Q: What version of Eclipse is Designer based on?
Designer is based on Eclipse 3.5 (Galileo) but is compatible with Eclipse 3.4 based products.
Q: Can I integrate Designer with my XYZ Eclipse based product?
Yes, a local update site is provided through the Designer installer that you can use to integrate Designer into any Eclipse product based on Eclipse 3.4 (Ganymede) or newer.
Q: How do I get started designing an application's user interface?
There are several ways to create a Designer application, depending on what you may already have.
Q: How can I run and test my application?
If you have the target hardware that you're expecting to run on, then you can generate a Crank Storyboard Embedded Engine deployment bundle by selecting File > Export > Storyboard Embedded Engine (GAPP). This'll prompt you for an export location and will transform your model design to a deployment bundle and export all of the associated images, fonts, and script files. Then use the sbengine application on your target to run your application.
If you don't have the access to the target hardware, then you can use the Storyboard Simulator to run your application. Right click on the application's .gde file and select Storyboard Simulator this will launch a local Embedded Engine configured for the host system that is pre-configured with all of the available plugins.
Q: Where are all of the widgets?
Designer is a control based design tool. This means that rather than widgets, applications use images for the graphical design and mark regions of interest using controls.
A typical button would adjust the alpha value of the control based on actions that respond to press/release events. Alternately the designer may choose two (or more) different images to represent the pressed/depressed state of a button.
Q: How to I import images into my application design?
Any images that are copied or linked into the images directory (including subdirectories) will be made available automatically in the image selector. Images can also be drag and dropped onto a screen/layer and they'll automatically be imported into the application's images directory if they are not already there.
Q: What is a gapp file?
The extension .gapp is a general convention used to name the XML deployment bundles interpreted by the Embedded Engine. There is no requirement for the files to be named with a .gapp extension other than convention.
Q: What is a gde file?
The extension .gde is used to identify the model files that are used by the Designer tool. These are meta-data files that contain information specific to the application development environment. In order to use an application, it must be exported to an Embedded Engine deployment bundle file, also known as a gapp file.
Q: Can I write my own Eclipse plugins to integrate with Designer?
There are several extension points defined within Designer for contributing event definitions, action definitions, render extension definitions. and model analysis routines. At this time these extensions are for internal use, but it's the intention once the plugin interfaces have stabilized, to make the plugin interfaces publically available to developers.
Do you have questions? We enjoy talking tech. Please call us at +1.613.595.1999. Or email us at info@cranksoftware.com.