Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Software Spotlight
You Say You Want a Runtime Revolution?
10/2/2008
The founders of Scottish dev tool maker Runtime Revolution (RR) might be accused of engaging in a bit of high-tech hyperbole with the claim that their latest product offering is "the world's easiest programming tool." But the Edinburgh-based company is pulling out all the stops to throw a spotlight on the usability of its just-released Revolution 3.0.
Revolution is a commercial, cross-platform rapid application development (RAD) environment based on HyperTalk, a high-level programming language first created in 1987. It was originally used with Apple Computer's HyperCard media program. (Oft-forgotten Apple Co-Founder Mike Markkula is an RR investor.)
What makes Revolution especially friendly to newbies and hobbyists is the language, which relies on plain words and phrases for most of its operations. Casual users, the company said, can ramp up quickly, and advanced users find that "a single Revolution command performs the equivalent work of pages of other kinds of code."
The Revolution architecture is designed to let users write their applications using the platform of their choice and to deploy to virtually any desktop environment. The applications automatically assume the correct appearance and behaviors of the target operating system, the company claims, without special effort on the part of the programmer.
The big upgrade in this release is the tool's script editor, said RR's CEO Kevin Miller. "This is where our customers live," he said. "So improvements to the script editor are felt most directly. They really make a huge difference."
The new version of the tool integrates coding and debugging tools in a customizable way that is "robust, efficient and understandable," Miller added
Along with a bunch of bug fixes, the list of new features in this version of the tool also includes some graphics enhancements, among them, seven types of programmable gradient fills and strokes for vector objects. Version 3.0 also comes with nested, multidimensional arrays and a resource center stocked with hundreds of examples "to help new users get up to speed quickly," the company said.
Revolution 3.0 is available in three editions: Revolution Enterprise for professional programmers, Revolution Studio for consultants and business managers, and Revolution Media for beginners and hobbyists.
The company was founded in 1997 to focus on bringing user-centric software development to all major platforms, Miller said, including Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Unix.
A free trial version is available now for download here.
John K. Waters is a freelance journalist and author based in Palo Alto, CA.
Cite this Site
copy text (above) for proper citation
Recommended Reading
- Tufts Grants Rights for Mileage-Increasing Transportation Technology to Electric Truck
Tufts University has optioned rights to a technology that can recharge the batteries of any hybrid electric and electric-powered vehicle while it is driven. The Tufts-developed technology could increase by 20 percent to 70 percent the miles per gallon or total driving range performance of vehicles like the Honda Civic, Ford Escape, and Toyota Prius hybrids and the Tesla Motors and Phoenix Motorcars electric vehicles.
- U Florida and Cyntellect Collaborate to Unlock Mysteries of Cancer Stem Cells
The University of Florida has entered into a research agreement with life sciences company Cyntellect. The university's Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research will work with the company to focus on a variety of research areas including the purification and analysis of cancer stem cells (CSCs), rare cells believed to be directly involved in propagating cancers.
- George Mason U Receives Grant To Deploy Intergraph Apps for Intelligence Curriculum
George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax, VA has been awarded a grant from Intergraph to enable students enrolled in GMU's Geospatial Intelligence Graduate Certificate program to use the company's geospatial production and exploitation software as part of their core curriculum.
- Institute for Cyber Security at U Texas, San Antonio Opens Incubator
The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) Institute for Cyber Security (ICS) has launched a new Internet security incubator. The incubator was developed to commercialize promising technologies that address major cyber security and privacy issues. The first companies to enter the incubator are Denim Labs and SafeMashups.
- ISO/IEC Publishes Office Open XML Standard
ISO/IEC has published the Office Open XML (OOXML) file format standard, formally known as ISO/IEC 29500:2008. It describes file formats originally designed by Microsoft for its Office 2007 productivity suite, which are used in presentation, spreadsheet and word processing applications.
- Dynamics NAV 2009 ERP Coming Next Month
Microsoft exec Kirill Tatarinov Wednesday described some new features to expect in the forthcoming Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 enterprise resource planning solution. He gave the keynote address at Microsoft's Convergence 2008 event in Copenhagen, Denmark.
