Plex 2E

I just found out from CA Support that a Plex generated application does not support any PC with a touch screen running Win 8.1 or Win 10.  I still cannot believe this is true.  I am not even talking about trying to use the actual touch screen but a Plex app cannot even use the mouse to navigate the screens when the PC or laptop has a touch screen.  I have a customer that has upgraded one third of their employees laptops to touch and now they cannot use our application and all I get from CA is that is not supported!  If anyone has experienced this and found a solution please contact me.  Also please join me in expressing to CA that this is not acceptable, I would guess that most laptops now have touch screens.

The main issue seems to be with the treeview control.

Take a look at the Windows Client (C++) Deployment Platform compatibility matrix here: https://support.ca.com/phpdocs/7/258/258_CompMatrix_SuppRel.pdf . You'll see that Windows 8.1 and above are not supported platforms for your Plex-generated clients. In order for us to certify Windows 8.1 for WinC client deployment, we would have to perform a rigorous QA process, and fix any problems we find (e.g. the TreeView issue that you discovered while testing on a Windows 8.1 platform).

If the community decides this it's important to support Windows 8.1 for WinC clients, then please vote on this idea so that Product Management can evaluate, prioritize in the context of other important fixes and features that you all have requested, and possibly add to the backlog for a future release.

Thanks!

Well,

Same treeview control problem with win 8.0 though officially supported. Problem was reported while ago.......

Kari

Stephen,

According to that document the Plex IDE is not supported on Windows 8.1. Considering that Windows 10 is due out in about a month, when will the Plex IDE be brought up to date with the current Windows OS? NOTE: You cannot call Windows 8 current, it's almost 2 versions old...

Thanks,

Crispin.

The Plex IDE is a separate issue. What Eddie is talking about is that certain GUI components do not function correctly in Windows 8.1 because we never certified that OS. Until we certify Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, we cannot begin to fix any issues with them.

Product Management will have to decide when to certify Windows 8.1 and/or Windows 10, that is not my call.

I'm quite aware of what Eddie was asking about. It's not a separate issue at all, it's the same issue, lack of support for current operating systems in the Plex ecosystem.

If certification is not your call, why even bother answering with the compatibility matrix? That wasn't Eddie's question, he'd already been told that deployed Plex apps were not certified by support. He was trying to get input from the community to see who else felt this was an issue.

Pot/Kettle...

Crispin is correct, the issue is the support of the current release (especially now that it is 2 years old) of the most widely used OS in the world today.  How can CA have a development product (that they are charging support for) and not have it support the 2 most current releases of the Windows OS.  It is my understanding that Win 10 will be released to the public on Monday the 29th. 

On the topic of the actual issue, Kari mentions the issue is present in Windows 8, which is officially supported.  Please correct the issue immediately in Windows 8 and I will have my support department test the fix in Win 8.1 and Win 10 for CA.

One last note, if CA is going to continue to charge for support then they must keep their product working with the current OSs.  That is one of the reasons we pay support.

Thanks,

Eddie

Eddie,

The developer from your company who opened the issue regarding the dysfunctional TreeView GUI component stated in the description that, "this appears to be working on the Windows 8 desktop." If that was not true, then please open a new case at CA support and state that the TreeView component is NOT working on the Windows 8 desktop which we have certified. CA Support will then investigate and fix the issue.

Best Regards,

Stephen,

The issue is the treeview control not working with 'touch screens', my developer's desktop does not have a touch screen...  However, we do have laptops with touch screens running Win 8, Win 8.1, and Win10 and the treeview does not work on any of them.  So again, since the issue is occurring in an officially support OS version I respectfully request this issue be correctly as quickly as possible.

Thanks,

Eddie,

OK. I will open a case to address the issue you are having with the TreeView control not working on Windows 8. As I stated before, we have not certified Windows 8.1 nor Windows 10 yet, so we cannot provide any support for WinC clients on those platforms.

but there is an issue open https://communities.ca.com/message/241802735#241802735

Thank you Stephen,

Please send James the ticket number and he will assist you in any way.  We have a Win 8 laptop ready to test and we are using Plex 7.0.

tick tock CA... chickens coming home to roost.... and we use visual studio 2005....Technical debt is growing.

BUT in the end as plex users creating your software the buck stops with you in the eyes of your end users I suggest...end users wont accept the excuses that CA were paid support money but did not deliver, end users will ask why you did not realize this earlier and taken evasive action. We as Plex users have witnessed for years now the total lack of investment into the c++ generator, the writing has been on the wall for years, and whether you disagree or agree on CA current strategy you will in then end will get the sharp end of the stick. My advice would be to plan for a continued behavior by CA and plan for a contingency c++ plan, this way you cover both eventualities.

If this was a new behavior by CA of neglect then may be user pressure I would accept would be realistic but there has been years of pressure and nothing has occurred so if your end users / management become aware of this prolonged years of pressure and no result then this will again lead end users / management saying "yes you did complain about CA but why did you not do something after it became habitual the behavior"

(For the record I believe CA should support current Windows OS if a Plex customer pays support and should not need voting or enhancements or ideas or user intervention or divine intervention)

I just spoke to the Sustaining Engineering team and Touch-Screen support was added for WinC Clients on Windows 8 (not 8.1) in 7.0. So Eddie, if you are having an issue with touch or even with using TreeView with the mouse controls, then please do open up a new support case, and we will resolve the issue ASAP.

Thanks

Hi George,

I do agree with you, we are currently working with CM First's Webclient product with limited success.  The issue is 15 years of Plex work is not easy to replicate into another language/tool but yes that is in our long term plan.  We may keep Plex as solely a backend tool but the lack of true support from CA makes that decision difficult to make at this time.  I had not stayed current as I should have since I am not a day to day developer, that was an oversight on my part.  I had relied on my development managers to keep me updated but now that I am more aware I will try to participate more in these discussions.

Thanks,

"We may keep Plex as solely a backend tool but the lack of true support from CA makes that decision difficult to make at this time."

This is what I have advocated to CA Plex team over the years, concentrate on battles you can win, give up the user interface as there are too many paradigms to reasonably support, so pump your limited budget into making Plex back end code as modern as possible so ca plex  customers like yourself still stay with Plex in some capacity and don't have to rewrite 15 years of back-end code as well. But as you highlight this has been made difficult now and backs up my findings over the last decade.

But at least you are not ibmi variant as that is the same as c++ generator.

We encountered the same problem here, changing the activeX's involved to the 6.0 versions  - Microsoft TreeView Control, version 6.0 &  Microsoft ImageList Control, version 6.0(from 5.0) seems to work for us. Some compiling to do but we got the application working again.

Good thing I only found this thread after trying the ActiveX swap....

I support the remarks above on CA "support". CA is manifesting a total disregard for their customers and tool users, and is continuing to run this product into the ground, too bad