Instant Developer Cloud 24.0 is all spruced up with more modern new graphics, offering you an even more pleasant and intuitive working environment.
But its good looks are just one of the strong points in this new release. The upgrades we’ve made to the Fluid graphics engine guarantee stunning solidity when using panels. And as always, Instant Developer Cloud offers effective protection against various breaking changes, ensuring continuity in your work in spite of high-impact changes to browsers and third-party libraries.
Let’s look at a few more details.
A new graphic look for a more pleasant development experience
The Instant Developer Cloud 24.0 IDE user interface has been completely redesigned to deliver a refined and modern visual experience.
Every element has been crafted to make your development work not only more productive, but more rewarding. You interact with the IDE every day, for many hours a day. A more pleasant interface encourages concentration and creativity.
But what’s new?
From the icons to the menus, every element has been redesigned with an elegant, contemporary look.
You can choose between light and dark modes to suit your preferences and working environment, for optimal visual comfort under any conditions.
The interface was designed to be more intuitive and responsive, enabling you to easily find what you’re looking for and work without interruption.
A more solid Fluid
The Fluid graphics engine has been updated with all the improvements we’ve made in Instant Developer Foundation, along with other fixes to guarantee a better experience when managing panels.
The advantages of developing a single engine for both platforms are becoming clearer every day.
Developers who use “Fluid panels” are sending us increasingly positive feedback.
As often happens with big changes, the margins for improvement were sizable at the beginning. But now, even for those who were discouraged by initial difficulties, I can assure you that the time has come to invest in this new way of developing.
In fact, we’re now able to guarantee extremely advanced solidity, and we’re already prepared for what’s next.
What’s more, in 2024 improvements will be deployed more frequently, because we’ll release another main version of Cloud and two main versions for Foundation as well!
Your shield against breaking changes
I often like to recall one of our of biggest commitments to people who develop with Instant Developer: No more breaking changes!
It’s an aspect that’s often undervalued: we’re working on it constantly, but we’re flying under the radar. It’s not about new functionalities, but about shielding your work from future problems. The world of IT is constantly changing, and if we don’t match the pace, we’ll end up buried in problems, glitches, and all manner of bugs.
In practice, we have to constantly chase digital evolution, a task that we tackle with determination. This dynamic often goes unnoticed, because when everything is working correctly, a developer using Instant Developer simply doesn’t notice it. But that’s precisely our goal: working so that you never have to deal with issues, allowing you to continue developing without obstacle.
As you’ll see in our release notes, for this new release we’ve addressed and resolved three breaking changes whose effects were seen at various levels.
Browser manufacturers have removed WebSQL support from browsers, and even Chrome has followed suit. If no action is taken to solve the problem, as of Chrome version 124 (April 10), and in any case after May 28, users who launch an offline application from a desktop browser will get an error, because the app will no longer find the SQLite database. But in version 24.0 of Instant Developer Cloud, we have restored native support for SQLite in browsers, including a WebAssembly component that supports SQLite. This required us to change the data access libraries so that they work exactly as they did before the database engine was replaced. As a result, users of apps recompiled with the new release won’t have any trouble.
A second problem we solved has to do with push notifications for Android. The maker of Firebase made the (non-negotiable) decision to change models and APIs, making the previous ones obsolete. This means that beginning on June 20, the legacy APIs will simply stop working, and consequently, so will the notifications. We have activated a new type of notification, and when you recompile the apps with the new version of Cloud and simply set a property, push notifications for Android will work as they do now.
In fact, we solved the problem created by the introduction of the new CSS directives for scrollbar visual control in Chrome 121 and removal of support for the overflow:overlay property. Had we not intervened to restore the scrollbar behavior, the user experience would surely have suffered. So, it’s a small action, but it has a huge impact on the user’s perception of the quality of the applications. And we’ve done all this without requiring developers using Instant Developer to adapt their application code to the new frameworks.
Consistently updated system components
In order to keep Instant Developer Cloud solid and secure, we regularly update system components such as server technologies, client packages, and security libraries. With these updates, we’re ensuring compatibility with the latest and most advanced technologies, and we’re protecting you from vulnerabilities and problems both today and in the future.
Updates to Docker, Node.js (which has now moved on to version 18), and certain applications preinstalled in Instant Developer Cloud publication servers are a few of the developments moving in this direction.
You can see them all in the release notes.
Switch to 24.0
An updated UI, a more solid graphics engine, steps to protect against breaking changes, and timely system updates: version 24.0 of Instant Developer Cloud is a significant step forward in terms of user experience, stability, and security.
That’s why we recommend you update Instant Developer Cloud right away!
