Sorry if this question has been asked before: I tried to search and got:
The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words: windows 7.
What's the timeframe for Flare on Windows 7? We're trying to make our plans for shifting our development environment -- the dev team is highly motivated to get to Win7 -- and I really want to have Flare with me when I get there!
Generally MadCap doesn't officially support an operating system until it's been released (i.e., not at "release candidate" or beta stage). I'm assuming MadCap developers have an RC of Windows 7 so it wouldn't take long after Windows 7 is released for an update to Flare to be available, but that would depend on how much Microsoft changes the release version from the last release candidate.
That said, if you're running an RC of Windows 7, you could contact MadCap to be added to the Flare beta when it's available.
Lisa Eagles may soar, but weasels aren't sucked into jet engines. Warning! Loose nut behind the keyboard.
One can reasonably expect that Flare works as well or as badly as it does under Vista. Windows 7 is Vista, just faster, but equally troublesome. I installed the RTM versions for 32 bit and 64 bit and hit several blue screens already - and that in a VM with really basic hardware. I may take Flare for a spin on W7, but it won't be an exhaustive test.
Thanks Rick, that's good to know!
Between that data point and MadCap's track record, I feel confident that Flare needn't be an obstacle to our changeover.
As another positive sign, Flare is developed in .NET, which is Microsoft's currently favoured development platform (so if they're going to put any effort into making legacy applications work, it's going to be in the .NET area at a minimum). Plus, the applications that are most likely to have compatibility issues are those that make driver / hardware calls, and to the best of my knowledge Flare doesn't do much of that. (It's not like it's a 3D app that's trying to use hardware accelerated OpenGL previews, for example.)
And if worst comes to worst, afaik they're putting in an XP Compatibility mode, and Flare works great in XP.
Until next time....
Kevin Amery
Certified MAD for Flare
KevinDAmery wrote:And if worst comes to worst, afaik they're putting in an XP Compatibility mode, and Flare works great in XP.
Which is a performance killer par excellance and only works on very specific CPUs. Even some of the top-of-the-line Intel quad core CPUs cannot do this. There are other options to virtualize XP or just keep the XP box currently in use. As long as Flare doesn't implement the ribbon all will be well.
Well, not an official stance, but before SP1 isn't out using any new Windows version is plain nuts. XP has still over 70% of the Windows share and that won't change drastically for at least another year. I think it is dangerous to go by what developers want and totally ignore what the end user wants and uses. So unless the majority of end users already ditched XP and goes W7 all the way I'd be hesitant to make the switch now.
Aside from that, applications should be developed without any OS requirement. If MadCap would embrace that the question if Flare work with Windows whatever wouldn't even come up. That said, W7 is looking more and more interesting, it is finally the Windows we all hoped for....when Microsoft announced Windows 95!
Given that W7 is 90% Vista I don't think that Flare would have any W7 related issues.
Ramon, are you assuming we force our end users to whatever platform we're using? We test on multiple platforms, duh.
(Hey, if you're gonna be "the Simon Cowell of the Flare forums", I don't see the need to mince words in my reply! )
I haven't seen anything official regarding support for W7 from Madcap either... otoh, there is at least one bug fix listed in the release notes for 5.0.1 that's related to a W7 specific problem. Make of that what you will.
Until next time....
Kevin Amery
Certified MAD for Flare
Windows 7's release version has been available to partners since early August. If this latest patch didn't bring it into compliance (barring some large problem, which is unlikely given that 7 and Vista are very similar on the back end), then I'd be very disappointed.
lauraj wrote:Ramon, are you assuming we force our end users to whatever platform we're using? We test on multiple platforms, duh.
(Hey, if you're gonna be "the Simon Cowell of the Flare forums", I don't see the need to mince words in my reply! )
Well, the mad rush to W7 made it sound to me as if there isn't anything else. W7 has currently 2% market share (explainable, because it was just released), so from a point of developing on it, for it, and supporting it I don't see what the hurry is. At the moment W7 can be as safely ignored as Vista. For W7 that will change over the next year, for Vista it won't.
Since windows 7 is really just a Newer version of Vista, almost all programs will still work fine with it, and I haven't had any problems with Flare and Windows 7
The only issue I've found is the pdf printer from Acrobat 7 hasn't installed properly.
I haven't tried pdf from Flare yet. But, as Acr 7 is superceeded by a couple of major releases I don't expect it will ever work properly. Office 2007 pdf works fine.
Steve
Life's too short for bad coffee, bad chocolate, and bad red wine.
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