Considering the breadth of changes introduced in 2020.1.12, it made sense to allow ourselves a cooling down iteration and see where we could improve and refine. That being said, we did add three new features:
- Tile background scaling
- Minimal and full versions (Windows GUI)
- Tools for online documentation (Software Factory)
Other improvements include:
- When a background task is started, the Running tasks panel is now opened automatically.
- It is not assumed anymore that each SQL Server installation allows people to log in using Windows authentication. This applies in particular when an application is deployed in Azure.
- When a default stored procedure includes a parameter from a password control, its value is now obscured in the debug console.
- The Started at column in the debug console now shows the full time stamp of each event, including its date.
- Scheduler improvements for edge cases.
- Fixes for the preview control in the Windows GUI.
IMPORTANT: As detailed in the Thinkwise Lifecycle policy, support for Software Factory version 2017.1 has ended in July 2019. Following this policy, support for this version will end in the Windows and Web GUI’s too in their next release.
Tile background scaling
Both GUI’s now support three tile background image scaling types. To use this feature, you’ll need to add the extended property TilesmenuBackgroundScaling to your project, Available values are:
stretched- The image is stretched to fill the available space. This is the default and current behavior.centered- The image is centered with respect to the available space.tiled- The image is anchored to the top left, and tiled to fill the available space.
Minimal and full versions
As the inclusion of the Chromium web browser engine for the preview control adds about 270 Mb to the required disk space of the Windows GUI, we’ve decided to make it optional.
If you delete the CefSharp subdirectory from the Components directory (see below screenshot), the GUI will still work, but with a limited set of file types that can be shown in the preview control.
Files that can still be previewed are:
- Images: .jiff, .jpg, .jpeg, .bmp, .png, .ico
- Text: .txt, .cs, .java, .ini, .log, .bat, .sql
- PDF: .pdf, .ps
To accommodate this change, we’ve also distinguished between minimal and full downloads of the Windows GUI in the Thinkwise Community Portal. The full download includes the CefSharp directory, the minimal download does not.
Tools for online documentation
The Project ribbon tab in the Software Factory development environment now contains two new tools:
- Online Documentation - Opens the online documentation in the default web browser.
- Community - Opens the Thinkwise Community in the default web browser.