Why is Konfabulator "Pretty?"

[Bill Marriott]

Ken,

Thanks a lot for this post! I hope your excellent summary will help settle 
the debate on this. I didn't imagine my recommendations would spur a major 
row, but I am kind of glad they did. We ended up really getting into some 
"nitty gritty" stuff and I hope this was useful to the RunRev staff as they 
consider updates to the software. I really would like to see components like 
your excellent system tray utility, and Chipp's indispensable altBrowser 
plugin, directly incorporated into Revolution soon.

You are also correct that Rev *does* face unique challenges when designing a 
cross-platform development tool. It's very difficult to exactly support 
every little detail of an OS while still enabling you to easily "write once, 
deploy many." I suspect this is why the fonts on buttons don't match the 
Windows OS exactly (they need to use Arial because that font is on all 
systems), and why tabbed panels allow only one tier of tabs (they need to 
maintain compatibility with Mac OS X).

When you have limited resources, you have to pick and choose your "battles" 
so to speak.

I would also like to say that I am very grateful for the existence of 
Revolution, as I can do things with it that would not be possible *for me* 
with Visual Basic (and most other development tools). It's also appreciated 
they have kept the pricing at a level which individuals and small businesses 
can afford.

Even though I mention some cool things that can be done with VBExpress, I 
would not want Rev to become a clone of that environment. It's just too 
daunting and a little over-engineered. But I do think Rev should spend a 
full day with its interface designers and developers, putting VBExpress up 
on a projection screen, and figure out how to "steal" every good idea 
presented in it.

I simply love xTalk, and Rev is keeping this great language very much alive. 
It really is an impressive tool overall; I'll be buying upgrades for as long 
as they are offered.

Bill

p.s.: One little "nit" is that all of the items I mentioned in earlier posts 
(specifically "calendar popups, notification tray support") are definitely 
included with the current version of VBExpress.