Adobe fireworks. There's still nothing that comes close to it's ergonomics and power for working with both vector and bitmap graphics while also allowing you to do layout reasonably effectively.
Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
411–420 of 837 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#412HyperCard. It's been decades and I've still never found a better way to make simple GUI applications.
It's an absolute mystery to me why this hasn't happened even through the open source community. For a tour down memory lane: https://blog.archive.org/2017/08/11/hypercard-on-the-archive...
There have been a bunch of attempts, but nothing takes off really. I think the closest is LiveCode which used to be proprietary but was open sourced some time ago.
Of course there is also https://vipercard.net/
Also i made this some time ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rshZHDDruAE (the URL at the video is outdated, the code is now at http://runtimeterror.com/rep/lilcard but note that after i made the video above i lost interest).
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#413Battlezone. This was a great game on Windows 9x, but never got updated to work on the NT based Windows. Of course, a Linux port would be even better.
My advice is the PS4VR "Battlezone" game is more of a re-imagining of "Arctic Fox" than a faithful remake of battlezone. Luckily I really enjoyed both games the first time around. I find it hilarious that the main difference in experience over 30 years apart is the resolution is a bit higher and the game is un-necessarily over complicated. Un-necessary overcomplication "because its possible" is a likely outcome of ev…
The PS4VR Battlezone is a reimagining of the original 1980 Atari arcade game that the 1998 Activision game was based on.
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#414The original Crimson Skies games, great story, great voice acting, really fun dogfights, and stunning graphics for the time.
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#415Google Desktop. I haven't yet seen a good, cross-platform alternative to search within documents on my PC, with a browser interface.
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#416* The Borland Turbo IDEs, but modified for modern languages. * Paradox for DOS (with PAL = Paradox Application Language), but with SQL backends.
Anders Hejlsberg (the original author of turbo pascal) developed C# and it integrates really nicely with visual studio.
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#417Eudora mail.
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#418Turbo Delphi Explorer. It was a free version of Delphi 6. They still do have a Starter Edition, of course, with some restrictions, which TDE had too. But IIRC, TDE was available in both Win 32 and .NET versions. Borland Sidekick, a pop-up TSR productivity utility. Turbo C 2.x MS QuickC Probably a few others I need to remember.
Note that Turbo Delphi Explorer was a free version of Delphi 2006, not 6 (which was released in 2001). TBH i think it made more harm than good overall since it disallowed installing custom components (which defeated a big reason for using Delphi) and it was based on perhaps the buggiest and slowest versions of Delphi ever released with a convoluted setup procedure (that among others required an obsolete version of .NET).
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#419MeeGo. While most part of it was opensource, the UI/UX wasn't. And it was GREAT. I turn on my N950 from time to time to see if still works and I get a bit sad that I'm not able to use it anymore.
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#420The Opera 12 browser, for umpteen reasons: - UX-wise, it solved many issues browsers today are still struggling with. Vivaldi is working in a similar direction, but they've basically started from scratch again so aren't close to the point of development Opera had achieved by version 12. - These HN posts from today's frontpage [0] [1] give some idea of why we really need Presto today. Not only would it just be good to…
The Presto source code was leaked not too long ago, so legal issues notwithstanding, you might actually see this one happen. Some Russians and Chinese have already managed to build and patch it with new features.