Windows Vista Support
Many of you are wondering when IdeaMason will be compatible with Windows Vista. Well, we are actually working on it as we speak. I am sure some of you are under the belief that XP to Vista compatibility should be fairly simple, and no doubt some of you have heard the opposite–early reports of existing applications not working on Vista. Unfortunately, compatibility of applications with Vista, even those which have been as recently developed as IdeaMason 3.0 using Microsoft’s most current development technologies, is not guaranteed. In short, creating a Vista compatible version of IdeaMason involves some amount of work and a full regression test. For those interested I thought I would take a moment to explain where some of the main areas of incompatibility exist:
.NET Framework 3.0: Vista ships with the .NET Framework 3.0 installed natively. IdeaMason is written on the .NET framework 2.0. While the Framework 3.0 is claimed to be completely backward compatible with 2.0, there are some implementation differences in several areas, even though the interfaces have remained compatible. In some cases, bugs in .NET 2.0 that applications such as IdeaMason had to code around are now fixed in 3.0, causing the method used to fix the original bug to break! In short, every area of IdeaMason must be regression tested.
64-bit Vista: Vista ships in both a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version. The 64-bit version is generally being installed on any new purchased machine that has one of the 64-bit processors in it. If you are upgrading a 2+ year old existing machine, you will probably be installing the 32-bit version. Obviously, IdeaMason needs to be compatible with both versions. The problem is that Microsoft has stranded certain system-wide development technologies (such as certain data access components) in 32-bit land and is not providing 64-bit implementations. We must identify and remedy any areas where this is the case.
Installation technologies: Vista demands more restrictive access controls and privileges for applications to install. Therefore, a complete review of the permutations of installation are required.
All that being said, we are very close to completing our regression testing and completing the necessary development changes to make IdeaMason version 3 completely compatible with Vista in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the operating system. We hope to have good news for you in this area within the next 1-2 weeks.