Refactoring is your friend / moving from 6.x to 9.x

[Richard Gaskin]

Simon Knight wrote:

 > ...I do agree that the team does an extraordinary job of bug
 > reduction while adding features and keeping on top of all the
 > changes to the list of OS’s that livecode runs on.

LC v9 is particularly strong in this regard.

We have some in our community who've dreamed of a major release that 
focuses exclusively on handling legacy issues that have cropped up.  But 
there are also a great many customers who need new features.

LC v9 adds many features for each of the platforms, including one of my 
favorites, replacing the older sha1Digest with messageDigest for easier 
extensibility, and taking advantage of that extensibility right out of 
the starting gate with sha2 and sha3 hash options.  Now we can build 
password management systems as well as the best of them.

Another key item is the much smarter integration into host OS 
look-and-feel with fine-tuned control appearance, especially with regard 
to label baseline placement.  And with that came new textFont options 
allowing us a range of ways we can adopt system fonts across platforms 
and platform versions with a single property setting.

Perhaps the biggest flaw I've seen with v9 is the bug report tracking: 
the Release Notes only include a subset of all issues addressed since 
work began on it two years ago.  My understanding from conversations 
with team members is that v9 may well have the largest number of 
resolved bugs of any release, an amazing feat considering the scope of 
new features and feature refinements, including huge strides forward 
with many aspects of performance.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com