MacAnagram - 29 years in the making!

A new take on an old Word Game has finally been published after 29 years in the making!

MacAnagram, the anagram Word Game for Mac and PC doesn’t just confound you with some cryptic clues, it’s also slightly rude if you get it wrong! It started life in 1987 on my original Macintosh Plus which ran Apple's amazing scripting language, HyperCard! Sadly, Apple abandoned development of HyperCard. The functionality of HyperCard was picked up and extended with a different product and company called RunRev. That as then transformed into LiveCode which is now based in Scotland.

After a major re-design to comply with this modern programming language and to make it Internet compatible, MacAnagram has taken on a new lease of life and is available for you to enjoy!

The screenshot shows how the game provides a random scrambled word based on categories selected! A free hint is provided and all other help is 'purchased'. Clues are mostly cryptic to increase the challenge and it provides a randomized 'slightly rude retort' should you get anything wrong! The dictionaries can either be web-based (most current) or on-board which is updated with each new release of the App. From an Educational point of view, once the answer is revealed, an option to check it out on Wiki pops up in its built-in browser.

You can get it here and read more about it here.

Capture Those Precious Memories

Alan Stenhouse used LiveCode to quickly build an app that allowed him to capture some precious memories with his father. I'll let Alan tell the story.

"One day when I was going through some old photos with my father, I was getting him to tell me something about them - who was there, where it was, when etc. I realised that I needed to record this easily and store it with the photo. Initially I just thought I wanted to take notes about each photo, but realised it would be great to record his voice recollections as well. Anyway, that afternoon + evening I made the first cut of an app which worked out quite well and I used it the next day successfully with my Dad."

In the screenshot you can see the the main palette window showing the image list with various controls at the top and a text area for taking notes at the bottom. Beside it is the image viewing window. 

The app also allows you to play back the images in a slideshow, automatically playing the spoken memories and displaying any written notes. 

Alan has created an iPad version of the app. He's called it Re-Collections. 

Co-ordinating Timezones

Pat M, known as 7Leven, is an intern at a company called ThoughtSTEM LLC in California. ThoughtSTEM is a company that for a while taught kids to program in the San Francisco area. They would use innovative and fun methods to teach the kids like helping them Mod in Minecraft. Currently, they are developing a video game by the name of CodeSpells. In the game the user, a wizard, uses code to make all their spells.

Pat helps run the forums, run contests for the forum users, and relays information to and from the users. There is also a monthly update where the users can talk to the developers over a live streaming service. 

There are many users from many different locations around the US and other countries. So keeping up with the time zones is difficult. As a result, he made an application with LiveCode that always has the correct timezone that correlates to the developers location. This application also counts down to the the time for the update livestream the application and opens the livestream in the user's default browser. 

The app connects to a MySQL database and gets the time of the update each month from that database. Pat created a second application that updates the database to which the users' applications connect. 

Dissect an Animal Without Harming It

Over 20 years ago, Stu of Duncan Software, wrote Dry Labs Plus. It provides a highly realistic simulation of the dissection of a number of animals including a fetal pig, a frog, a rat, a perch, a crayfish, and an earthworm. It has been used to educate many students and saved the lives of countless small animals.

Dry Lab Plus in action

Stu has continually refreshed Dry Lab Plus over those 20 years and authored various versions of it in different tools including Toolbox, Authorware, Director and Flash.

The latest version has been, to quote Stu, 'happily' re-written using LiveCode. It runs on OS X and Windows.

You can find out much more about it at Duncan Software.

Rewrite a Multimedia Game

Tom Bodine of the eponymously named Bodine Training Games LLC used LiveCode for a complete rewrite of the company's multimedia game show template, Game Show Presenter. The quiz software is used by teachers and trainers to add interactive fun to reviews and learning.

According to Tom, "The rewrite of Game Show Presenter in LiveCode only took about a quarter of the time needed to originally develop the product."

Find out more.

Team Organisation and Time Tracking

Roberto Trevisan of TD Software used LiveCode to help his small business customers organise and track how their employees time was spent in a cost effective manner. He built TCal, a time tracking calendar, that records events, deadlines and working hours on companies' own management databases. It works with a company's existing database which could be running in FileMaker Pro, Microsoft Access or MySQL.

The Tcal client allows employees to manage their events and times through a graphical calendar interface.

The TcalServer manages company shared calendars and interfaces to the company's own management database.

Tcal not only runs on both Microsoft Windows and Mac OSX, it is also available in both Italian and English. It is a testimony to both Roberto's development skills and the breadth and flexibility of LiveCode.

More about Tcal.

Give the Power to Arrest

This electronic version of the training course "Power to Arrest" from the Department of Consumer Affairs of the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services of the State of California was created using LiveCode by Alejandro Tejada Capellan for Franco Security Consulting Group.

This training course provides the minimum standards of instruction for security personnel. It is a self-instructional course designed to educate the trainee to carry out his or her duties with caution and within the confines of law.

Completing successfully this course is necessary to obtain the Security Guard's Registration Card, required for a person to serve the functions of a security guard or patrol person. This course is intended to be a learning experience as well as a guide to understanding.

Help people learn French

Alain Vézina set up a small language learning centre for adults more than 20 years ago. At that time, he looked for activities on computer to help students and didn't find much. So he started computing to create the kind of apps of which he dreamt. He started with HyperCard, continued with SuperCard and for several years used LiveCode.

One of those apps he developed in LiveCode is named A-mots-couverts. It is a new type of language game, a kind of crisscross puzzle in varied, interesting texts. The user consolidates and enhances their knowledge and abilities in all aspects of French. There are numerous skills, abilities and knowledge put to the test: listening ability, memorising, reading, text analysis (main idea, secondary ideas), usual spelling, grammatical spelling, syntax, vocabulary, synonyms, antonyms, words of the same family, conjugation, tense conformance, phrases and expressions. It stirs up the user’s interest in learning French in all its forms: oral, read and written. There are three difficulty levels and at the highest difficulty level, challenges are issued to the strongest students.

"It is extremely educational. It's very addictive. I love it" according to Delia Dyer, one of Alain's students.

A-mots-couvert is available for Mac, Windows and iPad. Learn more about A-mots-couvert. 

It's in both the iOS AppStore and the Mac AppStore.

Develop an interactive electronic textbook

Devin Asay has been teaching introductory programming to college students using LiveCode for over ten years. There was no textbook available, and he felt that static web pages were ineffective, so he created an interactive "electronic textbook", in LiveCode of course, for his students that teaches the fundamentals of programming and the LiveCode environment. It features interactive examples in each lesson, self-scoring quizzes to check comprehension, downloadable example stacks, an assignment download and upload feature, user progress tracking, and more. Students love this innovative learning tool, and teachers love the way it helps them give feedback and track students' progress.

Convert MediaWiki XML to HTML

Pascal Lehner wrote an App to convert MediaWiki XML to HTML. It translates the XML exported from MediaWiki to single externally available HTML pages. These HTML pages can then be easily displayed on a website.

Pascal modestly told me "Even though I am a new developer, it took me just a few days to write and debug it."

Get it here.

Note: Whilst the UI is in German, the code is commented in English.

Help people express their feelings.

Phil Jimmieson wrote In My Shoes in LiveCode. It is a computer package for Macintosh and Windows computers that helps professionals communicate with children and learning disabled adults about their experiences, views, wishes and feelings, including potentially distressing experiences such as illness and abuse in home, educational and other settings. The interviewer sits alongside the child and assists, guides and interacts with them through a structured interview process. Trainees learn how to use the In My Shoes computer-package and structured interview approach, as well as building on their skills in communicating with children. In My Shoes has a sound research base and has been sponsored by the Department of Health/DfES and others. It is useful for psychologists, social workers, child psychiatrists, other mental health staff, health workers, educational workers and specialists in forensic services.

Learn more.

Build a virtual pet ... when you're eleven!

William Eller used LiveCode to develop his own virtual pet. He was eleven at the time.

Spend time with your patients not entering data

Peter M Brigham, a psychiatrist, used LiveCode to reduce the time he spent entering data into a web-based system and, as a result, spend more time concentrating on his patients.

I'll let Peter tell his story. "Our group practice recently had to change to an electronic medical record and I had to stop using the LiveCode-based practice management tool I had been developing and using for 20 years. The new software is web-based, and extremely cumbersome and frustrating. I put together a little utility to facilitate writing notes that is being used especially by the other psychiatrists and prescribers in the practice. It allows storage and easy access to snippets of text, and provides a shortcut for writing certain prescriptions. It took me under 2 hours in LiveCode to get the basic functionality written, and then another few hours to clean up the interface, handle details like text fonts and opening and closing routines, and write a help text. It then took 5 minutes to turn it into a standalone for Windows and post it for others to use. I had it done before the end of the first week the new software was rolled out."

"This illustrates one of the unmatchable virtues of LiveCode — a 'non-programmer' can rapidly create a custom piece of software tailored to the exact needs of the user, since the non-programmer is the user."

Teaching Law

David Johnson has been using LiveCode to develop legal learning games for use by law students at New York Law School.

Create icons

Jan Schenkel developed IconBadger using LiveCode is an in-house utility for his colleague user experience designers. The company had purchased a large set of icons, but they were still missing some for their flagship application. Thanks to Jan's tool, they can now quickly create additional icons by combining database 'table' icons and function 'badge' symbols.

Build a complete chat system

ChatRev is a server/client chat system, similar to IRC (but much simpler), developed in LiveCode. It was made almost ten years ago by Björnke von Gierke as a proof of concept. Since then he updated it regularly and it is still used daily by him and a few other people to chat about LiveCode and the world.

You can join the discussion or just look at the code by downloading it.

Graph production data straight from a database

Roger Eller uses LiveCode and Charts Engine* to produce production graphs such as this directly from a database:

* Charts Engine is a LiveCode Library from Björnke von Gierke. It is currently available from the RunRev Marketplace. 

Create QR Codes

John Craig uses LiveCode to directly generate QR codes.

More information.


Note: The displayed image includes the text "1001 things to do with LiveCode".

Manage a database of images

Roger Eller used LiveCode to develop this app which to manage images via an SQL database for a large print company.

Some areas of the screen shot have been obscured to maintain privacy.

Administer SQLite databases

Peter Haworth developed a fully featured SQLite database administration app in LiveCode.

It's for sale.