For some time now I've been adding features that won't work properly, or at all, on those very old Windows versions, which forces me to add extra code so the applications won't crash in Win9x/NT4.

Winstep was always proud to support Windows versions all the way back to Win95, but now I think it is time to discontinue that support and remove all the Win9x/NT4 code which is just adding to the clutter.

Winstep software will remain compatible with Windows 2000, 2003 Server, XP, Vista and Windows 7, both 32 and 64 bit versions.

Anyone has anything against dropping Win9x support? Is even anyone still using Win9x or NT4?

100% in agreement Jorge.


Best Regards

Yeah, I think it's fine also.
Besides the internal OS-related stuff I'm sure that just some of the
eye-candy features like animation, thumbnails, zooming, transparencies
and the like are more than what a Win98 era machine can happily handle.
I doubt anyone's running Win98 on a rig like yours.

Though running WinXP Pro my current machine is one of those
"Designed for Windows 98/NT4/2000" things.
Being stuck in my old-school theme I haven't even tried any of
the features introduced in the past year or so until yesterday when
I reinstalled Xtreme. The zooming icons and whatnot were somewhat
sluggish.

Even if I dust off my Win98 machine I won't feel too sad as I have saved
almost every version of NS and WS going back years.

I just cleaned up some old Win9x/NT 4 code relating to the system tray.

The new method of handling the system tray, which is not Win9x/NT4 compatible, is very elegant and easy to understand/modify, especially when compared to the old, hack on top of hack on top of hack, legacy code. That legacy code was extremely complex (it was the result of 10 years of hacking away at the systray on different Windows versions, each with different requirements) and made any changes related to the system tray VERY difficult to do, because it was really easy to break something by accident.

Now it's all very straightforward.

Yes, some effects can be heavy on very old machines. Keep in mind you have other mouseover effects which are quite cool and go easy on processor usage (the Glow effect, for instance).