Learn 4D: A New Space to Learn, Grow, and Evolve with 4D
Training has always been part of 4D’s identity. Sharing knowledge, promoting best practices, and supporting developers in building their skills has always been a top priority.
In recent years, however, things have changed. The rise of remote work and distributed teams has challenged traditional in-person training formats. At the same time, the rapid pace of new features in the 4D platform, along with a new release cycle, requires constant updates, rewrites, and improvements to training content.
Learn 4D was created in response to this shift.
Transform Static Documents into Actionable Knowledge with AIKit
Large reports, contracts, or documentation files often contain more information than can be quickly processed. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could simply upload a document PDF from your 4D application and let AI help you summarize it, extract key data, or answer questions about its content?
Thanks to the new OpenAI.files class, this workflow is now very simple. You can seamlessly upload files and use AI to interact with their content in many ways.
Deploy Fluent UI effortlessly in your 4D applications
With 4D 21 R2, Fluent UI remains in Developer Preview, but reaches a new milestone with a full native integration directly into 4D. While still in preview, it is now easier to enable, configure, and deploy, and no longer relies on external dependencies. Your applications instantly adopt a modern interface consistent with Windows 11, without any additional setup for your users.
And for you as a developer, the improvement is even more significant. Fluent UI becomes easier to activate, more flexible to configure, and simpler to deploy. You gain new tools and options that fit naturally into your workflow while offering a smooth and controlled transition to the new interface.
Searching Across Host Projects and Components in 4D
When working on a large 4D application, it is common to split functionality across a host project and several components. This modular architecture keeps things clean, easy to organize, and maintainable, but it can also create a challenge: figuring out where a method is used.
Since 4D 21, a major improvement has made this workflow even smoother: you can now edit a component’s source code directly from the host project, without switching contexts. And with 4D 21 R2, the Find in Design dialog has been enhanced to search not only within the host project, but also across all accessible components created in project mode with their source code available.
4D View Pro: What’s new in 4D 21 R2
4D 21 R2 introduces an updated version of 4D View Pro based on SpreadJS v18.2, along with a Ribbon fully compatible with this release. Since 4D View Pro is built on top of SpreadJS, upgrading the underlying engine immediately brings performance improvements and new capabilities. Some of these enhancements are directly available in 4D, others can be accessed through the View Pro designer, and a few require custom JavaScript code. In this article, we highlight the most important changes introduced by SpreadJS v18.2, including features that are not yet directly exposed as 4D functions.
Give Your Components a Visual Identity with Custom Icons
When working on a project with multiple components, quickly identifying the one you need can save valuable time. The simplest and most effective way to make your components stand out in the Project Dependencies is to give each one a custom icon. 4D 21 R2 lets you visually distinguish your components at a glance, simply by placing a logo.png or logo.svg file in its Resources folder.
Get an easy start with Qodly pages in the 4D explorer
4D Qodly Pro offers all the tools you need to design, build and run web forms for your 4D application and is fully integrated to 4D.
Since 4D 21 R2, you can now create your Qodly pages from the 4D explorer as you are used to for 4D forms. Moreover, you can also open Qodly pages from the 4D explorer also!
This makes 4D Qodly Pro easier to pick up.
4D AI: Sorting Query Results by Vector Similarity
In the Semantic search: querying by vector similarity post, we introduced how to query entities using vector similarity, a powerful way to find the most relevant records based on meaning rather than exact values.
4D 21 R2 comes with a new way to sort query results using 4D.Vector fields. You can not only filter entities by similarity but also sort your query results using the .query() function so that the most relevant and semantically closest entities appear first. Whether you’re building an intelligent search experience, a recommendation engine, or an AI-driven assistant, this new feature ensures that your results are ordered by relevance, providing more accurate and user-friendly outcomes.
Better Error Handling and Type Inference for 4D Developers
When you’re coding in 4D or VS Code, clear and precise feedback from the editor makes all the difference. It helps you understand what’s happening in your code, fix issues faster, and keep your focus on building great features.
Starting with 4D v21 R2, we’ve improved the check syntax of the code editor to make error detection and type inference more accurate and consistent in both 4D and VS Code.
4D 21 R2 Beta Starts Today
Beta testing for 4D 21 R2 starts today, introducing document-aware AI workflows, semantic result ranking, modern Windows UI rendering, and a series of focused improvements across the editor, components, and 4D View Pro, designed to reduce friction and keep intent closer to the code.
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