Improved Live Edit and a new series: Features Showcase

Posted by Eugenio on 9 Nov 2021

Dear all,
DaDaBIK has now a pretty solid features set available. During these weeks, I am trying to focus on improving what we have, refining existing features, fixing old known bugs and making the whole DaDaBIK experience as fast and pleasant as possible.

I have also started a Features Showcase Series on YouTube, where I want to present in details, in each episode, a specific feature; typically I will showcase one of the newest feature, introduced in DaDaBIK 10 or 11, that haven't been covered in tutorials yet.

The first episode is about live edit, introduced in V. 11 Elba with some limitations. The live edit feature has been improved a lot, removing several of the limitations we had. The video has been premiered yesterday evening on Youtube and you can now see it here:



It has been recorded using DaDaBIK V. 11.2, currently under test and available soon. Apart from the improved live edit capabilities, you will see a slightly different graphic layout: several changes to fonts, buttons, icons, spaces; in most of the cases, they are minor changes but overall I think they make the GUI more modern and pleasant to use.

The idea is to post a video every two weeks, if you want to keep updated on the videos click on subscribe and then hit the notification bell on YouTube.


Best,

--
Eugenio Tacchini
DaDaBIK Founder

Lessons learned after 20 years of DaDaBIK

Posted by Eugenio on 10 Oct 2021

Dear all,
in November, DaDaBIK will turn 20 :)

In this article, I have summarized the lessons learned during all these years. Some tips and advises useful for independent software vendors or anyone who plans to build and distribute a (typically digital) product:

https://medium.com/@eugenio.tacchini/lessons-learned-after-20-years-of-developing-managing-and-selling-a-software-product-1fcc05f45b03

Personal productivity, relationship with the users, tools, passion, digital nomadism are some of the topics. Of course there is a bit of DaDaBIK history as well.

I know that many of you are software developers or digital creators so I thought it might be useful to share!

Best,

--
Eugenio Tacchini
DaDaBIK Founder

DaDaBIK 11.1 Elba is out: we finally have users self-registration

Posted by Eugenio on 14 Sep 2021

Dear DaDaBIK users,
a new version, 11.1 is out. The main change is the availability of users self-registration. A "register" link allows visitors to create their account, specifying username, email, password and other optional information.
This feature is disabled by default, a new enable_users_self_registration config parameter allows you to enable it.

Other two new config parameters allow to enable email confirmation (account is active only after email confirmation) and the "forgot password" feature (a temporary new password is sent via email). Finally, you can also choose the group a self-registered user should belongs to.

Two other small but quite useful enhancements are available:

• a select all link allows you to select all the records in a page without selecting each checkbox manually. You can then delete all the elements or apply a custom function to the set of elements. The link appears after having selected one record.


• For php_ajax custom buttons, it is now possible to specify, in your custom function, a custom message (confirmation message or error message) that wil be displayed to the user after the execution of the function. Until now, only a "Done!" message was always displayed. You can find an example in the documentation.

Online demos still run V 11.0 and users self-registration won't be enabled anyway so you can't check out the new features from the demos.

We also have several bug fixes, please check them out in the change log; the first in the list (the htmlspecialchars requirement) it's not a proper bug, more a missing note in the documentation but it's still very important to verify.

You can buy DaDaBIK 11.1 from here https://dadabik.com/download

You can find all the new features and bug fixes in the change log.

As usual, if you already have a license, get your v. 11.1 copy from the upgrade page. If you have an Enterprise license and want to upgrade to Platinum, reply to this email.

Finally, a special thanks goes to the translators, the work this time was much more than usual!

Enjoy!

Best,

--
Eugenio Tacchini
DaDaBIK Founder

DaDaBIK 11 Elba is here: live edit, import/synch from MS Excel and more

Posted by Eugenio on 17 Jun 2021

Dear DaDaBIK users,
I am very glad to announce the release of DaDaBIK 11 "Elba".

Some long-awaited features are finally available, I will briefly introduce the main news here, please have a look at our release video to see the new features in action.

To promote the adoption of this new version, for just 7 days (until June 24th):
• DaDaBIK Enterprise IS ON SALE AT €125 instead of €190 (in USD: $149 instead of $229)
• DaDaBIK Platinum IS ON SALE AT €415 instead of €595 (in USD: $495 instead of $695)

You can buy DaDaBIK 11 from here https://dadabik.com/download

Here are the news!

Live editing
For some of the fields you can now edit values directly on the results grid, by double clicking on the cell, without entering the record in edit mode.

Import from MS Excel (Enterprise/Platinum only)
Users can now import data into a table from MS Excel (OpenOffice and CSV are also supported).
This new feature is very flexible; the very basic usage is: import the raw data from a file having, in the header, the same column names you have in your DB table. But you can do much more: in your custom_functions.php file you can easily specify:
• The correspondence between column names and DB field names
• The transformation rules (you might need to change the data before importing it)
• The preview rules
• and more...

Synchronization with MS Excel (Platinum only)
Not only you can decide to import all the rows into your table, you can also decide to synch your table with your Excel file (OpenOffice / CSV). What does it mean? DaDaBIK checks, for each row, if it's already available in your table and in case it is, it will update the existing DB record instead of inserting a new one. You can specify the field (or combination of fields) DaDaBIK must use to "recognize" existing records.

AJAX file upload
Uploads are now executed asynchronously, before submitting the form, showing a progress bar during the upload process; this makes them much more user friendly, especially for big files.

Add a record to a lookup table via pop-up window
Near to your lookup field you have now a + button that opens a pop-up window; from the window, the user can add a new item to the related linked table and the item will immediately be available for the current form after having closed the pop-up.

Other new features include a new maintenance mode (you can enable it from the admin section without using config parameters) and the new search by URL feature, which allows to embed a search filter into a URL.

You can find all the new features and bug fixes in the change log and, as mentioned before, you can find an analysis of the new features in the second half of our release video on youtube.

As usual, if you already have a license, get your v. 10 copy from the upgrade page. If you have an Enterprise license and want to upgrade to Platinum, reply to this email.

How about the name, "Elba"?
Elba is a lovely Italian island near the coast of Tuscany. After three releases named after villages in Liguria (Lerici, Monterosso, Manarola), this 2021 version explores a new region :)

Have a wonderful summer!

Best,


--
Eugenio Tacchini
DaDaBIK Founder

DaDaBIK 10.6 is here.

Posted by Eugenio on 26 Jan 2021

Dear all,
DaDaBIK 10.6 is here.

This is a maintenance release containing two important fixes related to sqlserver and Wordpress and some other general fixes.

Check the change log to see the complete list of fixes and changes:
https://dadabik.com/index.php?function=show_changelog

If you are using DaDaBIK with sqlserver or as a Wordpress plugin, it's particularly important for you to upgrade.


You can buy your license here https://dadabik.com/download.

As usual, if you already have a license, get your v. 10.6 copy from the upgrade page: https://dadabik.com/index.php?function=show_upgrade_new

Best,


Eugenio Tacchini
DaDaBIK founder