IMPORTANT: The nightly builds (previously called the 'pre-release' builds) are only available to customers with a valid Alpha Anywhere subscription. If your subscription has expired you will not be able to use the nightly build.
If your subscription is valid and you download and use the nightly build please keep in mind that if you do not renew your subscription after it expires your eligibility to use nightly builds will end.
The Features and Bugs Listed Below
are for the current nightly build. These
features/fixes will be included in the next official
Update. These notes are for users who are
testing the nightly build.
This is not an official patch, so you should not deploy this update to a production environment.
This nightly build is our internal, development build and it is made available to you for the sole purpose of testing the new features that have been added and the bug fixes that have been made since the last official release. We are making this nightly build available to you so that you can provide us with feedback on whether the changes we are making are working correctly and have not introduced new issues.
If you encounter any type of bug while using this nightly build, please send information about the bug (including full instructions on how to duplicate the issue, and a test case that we can run on our own machines) to a5v12bugs@alphasoftware.com.
Please do NOT post bug reports concerning the nightly build on the message board. Alpha Software engineers do NOT routinely monitor the message board and there is a good chance that your posting will be overlooked. Also, since your posting will be referencing unreleased code, it will only serve to confuse other users.
This nightly build is not intended to be used in a production environment.
IMPORTANT: A new installer (called the Universal Installer) is used to install the nightly builds. To learn more about the Universal Installer, click here.
The Nightly build is installed using the Universal Installer. To open the Universal Installer, select the Help, Run Universal Installer menu command.
If you have previously installed a Nightly build (of any of the product variants) using the Universal Installer, the Universal Installer will display the install details on the Installed tab and you can simply click the Update button to install the latest Nightly build of that product variant.
However, if you have not previously installed a Nightly build using
the Universal Installer, go to the the Available tab,
select the product variant you want to install, click on the Version
to Install link, select Nightly build
from the Product to Install dropdown and
set the install location. Then click the Install button
| UX Component _Web Push Notifications | Using OneSignal to send push notifications in Web applications |
These videos show how you can use the OneSignal
service to send notifications to a web
application (including PWAs) Watch videos Date added: 2025-06-21 |
Some customers have reported that their (classic) server unexpectedly
stops responding to client requests. We have been working with these
customers to identify the cause and resolve the issue, but we have not
yet been able to duplicate the problem in order to troubleshoot it.
If anyone else is experiencing this issue, please submit a bug report
with the relevant details. Please include the Application Server build
number you are running on your server, your OS version, and any other
details or patterns you are aware of that lead to the problem. If there
are any crash dump files, please submit the most recent one, and if you
have access and Xbasic error logging enabled, and there are logs
covering the period of the most recent problem, please include them as
well.
If you do not have at least access and Xbasic error logging enabled,
please enable them so we can get an idea of the level of traffic and
type of requests that your server is seeing.
Also for the sake of consistency and making sure we are all on the same
page, please be specific about what the server is doing in your case,
using the below terminology:
crashing - alpha5.exe or
a5applicationserver.exe exited unexpectedly and is no longer found when
viewing Task Manager.
stopping - alpha5.exe or
a5applicationserver.exe is still running and the UI is responsive, but
it shows that the Application Server status is not running or stopped.
hanging - alpha5.exe or
a5applicationserver.exe is still running. The UI may or may not be
responsive, and if responsive, it will show that the Application Server
is running. However no requests made to the server will load properly in
a web browser.
If you are using AlwaysUp, please try
running the Application Server directly, as
AlwaysUp is not supported, and using it greatly complicates
troubleshooting and debugging.
From working with the customers that have reported this behavior so far,
it appears that their servers are receiving a large number of malformed
- and likely malicious - TLS/SSL connection attempts. As a stop-gap
measure, implementing a Web Application Firewall (WAF), such as
Cloudflare or similar services and
products, has been shown to at least partially mitigate the issue.
Having such a system in place offers many benefits beyond this
particular case, and is considered a best practice for all web
applications, regardless of server software.
Xbasic, PDF_Merge() Function - Now allows you to specify the page size of the merged document. If you don't specify the page size the default page size is determined by the page size of the largest source document.
The syntax for pdf_merge() is now:
L pdf_merge(Base_File as c, Merge_File as c,
Result_File = "", flagMergeAllPages = .t., flagMergeFileOnTop = .f.,
flagNested = .f., pageWidthInPoints = "", pageHeightInPoints = "")
Push Notifications - You can now send push notifications to Web applications (including PWAs) using the OneSignal service.
OneSignal is a unified messaging platform that supports web push, email and SMS notifications. To setup an account at OneSignal visit OneSignal.com
To enable OneSignal within a web project go
to Project Properties/OneSignal and check
Enabled. Next enter your
OneSignal App Id.
(which you will obtain from the OneSignal
web site.)
Click here for information on setting up a
OneSignal project and obtaining a OneSignal
App Id.
For further details on using web push notifications with Alpha Anywhere
see the Alpha Anywhere documentation topic:
Web Push Notifications with OneSignal
For a series of video tutorials on the OneSignal
integration click the link:
OneSignal Web Push Notifications Playlist.
JSON Forms - Date Picker - You can now control if a datepicker control should have an icon to open the datepicker. if no icon is shown clicking anywhere in the control will open the dqtepicker. if an icon is shown you can customize the icon.
Datepicker control with no icon.
Datepicker control with default icon.
Datepicker control with custom icon.
To set the properties of the datepicker icon, set these properties
If you have turned on the Show Icon property, you can leave the Icon Name property blank to use the default icon
Security Framework - New folder level allow options have been added to include subfolder for the selected folder. These options are named
These options have been added to the Folder Security menu for folders.
When either of these options is used files in subfolders are allowed when the option's condition(s) are met.
Note
The implementation of the existing Allow All Files
in Folder and Allow All Files in Folder
with Login was done incorrectly under IIS. Subfolders are
included in the folder level option. Because of this, Allow All Files in
Folder and Allow All Files in Folder with Login for existing IIS
applications will continue to behave as if and Subfolders was selected.
However, if the allow option for a folder is changed, the consistent
meaning will be used and and Subfolders must be explicitly selected to
get that behavior.
Xbasic - For Each Loops - Fixed a regression that did not allow the iterator variable to be referenced directly (e.g. varname). It was required to explicitly use varname.value.
As a result of this bug, the output generated by the a5w_info() function was incorrect.