Hi All,

I don't normally follow the other groups at Elevate, so I missed Tim's post a few days ago, you can look for it at:

https://www.elevatesoft.com/forums?action=view&category=edb&id=edb_general&msg=23524&page=1

And since I think EWB is a larger audience and there have been a lot of people speculating, I hope nobody minds that I post this reference to help others like me who are discussing the status.

I've been busy on a new pet project using EWB, I'll post more about that in my next post.

There are only a few things I think are needed to bring it to 2025's standards for compatibility, accessibility, etc.  These come from audits using commercial software, but you get similar results from Lighthouse free with Chrome.

1. Frame unload - The Javascript unload function is deprecared, so our clients complain that EWB uses a function which is going away, it just looks old.

2. ELements Contrast is insufficient for people with visual challenges.  This includes buttons, grids, etc.  You can fix this easily with my Nice toolkit, setting all the borders, buttons, grids, etc. to higher contrast colours before starting the application..   But higher contrast defaults would be better for everyone.

3. HTML Element should have a Lang value.  This is easily edited after compiling, but that's annoying everytime you hit compile.  Ideally the EWB would store a user defined value, defauting to English perhaps if no use override..

4. Images should have an ALT tag for people without images or visual challenges.

(5. I'd love to see EWB IDE default to using a better browser, I have to keep firing up other browsers to test code because IE is incompatible with so many things... but that's a harder implementation).

There are other things I find essential, but I have workarounds.

So that's my current wishlist, some relatively simple change but still important fixes to put EWB into 2025.

Erick
EWB Programming Books and Nice Component Library
See my EWB BLOG posts, at:
http://www.erickengelke.com

I appreciate the Tim hasn't significantly raised prices or put out diminished quality products in light of the economic situation.

Embarcardero squeezes us badly every year, and I rarely see much benefit in each new release and a whole lot more bugs.  Other than them and TMS (who charge even more for the full product), I don;t know anyone making real money on the  Pascal ecosystem.  It/s probably dying out with us old folks.

Tim makes the point about the economy and the reality of tools development.  Truth is, so much has been made free but in some ways it's not always sustainable.  

Even the most cited open source including well known linux tools like Ubuntu, Proxmox, MySQL and Android have subscription fees in one way or another.  Remember, if you're not paying, you ARE the product.   Microsoft proved that with their tools that encourage people to buy into their ecosystem.  Why charge for the compiler when you charge for the OSs cloud, AI, etc.

Erick
EWB Programming Books and Nice Component Library
See my EWB BLOG posts, at:
http://www.erickengelke.com

Thanks for posting this Erick.
A  great relief.

erickengelke wrote:

Hi All,

I don't normally follow the other groups at Elevate, so I missed Tim's post a few days ago, you can look for it at:

.....