Ken, Thanks a lot for this post! I hope your excellent summary will help settle the debate on this. I didn't imagine my recommendations would spur a major row, but I am kind of glad they did. We ended up really getting into some "nitty gritty" stuff and I hope this was useful to the RunRev staff as they consider updates to the software. I really would like to see components like your excellent system tray utility, and Chipp's indispensable altBrowser plugin, directly incorporated into Revolution soon.
You are also correct that Rev *does* face unique challenges when designing a cross-platform development tool. It's very difficult to exactly support every little detail of an OS while still enabling you to easily "write once, deploy many." I suspect this is why the fonts on buttons don't match the Windows OS exactly (they need to use Arial because that font is on all systems), and why tabbed panels allow only one tier of tabs (they need to maintain compatibility with Mac OS X). When you have limited resources, you have to pick and choose your "battles" so to speak. I would also like to say that I am very grateful for the existence of Revolution, as I can do things with it that would not be possible *for me* with Visual Basic (and most other development tools). It's also appreciated they have kept the pricing at a level which individuals and small businesses can afford. Even though I mention some cool things that can be done with VBExpress, I would not want Rev to become a clone of that environment. It's just too daunting and a little over-engineered. But I do think Rev should spend a full day with its interface designers and developers, putting VBExpress up on a projection screen, and figure out how to "steal" every good idea presented in it. I simply love xTalk, and Rev is keeping this great language very much alive. It really is an impressive tool overall; I'll be buying upgrades for as long as they are offered. Bill p.s.: One little "nit" is that all of the items I mentioned in earlier posts (specifically "calendar popups, notification tray support") are definitely included with the current version of VBExpress. _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
