works and it’s reliable. Not like xojo

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I believe it is done with the CSSUtils library, but for that kind of thing you’re better of asking in the B4X forum

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BTW, if you are planning to look into Desktop - Mobile crossplatform I strongly advice you to look into this: [B4X] B4XPages - Cross platform and simple framework for managing multiple pages | B4X Programming Forum