Irie Tools (Business & Technology)

Well, I finally got around to testing Irie Pascal on Windows Vista and in general I was pleasantly surprised. Not only does Vista look great (by the way, be sure to check out the stunning screen backgrounds if you have not done so already), but Irie Pascal looks great on Vista as well.

As far as functionality goes, Irie Pascal ran almost perfectly on Vista, the only issue was the one I was expecting, Irie Pascal uses WinHelp for it’s online help but Vista does not include the WinHelp engine. As an experiment I downloaded the WinHelp engine from the Microsoft web site and installed it, but I ran into some weird problems. I can probably fix these problems but I think I am going to switch to the newer (and better) HTML Help engine instead. Actually, I am planning to update Irie Pascal so that it will support both WinHelp and HTML Help. Irie Pascal will use WinHelp on Windows 95 and Windows NT, and use HTML Help on the later versions of Windows.

I have spent the last couple of days experimenting with the Microsoft HTML Help Workshop, which I found to be (hmm what’s a nice way to put this) unsophisticated. Anyway, after some trial and error, I have learned enough to add support for HTML help to Irie Pascal.

After Irie Pascal is updated to support Windows Vista, I am planning to make some other changes before releasing the update (these other changes will mostly be about making it easier to write web applications).