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| Brandon | Time Machine: The State of GUIs Summer 2005Here's a post written by Jacob from QB Express #12 (July 2005). I find it interesting that all the links in this article are dead, seems like at least one of the sites that were linked to would have stayed up. QBasic GUI News Written by Jacob Palm I feel like writing an article. In fact, I really like writing articles. So, I'm gonna write you an article. Or, in fact, more of a news brief. Although QB Express already has a news brief, this one will only have GUI-related news. Below you'll find some information about new (and upcoming) GUI releases, GUI pages and everything else going on in the QBasic GUI community. So, I'll just get to it right away. Brandon Cornell launches GUI reviews The author of the fairly new GUI Fun500, Brandon Cornell, has begun rewriting GUI's at his homepage. He posted the following message at the JacobPalm.dk forum: "I am going to change my site a lot! I will review a few of the newer GUIs that work on my PC, if they don't work I can't review then." So far there's three reviews up. Since the link in the menu bar doesn't work (yet, he's page is brand new), here's the direct links to the reviews: Linster OS, Costa and Edge. The Fun500 homepage can be found here. New GUI by MystikShadows in the works MystikShadows has begun working on a new GUI, ErgonOS. It will be different from most other GUI's (including Windows) in a special way. But rather than trying to explain myself how it works, here's MystikShadows' description: "I'm in the process of creating a new GUI. I've been working on the backend of it (hardware and dos detection etc...) and I just now started the GUI design part. I'll have a screen shot today or tomorrow. As some might not expect however, the GUI is very different than what most are acustomed to. It wont be a file based GUI like windows/linux/mac etc etc....but a Task or Work based GUI. Hopefully the Screenshot, when it's done, will help clear this concept up a bit. Think of it this way. Windows and the likes are application based GUIs right? where everything is related to an application, and typically the application governs the file format and what the file (data) can do. In my case it's the document that decides things. This would mean that there's no single applications per se...only application features that are available for the given type of document (word processor would have a Font/formatting etc ... source file would have compiler and other programming related features available. Is this clear enough or are you all thinking I must be smoking some real damn good stuff? LOLOL" The screenshot was released the day after the post: The screenshot above was made in Paint. The GUI part hasn't been coded yet, since MystikShadows is waiting for VESA support in FreeBASIC for DOS. If you want to read more about ErgonOS read these two forum topics: First and second Good look to MystikShadows with this promising GUI! JacobPalm.dk gets new GUI review system The menus at my site was getting pretty long, and only showed the name of the GUI. I've written a PHP system to display an alphabetical list of GUI's with screenshot, name, author, short description and ranking. Also, reviews are now much more detailed (I'm currently re-writing all reviews to fit into the new system). A little while ago, my site also got a brand new forum. It's much easier to use and more pleasing to the eye. My site can be found at http://www.jacobpalm.dk. Kyle McInnes releases Edge 0.6 It's actually been a while since Edge 0.6 was released, but I didn't see it pronounced anywhere but my own forum, so here goes anyway. Edge is a nice screen 12 GUI with moveable windows and a good scripting engine. It also has a nice boot screen (not that a boot screen makes it better, but I kind of like it, and... Oh well...). Kyle is currently working on Edge 0.7, which will be released soon. Go to http://www.edge.us.tt for more information on Edge and other programs by Kyle McInnes. New GUI review site A GUI programmer who calls himself MPN has launched a new GUI review site. The site currently has 3 reviews and a lot of screenshots of MPN's own GUI's. A lot more reviews will be coming up, and so far the site looks promising. Go check the site out at http://users.adelphia.net/~mjn99/ Fun550 starts work on new GUI A new programming group, Fun500, have started their work on a new GUI. 550 consists of 4 members, including Brandon Cornell, Todd Suess, MystikShadows and Y12. The GUI will be named Pheonix, and is planned to have multitasking and full customization. They've also set a goal to keep the code size below 3 megabytes. Just days ago, a preview on the windowing engine was released and is available from Pheonix GUI's homepage: http://pheonix.us.tt/.Below is a screenshot from the preview. It looks very good so far, and I will be looking forward to seeing the final version. It looks to me like the QBasic GUI community is really starting to blossom, right now I can think of 7 GUI pages. When I started my GUI page in February 2004 I only knew of 2 pages. There are not many GUI's still in development, but the few ones that still are being developed looks great. I think maybe if more GUI tutorials were available more GUI's would be developed. But maybe that's just me :) Anyway, I'm currently working on a tutorials series on GUI programming in QBasic. Maybe I'll submit them to QB Express, so keep your eyes open ;) Well, I don't have much more for you this time. I hope you liked it, though it really nothing special. I just felt like writing something, so, well... Visit Jacob Palm's GUI site at http://www.jacobpalm.dk/ | 2013-04-03 | 12:00 PM |
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