5 ms·

I know that comment seems superficial, but when I saw the Windows 98 style GUI, I actually thought that perhaps this was an abandoned project someone was bringi

I know that comment seems superficial, but when I saw the Windows 98 style GUI, I actually thought that perhaps this was an abandoned project someone was bringing up for nostalgic purposes.

johnfound 9y ago
The screenshots are taken in Linux: XFCE+Wine. Fresh IDE is actually some kind of hybrid application. It works in Linux better and with more features than in Windows. :)
- rbanffy 9y ago
  I know Windows is a lost cause, but Unix apps don't have to be ugly like that ;-) And even Windows can use GTK.
  - johnfound 9y ago
    I am working on v3.0 that will use its own portable GUI toolkit (in assembly language) with much prettier UI. On this page you can see some preliminary experimental screenshots: https://fresh.flatassembler.net/index.cgi?page=content/articles/5_FreshLibGUI.txt https://fresh.flatassembler.net/index.cgi?page=content/artic... Still not GTK though. It is too heavy for assembly language programming and will not allow portability for example on MenuetOS or KolibriOS assembly written OSes.
    - rbanffy 9y ago
      > in assembly language That's pretty impressive.
    - vanderZwan 9y ago
      Nice improvement! The screenshots have much nicer font rendering (and a better font, for that matter). The fact that it uses more than the 16 colours that were available in Windows 3.1 helps a lot too.
    - adamrezich 9y ago
      That looks cool as hell!
harveywi 9y ago
We have been conditioned to prefer style over substance.
dkersten 9y ago
Yeah, I find it funny that a project called Fresh has such a dated looking GUI style :D It does look like an interesting project though, if you can ignore the fugly widget styles.
- kronos29296 9y ago
  The entire thing is writted in FASM assembler. So maybe they thought a normal gui toolkit is too heavy weight for asm.
  - dkersten 9y ago
    Sure, that's likely the case and its an impressive piece of software. But.. that doesn't stop it from looking dated. Then again, maybe people used to developing in assembly (ie the target users) don't mind or are used to worse looking tools (eg when I was doing microcontroller development, most tools were pretty bad and dated looking, some newer ones used eclipse/netbeans for better or worse).
    - johnfound 9y ago
      Well, as I said several posts above, I am working on a new, assembly language, portable GUI toolkit that to be used for v3.x series of Fresh IDE. Unfortunately it will add another 50..100kB to the code, but the portability has price. :(
      - dkersten 9y ago
        I didn't mean it as a criticism to you or your work and fresh certainly looks decent, more that I found the name ironic given the "classic" look of the GUI. My first comment at least, the second one was commenting on how many low level tools are to look dated and maybe it's the norm. Again, I didn't really mean it as criticism even though I suppose it sounds like it. :/ Could you instead call into an existing portable UI library? Perhaps FLTK or something more lightweight than the popular ones. It just seems to me that creating a new GUI toolkit from scratch is a massive undertaking and I'm unsure what value you will get over spending the time improving fresh itself? I guess there's some appeal to having a self contained assembly system through and through.

I know that comment seems superficial, but when I saw the Windows 98 style GUI, I actually thought that perhaps this was an abandoned project someone was bringing up for nostalgic purposes.

johnfound 9y ago

The screenshots are taken in Linux: XFCE+Wine. Fresh IDE is actually some kind of hybrid application. It works in Linux better and with more features than in Windows. :)

rbanffy 9y ago
I know Windows is a lost cause, but Unix apps don't have to be ugly like that ;-) And even Windows can use GTK.
- johnfound 9y ago
  I am working on v3.0 that will use its own portable GUI toolkit (in assembly language) with much prettier UI. On this page you can see some preliminary experimental screenshots: https://fresh.flatassembler.net/index.cgi?page=content/articles/5_FreshLibGUI.txt https://fresh.flatassembler.net/index.cgi?page=content/artic... Still not GTK though. It is too heavy for assembly language programming and will not allow portability for example on MenuetOS or KolibriOS assembly written OSes.
  - rbanffy 9y ago
    > in assembly language That's pretty impressive.
  - vanderZwan 9y ago
    Nice improvement! The screenshots have much nicer font rendering (and a better font, for that matter). The fact that it uses more than the 16 colours that were available in Windows 3.1 helps a lot too.
  - adamrezich 9y ago
    That looks cool as hell!

harveywi 9y ago

We have been conditioned to prefer style over substance.

dkersten 9y ago

Yeah, I find it funny that a project called Fresh has such a dated looking GUI style :D It does look like an interesting project though, if you can ignore the fugly widget styles.

kronos29296 9y ago
The entire thing is writted in FASM assembler. So maybe they thought a normal gui toolkit is too heavy weight for asm.
- dkersten 9y ago
  Sure, that's likely the case and its an impressive piece of software. But.. that doesn't stop it from looking dated. Then again, maybe people used to developing in assembly (ie the target users) don't mind or are used to worse looking tools (eg when I was doing microcontroller development, most tools were pretty bad and dated looking, some newer ones used eclipse/netbeans for better or worse).
  - johnfound 9y ago
    Well, as I said several posts above, I am working on a new, assembly language, portable GUI toolkit that to be used for v3.x series of Fresh IDE. Unfortunately it will add another 50..100kB to the code, but the portability has price. :(
    - dkersten 9y ago
      I didn't mean it as a criticism to you or your work and fresh certainly looks decent, more that I found the name ironic given the "classic" look of the GUI. My first comment at least, the second one was commenting on how many low level tools are to look dated and maybe it's the norm. Again, I didn't really mean it as criticism even though I suppose it sounds like it. :/ Could you instead call into an existing portable UI library? Perhaps FLTK or something more lightweight than the popular ones. It just seems to me that creating a new GUI toolkit from scratch is a massive undertaking and I'm unsure what value you will get over spending the time improving fresh itself? I guess there's some appeal to having a self contained assembly system through and through.