Develop on Windows or Mac?

Chipp Walters chipp at chipp.com
Wed Nov 5 12:07:45 EST 2003


A very interesting thread topic.

I develop on Windows for Windows. I've tried developing on a Mac and things
just didn't seem to work as well, though in fairness to RR, I was using
1.1.1 at the time on a System 9 machine. It crashed much more than Windows.

Ray mentions garbage collection and crashing alot on Windows. Hmmm. I've
developed quite a few projects the last few years. One of them an Enterprise
Content Management System - no crashes here. Though in fairness to Ray, I
seldom ever store large amounts of data 'in the stack'. I use stacks as
application interfaces, not data containers-- a lesson I learned a long time
ago with SuperCard. I rarely have more than two cards per stack. The first
with interfaces and groups which hide and show if necessary. The second with
all the images used as icons for buttons on the first. If I need to store
data I'll either store it: 1) on a server; 2) separate small stacks; 3)
images and XML.

The big differences IMHO between the two platforms are: 1) Look and Feel; 2)
OS specific components and; 3) Performance.

Look and Feel - I've built my own tools (www.buttongadget.com) to modify the
look and feel of RR to create cross-platform GUI's. I'd recommend also
changing the textfont of the stack to Tahoma. I like using Tahoma 11 for a
lot of the text. If you're building Apps, good interface choices are smart
on BOTH platforms. I've seen bad looking interfaces on both.

OS specific components - On Windows, it's good advice to store stacks you
download or write to in specialFolderPath(35) because they have permission
to do so there, but may not have permission to do so in the Program Files
folder. Also, you may also wish to have icons for your application document
files which, when double-clicked, launch the application. You'll need to
edit the Windows registry for this. Ditto for registration codes and setting
mime types for launching from a browser. Also, you don't need the creator
code for Windows, just a file extension for your ask/answer file dialog
boxes. I'm sure there are many more, but these are the differences which
come to mind.

Performance - I've created apps which use math and run fine on Windows, but
too slow on Macs. Something to be aware of as you continue to develop on the
Mac for the PC.

Early on at Human Code, we tried developing on Macs and publishing on PCs.
Just too many 'gotchas.' By working day in and day out on the PC, you get
the 'feel' of the app on the OS and discover subtle areas which need
tweaking. This doubles as a good testing platform.

While starting out on the Mac may work, I'm betting you end up switching to
PC somewhere early in the process.

-Chipp




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