11. Release notes #

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A version you own never loses its components: 3.0 contains the twenty-one from 1.0 and 2.0, and a key whose maintenance covers the date of your build compiles with the latest DLL — see License.

3.0 — September 2026 #

Eleven components: data, utilities and media #

• Breadcrumb — the breadcrumb trail: where you are, and back to any level in one click. Branches opened on demand, direct path entry, files dropped on a segment.
• Button bar — a row of command buttons — icon, label or both — in a single component; a click reports the button's key.
• Crosstab — the live pivot table of a DataStore: rows, columns, aggregated values, filters, subtotals, calculated fields and measures, CSV and Excel export.
• Crypto — hashes, HMAC, password or key encryption, RSA, ECDSA and Ed25519 signatures, JWT, salted passwords, two-factor TOTP and DPAPI — with nothing to install.
• JSON — build a JSON document type by type, read it along a path and edit it in place, in pure PowerScript.
• JSON tree — a JSON document shown as in a code editor: line numbers, colouring by type, every block foldable, search.
• REST client — a native, asynchronous HTTPS client: GET, POST, headers, JSON, multipart, cookies, retries, file downloads — without a browser's CORS wall.
• Speech out — reading aloud with the voices installed on the workstation: current sentence and word, queue, pronunciation dictionary, synchronous reading.
• Video player — a video player with its own themed bar: subtitles, full screen, chapters, markers, playlist, frame capture.
• XML — build an XML document element by element and read it with real XPath: namespaces, editing, XSLT transformation.
• XML tree — an XML document shown as in a code editor: tags, attributes and text colour-coded, every element foldable, search.

What changes #

• Every position given to a method counts from 1, like the ones the reordering events already report; a cascading entry reports its full address. The details, and what to change: Migrating from 2.0 to 3.0.
• Button is still shipped and supported, but it is deprecated in favour of Button bar: a row of buttons fits in a single component.

Elsewhere in the library #

• of_set_property, of_get_property and of_component_name: drive a property by its name, for a settings screen or a saved configuration.
• The message box offers a list of choices (of_add_choice, of_choose) besides its buttons.

Fixed #

• A colour read back (il_text_color, il_accent…) returned 0, black, whether set or not: it returns the colour set, and -1 when it is the theme's.
• ue_error of Picture and Shell explorer was never raised.
• Rich text: an unknown [word] made the rest of the text disappear; it is now shown as written.
• Status bar: ue_panel_rclicked gives screen coordinates, to hand as they are to a context menu.

2.0 — September 2026 #

Five components, all about navigation #

• Menu bar — application menu bar: menus, submenus, checkable entries, separators, icons, shortcuts and &File mnemonics, drawn by the library in the application's theme.
• Command palette — one shortcut, three letters, and any action of the application is reached without hunting through menus. Searches the label, the group and the keywords, several words at once.
• Radial menu — commands in a ring around the cursor on right-click, chosen by direction rather than by walking a list.
• Shell explorer — the real Windows shell tree: Desktop, This PC, drives, folders, Network, with the machine's own icons. A single of_expand opens a deep path.
• Stepbar — a wizard's trail of steps: the ones done, the current one and the ones to come, horizontal or vertical.

A reshaped API on the sixteen from 1.0 #

One key, one address; everything from the component; an addition returns a code. The three rules, the before/after and every changed signature are in Migrating from 1.0 to 2.0. What motivated it: a handle that added could not say it had refused, and three arguments to name an item forced every component to invent its own way of doing so.

On every component #

• of_count, of_keys_at and of_has, on the component and at every level: what a component holds can be asked, there is no need to keep track of it yourself.
• Every method returning a long says what its return means: 0 applied, -5 invalid argument, -2 component not created — in the demo's embedded doc as well as here.
• Item properties read back live: the icon of a listbar entry, the text and icon of a tile, the state of a bar button — a getter says what is on screen, never a remembered value.
• ib_visible on every menu entry — menu bar, context menu, radial menu, ribbon menus: hiding is not greying, the entry leaves the menu, shortcut included, and keeps its key to come back.
• The status bar builds its menus one entry at a time (of_add_menu_item ("panel/id", …)), with an entry handle that greys, checks and hides — instead of the two parallel arrays of of_set_panel_menu.
• ue_script_error: a script error in the page reaches PowerBuilder with its message and stack, instead of being lost.

Fixed #

• A disabled or hidden item no longer answers anything: neither click nor keyboard — the listbar still selected a greyed entry on Enter.
• Greyed text is legible in every theme (3:1 contrast at least), and hovered text too in dark mode — two disabled ribbon buttons went invisible in Office 2007.
• A Windows path read back from the page came with its backslashes doubled (C:\\Windows); a value holding a quote was cut short.
• Dock container: the panel pinned on the left lost its right border above 100% display scaling.
• Ribbon: the icon of a disabled button was not greyed in compact mode; a menu bar title lit up together with the hovered one.
• Code editor: the text read back after folding was the old one, and unfolding overwrote what had been typed.

1.0 — August 2026 #

First release: sixteen components — button, code editor, dock container, listbar, message box, PDF viewer, picture, progress, ribbon, statictext, statusbar, tab, tiles box, toaster, toolbar, web browser — one DLL to deploy, x86 and x64 under the same name, no .NET, ActiveX or PBNI dependency. Office, Fluent and Metro themes, light and dark; six languages and RTL; entirely offline licensing; PowerBuilder 10.2 to 2025.

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