Did you know that Mac OS X still recognises floppy disks? I wonder how many people realise this.

Now this is interesting. It seems to me that Microsoft and Apple are doing something completely wrong. It appears that half of computer users is still using the previous version of Windows and a quarter is still using XP, while Windows 8 is out for a few months already. It is even worse for Mac OS X: most users decided to stick with Snow Leopard (10.6), while Apple already released two new versions of its operating system.

source: statowl.com

Why does this happen? First of all, because Windows 8 and Mountain Lion aren’t really upgrades. Windows 8 is nothing but Windows 7 with a brick wall that won’t run on netbooks with odd resolutions but will run on tablets and Mountain Lion is Lion with the same yet slightly tightened security measures and a few extra features, e.g. social integration, that nobody needs.

Operating System       Share'  (%)
                      2009   2012
---------------------------------
MS Windows
 Windows 8                    0.57
 Windows 7             3.13  48.77
 Windows XP           56.62  25.66
 Windows Vista        26.92   9.45
-----------------------------------
Mac OS X
 OS X 10.4             2.07   0.33
 OS X 10.5             5.80   1.43
 OS X 10.6             2.54   5.24
 OS X 10.7                    4.62
 OS X 10.8                    2.13
-----------------------------------
Other
 Linux                 0.33   0.97
 Other                 2.02"  0.48
-----------------------------------
') numbers may not add up because
not al Mac and Windows versions are
included
") includes Windows 2000

How does this compare with the previous big release of Windows, in October 2009? One month after its release, Windows 7 had a market share that was 5.6 times bigger than the market share of Windows 8, also one month after its release. This means that the number of users who thought it was worthwhile switching to Windows 7 immediately was almost 6 times bigger than the number of users who switched to Windows 8 immediately. Apparently, the consumer understands what a product really is. Windows 8 is like Vista. It will soon be replaced by yet another Windows version, which will be embraced by all users except for XP fans, who will probably still count for 10% of all computer users by that time.

What does this mean for developers? Apparently, developers shouldn’t always aim at the most recent OS. As a Windows developer, one should target the previous OS, Windows 7, and not forget Windows XP, which is still 25% of your market, although there is a chance that an XP user doesn’t want to spend money on his (old) computer anymore. If you’re a Mac developer, you have a small market already with a mere 13% of all users. A Mac developer needs to target Snow Leopard and Lion users while he still has time to get ready for Snow Leopard, which will probably need at least 6 more months to catch up with Lion. It will probably take a long time for Snow Leopard to give way to (Mountain) Lion, because there are many old machines that still run perfectly. In all its wisdom, Apple decided to not let Mountain Lion run on machines that are more than 4 years old, excluding many Apple fans from the market.

Conclusion: both Microsoft and Apple are excluding important target groups, netbook users and users of slightly outdates Macs, from buying their products. Computer users are well aware of what an upgrade really means to them and they understand that it isn’t always necessary to have the latest of the latest. Software developing companies need to be aware of the fact that computer users with older operating systems will continue to be part of their target group for years to come.

Here’s an updated list of websites for starting LiveCode programmers.

http://h.webring.com/hub?ring=runtimerevoluti1
http://revolution.byu.edu/indexgeneric.php
http://www.runrev.info
http://www.altuit.com/webs/altuit2/RunRev/Tutorials.htm
http://www.revjournal.com/tutorials/
http://www.runrev.com/developers/lessons-and-tutorials/tutorials/online-scrip…
http://derbrill.de/developers.php?lang=en
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
http://tactilemedia.com/site_files/software/tutorial_thumbs.html
http://www.hyperactivesw.com/Resources.html
http://www.sonsothunder.com/devres/revolution/revolution.htm
http://www.sanke.org/MetaMedia/
http://revclever.com/
http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-revolution
http://www.runrev.com/developers/documentation/beginners-course/
http://www.runrev.com/developers/documentation/
http://livecode.tv

This is the collection as of December 2012. Please, tell me know if you know about any links that belong in this collection.

The holidays are near, although some believe that the end is neigh. Both occasions are good reasons to offer you a big discount on a license for the Installer Maker Plugin. From 17 until 27 December, new licenses are 33% off.

Installer Maker Plugin is the best tool available for LiveCode to wrap your standalones in an installer for Mac OS X or Windows. An overview of all features can be found at http://qery.us/za and there you can also purchase your license.
To get the discount, click on the Plimus button on the website and use the coupon code 33OFF.

If you have any questions about this offer or Installer Maker, use the contact form on the website.

We are happy to announce a new version of the Installer Maker Plugin.

In response to a number of recent bug reports from our customers, we have made the following changes:

• no more delay when going to a different screen (this delay now occurs right after you open the plugin/application and should now be hardly noticeable)
• we fixed a bug, which made the “Use None” button of the Picture tab of the Appearance screen dysfunctional
• if an installer for OSX was created on Windows, the installer will set an executable bit for any *.app folders after all files have been written to disk

Installer Maker Plugin can be downloaded from our homepage. Licenses can be purchased on the same website.

Bill Atkinson, creator of HyperCard, sees the seeds of early web browsing in the Apple software. Atkinson declares that HyperCard’s biggest impact is how it has influenced greater innovation.

Complete video at http://qery.us/3bh (subscription needed to watch without ads).

It is a pleasure to announce a new version of the standalone edition of Installer Maker. Installer Maker is a tool for users of RAD tools, which allows you to quickly wrap your software in an installer for distribution.

License Screen of the Installer Window

Installer Maker 1.7.14S contains all bug fixes and new features that have been added to the LiveCode plug-in since the release of IM 1.7.11S. Software that is installed on Mac OS X by an installer created on Windows now has its permissions set correctly (i.e. the software will actually run) and resource forks are now included. Altogether more than 50 bug fixes and new features have been implemented. A complete list of recent changes can be found on the website at http://installermaker.economy-x-talk.com and that’s where you will find downloads as well.

Installer Maker Window on Mac OS X 10.6.8

Installer Maker Plugin 1.7.14 for LiveCode and the standalone edition Installer Maker 1.7.14S are free for anyone who bought a license after 20 September 2012. An upgrade license can be purchased for only EUR 16.95 if your license is at most 1 year old. New licenses cost EUR 39.00. Licenses can be purchased at aforementioned website.

This search field adjusts its size automatically to the size of its group. Use the pointer toolto select and resize the group.

You can copy this search field and paste it into your own stack. All required scripts are included.
When you type return or enter, the message extSearch is sent together with the long id of the searchfield (actually the group). This allows you to retrieve the textValue property of the search field.

You can get and set the textValue property. The textValue property has 4 possible keys: text,html,utf8, utf16 or rtf. Each key returns the respective text property. The format key is optional ifyou are retrieving or setting plain text (i.e. textValue[“text”] and textValue both work).

An overview of all of Economy-x-Talk’s products and services can be found at http://qery.us/sm and the search field control can be downloaded at http://qery.us/3am

We got a request for information about Installer Maker, more specifically for instructions how to use it. We don’t have official documentation yet, but there are several places where you can find useful info. Currentl, there are the following options:

– a slightly old video tutorial at http://qery.us/39u
– a collection of blog posts with announcements, videos and hints at http://qery.us/39v
– the Read Me file http://qery.us/39w
– the tool tips in almost every element of Installer Maker’s interface

You can always contact support with your comments and questions.

We make our website with a very simple CMS. This tool automatically creates all files we need and we only need to add a title in the list on the left and enter the text and a few HTML tags.

Screen Recording.mov
Watch on Posterous

Recently, we needed a way to quickly find stray tags. We added a command line utility to validate the HTML code and a brief script that highlights in yellow all the HTML code that appears within one pair of tags. This is also useful to debug HTML code of other projects and thus we made a separate HTML editor with the same validating and highlighting features. Everything was scripted in LiveCode.