BCD Int'l., Inc. announced the release of Presto 4.7, the rapid green-screen web enablement and modernization tool. This version offers predefined styles for its Visual Editor Palette's container and heading elements and support for accessing spool files in PDF format. Presto 4.7 comes on the heels of the recent 4.5 release in February, which included the Visual Editor Palette, updated subfile detection, HTML5 SmartCharts and significant performance improvements.

According to Eric Figura, BCD's Director of Sales and Marketing, "We are constantly investing in Presto to make it faster for RPG programmers to modernize their IBM i and our shorter release cycle gets these new features in our clients' hands as quickly as possible. The improvements that we've made this year alone to Presto's Visual Editor and automatic subfile detection feature, for example, will go a long way in reducing the time it takes IBM i shops to give their green screens a web GUI, then further enhance their web-enabled screens."

Visual Editor Palette Element Styles

Presto's Visual Editor Palette's drag-and-drop functionality has made it easier to add new UI elements, such as drop down boxes, autocompletes and charts, to your screens without coding HTML or CSS. Version 4.7 builds on this feature by adding predefined styles to two elements: headings and containers.

With Presto's predefined heading (e.g. H1, H2, H3) styles, you can give your titles consistent styling across all screens without coding HTML or CSS. These new heading styles are a good example of how Presto makes it easier for you to style screens like traditional web pages, with page titles and subtitles that have different font sizes. This feature uses CSS classes behind the scenes so you won't have to reapply styles if you change them in the future.

The palette also includes predefined styles for containers, which are an effective way of grouping data together. The new styles include a container with a gradient background and one with rounded corners. It was possible to add containers in previous versions of Presto but required you to pick a background color or create a CSS class.

Spool File-to-PDF

It is now possible to access spool files as PDFs in Presto. With Presto's spool-file-to-PDF feature, you can access the list of IBM i spool files from any screen you're on in Presto and view spool files in PDF format. You can then download the PDF versions and email them or print them on any printer that you can connect to from your PC.

Other Key New Features

• Option to automatically right-align text left of input fields, or to use a regular expression to custom format it.
• Internet Explorer 10 has been added as an option for the Visual Editor's default browser.
• Improved support for PHP definitions in WebSmart Change Management.
• Page-level custom JavaScript can now be seen in Firefox and Chrome developer tools.
• A dockable status window for reporting non-critical generation warnings.
• Support for adding a favicon to your Presto site.

About Presto

WebSmart Presto is the fastest way to give green screens a rich web GUI that is accessible from browsers on PCs and mobile devices. It transforms all green screens (RPG and COBOL programs, menus, third party and system screens) to web pages without requiring any source code changes. Presto also gives you the most flexibility to add new functionality with its Visual Editor or by making changes to the HTML, CSS or JavaScript.

You can request a free trial of Presto 4.7 at http://www.bcdsoftware.com/richgui.

BCD is a Quadrant Software company and one of the most successful software organizations in the IBM i marketplace. The companies have a combined 60 years in the IBM i marketplace and have successfully helped thousands of organizations worldwide modernize. Together, Quadrant and BCD help customers maximize their investment in IBM i with their industry leading web development, mobilization, spool file beautification and document distribution tools. Their customers and partners around the world are leaders in key markets such as finance, manufacturing, transportation, retail and healthcare.
Quadrant and BCD are part of the Quadrant group of companies that also includes Netlert, which develops an Avaya call center performance analysis solution, and SoftBase, which provides application testing and tuning solutions for IBM's DB2 database utilizing the OS/390 and z/OS operating systems.
For more information, please visit http://www.bcdsoftware.com and http://www.quadrantsoftware.com.