Burrman,

Hey, I'm still here, although I haven't had much time to devote to MoI recently. I'm patiently waiting for the v3.0 beta to begin (like everyone else), since I think the new webkit integration is going to open up a lot of new scripting options. I usually just skim the forum topics here, looking for a sign for Michael, then go back to coding. Hopefully I'll be more active again once the beta starts...

Hi Dave,
Thanks for responding... Glad you are still around! We'll wait and see what the webkit brings.

Hi Burr, well at first glance it won't look too exciting because the UI looks pretty much the same as before, only a few cosmetic differences here and there.

But it does open up new possibilities in a few different ways.

One big difference is that if you develop some UI for MoI you'll now be able to know exactly how that UI will be processed, since it's now handled by the WebKit engine that is included with MoI's installation. Previously the UI would have been handled by whatever version of mshtml.dll was installed on a user's machine, that could have been IE6, IE7, IE8, or IE9, making it kind of difficult to rely on any specific features from the later engines if you wanted something that worked for all users.

So that makes it possible to use newer things like CSS3 in the UI now in a reliable way.

Another benefit is that MoI will no longer be susceptible to mangled IE installs - previously if your machine's installation of IE or jscript.dll was mangled somehow (like if some registry entries that handle some IE configuration stuff was corrupted) it could interfere with MoI being able to run properly. I think you ran into this before yourself - something like a text editor that you installed overwrote a registry entry for which script engine was marked to handle .js files or something like that? Anyway, that won't be an issue anymore with the new engine.

Then another sort of underlying thing is that new versions of IE can sometimes have subtle changes in behavior, sometimes those are enough to mess things up for MoI and that will no longer be an issue with MoI v3 as well.

- Michael

Thanks Michael,
Ah yes, the ole "script error" I created...

Hard to imagine using the words "More reliable" when Speaking about MoI, But I do understand that there are many different types of computers/setups/users/other apps.....

I think you answered this before. Was it able to keep the installation small?

Hi Burr, yeah that kind of registry corruption issue was not really too frequent, but all the same it will be nice not to have to worry about it anymore.


> But I do understand that there are many different types of
> computers/setups/users/other apps.....

Yeah, another issue that has come up occasionally is that some kinds of apps try to hook into mshtml.dll and can alter behavior and cause side effects.


> I think you answered this before. Was it able to keep the
> installation small?

Yeah an increase in installation size is the main negative side effect of having more things built in like this.

But I've managed to keep it under control pretty well - the installer is only about 6MB larger than v2, right now a total size of 16MB. I figure anything under 20MB is really nice and light still.

It was really cool previously to have the installer at around 10MB in size, but that's the part that has been sacrificed.

- Michael

well 16 megs is still pretty banner!!! (And amazing) Thanks.

Hi Michael,

> It was really cool previously to have the installer at around 10MB
> in size, but that's the part that has been sacrificed.

I would hardly call it a sacrifice, MoI must be the leanest cad package out there, when you have the likes of the free Autodesk 123D coming in at 525MB and then who knows what disk space it takes up after installation, so I wouldn't kick myself about the 6MB increase, it seems the mentality these days is bigger must be better, you had one customer who thought his download was cut short when he only got 10+MB :)

-

Hi Danny, well "sacrifice" just in the sense that it's the only negative thing that I had to trade off for this new UI system.

But yes, 16MB is still quite extremely lean, particularly in these days when excessive bloat is the norm.

I'm not really worried about a 16MB size, it's just something that I tend to like to keep track of and keep down - to me a low download size is one of the hallmarks of high quality, more carefully crafted software.

- Michael

and carefully crafted it is! :)

Cheers

[quote] .. to me a low download size is one of the hallmarks of high quality, more carefully crafted software .. [/quote]

not just for you!
I still remember games coming on 2x3,5" floppy disks that were more fun and more creative than things coming nowadays on a DVD. Of course graphics have been improved a lot... Mostly I have the feeling noone cares about file size anymore.

Even 1 photo of my DSLR is bigger than MoI in total. :)