Hi eric, still not quite sure when the first one will be out - right now I'm still in the process of overhauling the UI to move it to a different toolkit. This has been going pretty well but it is taking me a while longer than I had originally hoped.

- Michael

Hi Michael ..
Thanks Michael. I am enjoying the anticipation of the next version and really look forward to being part of the beta process.
On the other hand, as I use MoI it is a constant discovery finding all the things it can already do so well.
cheers,
eric

Hi Michael, can I ask what "overhauling the UI to move it to a different toolkit" actually means? In particular "different toolkit". Does this mean there may be support for Linux?

regards,
Mark.

Hi Mark,

> Hi Michael, can I ask what "overhauling the UI to move
> it to a different toolkit" actually means? In particular
> "different toolkit".

It means moving the UI from being based off of mshtml.dll/jscript.dll, to be based off of WebKit instead.


> Does this mean there may be support for Linux?

Possibly, but I don't expect to get a direct Linux build out of it. What I do hope for is that removing the dependency on the mshtml stack will make MoI function a lot better under WINE.

I'm still not sure if that is going to work or not (it depends on WINE handling some other stuff like translating Direct3D calls well) but some early tests did seem promising.

- Michael

Another wise choice from you Michael, great news.

Is the next step to move from Direct3D to OpenGL?

> Is the next step to move from Direct3D to OpenGL?

Possibly in the future, but I don't expect to do that work for MoI v3.

Part of the WINE library involves a translation layer that converts Direct3D calls by a program into OpenGL calls anyway, and if that works well enough I'd probably stick with that for quite a while.

- Michael

I see, thanks Michael.

dare I ask.... moving to a different UI toolkit, could it make it easier to make Moi a crossplatform app, meaning PC/Mac? (one hopes:))

Hi olio,

> moving to a different UI toolkit, could it make it easier
> to make Moi a crossplatform app, meaning PC/Mac?
> (one hopes:))

Well, it's one step towards that anyway.

The WINE library that I mentioned previously does work on Mac as well as Linux, so that may be a way to have a Mac version without actually doing a complete port of everything.

I still don't know quite yet how it will all work out though.

- Michael

What about the Javascript engine? Will it be V8-based? I'm been looking at using V8 in some projects I'm working on, and I've been seriously impressed by its performance...

Hi Dave,

> What about the Javascript engine? Will it be V8-based?

No, it's using the regular JavaScriptCore engine (nitro) that normally goes with WebKit. But it does have the JIT engine enabled, it's fairly close in performance to V8.

- Michael

Hi Michael and all,

I'm not sure what you mean by webkit. Although, one I've found is this one at http://webkit.org/ an open source project.

I have used Moi on Linux but I find it generally a lot slower. But having Moi running 'natively' on Linux would be so cool (and useful).

Mark.

Hi Mark,

> I'm not sure what you mean by webkit. Although, one
> I've found is this one at http://webkit.org/ an open
> source project.

Yup, that's it.


> I have used Moi on Linux but I find it generally a lot slower.

Were you using a virtualization system?

The WINE system is not a virtual machine system, it actually loads and executes application code directly so if it works out it should likely be fast.

- Michael

Hi Micheal,

> Were you using a virtualization system?

No, just wine. I installed directx 9 to get Moi to run properly.

It may run slowly though because my system is P4 478 socketed PC. I'm upgrading soon so I'll let you know how the speed is then.

regards,
Mark.

P.S. I can try a virtualization install of Moi3d if the results would be useful?

Hi Mark,

> P.S. I can try a virtualization install of Moi3d if
> the results would be useful?

No, that's ok - I do know that MoI runs ok under virtualization on the Mac already.

- Michael

>No, it's using the regular JavaScriptCore engine (nitro) that normally goes with WebKit. But it does have the JIT engine enabled, it's fairly close in performance to V8.

Awesome! I've mostly been using node.js (which is built using V8), but I've also been keeping an eye on the Javascript arms race in general, so a nitro powered MoI should be pretty hot as well. It's too bad IE9 wasn't coming out about a year earlier, you might not have needed to go to all this trouble.

With all the raw scripting performance you're going to have in the new version, hopefully you'll be able to expose more functionality to the scripting API as well...

Hi Dave,

> It's too bad IE9 wasn't coming out about a year earlier,
> you might not have needed to go to all this trouble.

Well, IE9 doesn't run on Windows XP, so it would have been hard to make a dependency specifically on that.

Really the main reason why I'm switching over is to make for a more stable platform so that MoI's UI will run on the same engine on every installation, rather than depending on what version of IE is on any one particular Windows installation.

Having an increase in script performance is more of a nice side benefit...

- Michael

> Well, IE9 doesn't run on Windows XP, so it would have been hard to make a dependency specifically on that.

Doh! Forgot about that.

> Really the main reason why I'm switching over is to make for a more stable platform so that MoI's UI will run on the same engine on every installation, rather than depending on what version of IE is on any one particular Windows installation.

Sure, I get that. That will be a big win.

> Having an increase in script performance is more of a nice side benefit...

Well, I'm still hopeful about being able to do more with scripting in MoI, so WebKit/nitro sounds really exciting to me. Looking forward to trying this out sometime...

Hi Dave - also another nice benefit with being based off of a modern version of WebKit is being able to use CSS3 (with some extensions even) for the UI now. This allows for a lot more stuff like gradients and rounded corners, etc... Previously that sort of stuff was done by lots of little images.

- Michael

> Hi Dave - also another nice benefit with being based off of a modern version of WebKit is being able to use CSS3 (with some extensions even) for the UI now. This allows for a lot more stuff like gradients and rounded corners, etc... Previously that sort of stuff was done by lots of little images.

Yes, that will be extremely useful. I've been busy stocking up my library with HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript books for a while now (for other projects). The <canvas> element could also prove useful for creating custom UI components as well. I'm really looking forward to getting under the hood of this new MoI version...