5.5.4 and Other News
Life outside Kickstarter: LiveCode 5.5.4 brings support for iOS 6.1, Article published in major Education magazine.

By Heather Laine

While it does feel for some members of the team as though Kickstarter is the entire world and nothing existed before it, other members are steadily working on their own areas, and providing such useful things as LiveCode 5.5.4 for your delight.

LiveCode 5.5.4

This release is important if you are trying to build apps for iOS. You can now build LiveCode apps for iOS 6.1, using Xcode 4.6. Armv7 device builds are now produced using the iOS 6.1 SDK and testing with the 6.1 simulators is now possible.

For Lion & Mountain Lion users to produce Armv7 device builds, you must have the iOS 6.1 SDK installed, which comes with Xcode 4.6. For Armv6 builds, the iOS 5.1 SDK is needed, which comes with Xcode 4.4. Naturally, to produce universal builds, both Xcode 4.4 and 4.6 are needed.

For Snow Leopard users, all device builds are produced using the iOS 5.1 SDK (the latest version available for Snow Leopard) which comes with Xcode 4.2.

LiveCode 5.5.4 supports the 4.3, 5.0, 5.1, 6.0 and 6.1 simulators. To use LiveCode with a given simulator version, point LiveCode to the version of Xcode the simulator comes with using the "Mobile Support" section of the LiveCode preferences. Extra simulators can be installed through the "Downloads" pane of Xcode's preferences.

You can download the release notes for 5.5.4 here:

Desktop

iOS

Android

Article in Learning and Leading technology magazine

We congratulate Steven Whyte on having his article "Yes, Students can Learn to Love Computer Programming" accepted by this leading educational magazine. You can read it online here. This magazine is published by ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education. In the article he says

"The computing department has seen firsthand how using the right development language and platform can bring programming back to life for high school students.

At Gracemount High School we are piloting the use of netbooks, which students can use both at school and at home. LiveCode runs perfectly on netbooks, and for the first time, I have been able to assign programming for homework."

Great to hear! Later he says

"Students who gain knowledge and confidence in mobile app develop- ment will benefit well beyond the classroom. The rise of mobile app developers is increasing at an incredible clip, and introducing students to a profession with more than 500,000 new jobs annually, according to a survey by TechNet, makes great sense for educators."

It certainly does, and this substantial article is yet another jumping off point for more educators to discover LiveCode and how it can help.