Magic user interface

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Magic user interface
Basic data

Maintainer The MUI for AmigaOS Development Team
developer The MUI for AmigaOS Development Team (originally Stefan Stuntz from SASG)
Publishing year 1993
Current  version 5.0
(January 30, 2017)
operating system AmigaOS 68k from 3.X / PPC from 4.X
programming language C.
category GUI toolkit
License Shareware or bundle
German speaking Yes
muidev.de

The Magic User Interface ( MUI ) is a commercial , object-oriented GUI toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces for AmigaOS from version 3.X / 4.X. This is free of charge for end users of programs that use MUI. Freeware can also be used free of charge in your own applications; a license fee is charged for commercial products.

Range of functions

MUI provides programmers with a number of ready-made controls as well as an API for creating their own controls, with which the implementation of complex GUIs has been significantly simplified. The four-color standard palette of the AmigaOS has also been supplemented by four more colors in order to achieve a better display of the control elements. The color palette is adapted to the extensions MagicWB and NewIcons , which in turn extended the Amiga Workbench to include more "colorful" file symbols.

Color palette from MUI & MagicWB
colour
red 149 000 255 59 123 175 170 255
green 149 000 255 103 123 175 144 169
blue 149 000 255 162 123 175 124 151

Users of MUI applications have the option of setting their appearance with the configuration program MUIPrefs globally or individually for each program in great detail. Not only background colors or patterns as well as font for text display, but also the display of the control elements themselves can be changed. The size of the controls and program windows is automatically adjusted by MUI. In addition, MUI enables the saving of window sizes and positions, keyboard control and the minimization of running programs.

distribution

MUI was very popular with both programmers and users: Over 900 applications use it for their GUI. These include, above all, some equally popular programs such as the web browsers IBrowse and Voyager , the mail clients MicroDot II and YAM , the IRC client AmIRC , the FTP client AmFTP or the control program of the TCP / IP stack Miami .

history

With the appearance of version 2.0 of the AmigaOS, a new object-oriented interface for implementing reusable control elements was provided with BOOPSI . This was easier and more flexible than direct programming of the Intuition interface, which is encapsulated by BOOPSI . Along with ClassAct (later ReAction ), MUI was one of the first libraries to use this new technology.

In August 1993, MUI was first published as version 1.0. The software is available on the website and especially on the popular Aminet . After numerous intermediate versions, the last official version 3.8 was published on February 12, 1997.

With the decreasing importance and the turbulent history of Amiga and AmigaOS from 1999 the situation becomes unclear. At first it was said that MUI should be used in the repeatedly announced AmigaOS 4 MUI. This was eventually discarded in favor of ClassAct .

In MorphOS , the operating system successor started around 1999/2000 with a similarly changeable history, it became part of the new operating system and its ambient interface as "MUI4" . An unofficial MUI derivative "Zune" was also integrated in AROS , a source-text compatible reimplementation of the previous AmigaOS.

MUI for AmigaOS is now actively being further developed by the "MUI for AmigaOS Development Team" and is available in version 5 for AmigaOS3.X and AmigaOS 4.X. Registration for use in new programs is still possible (as of June 2017).

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ MUI: license conditions
  2. ↑ List of programs that use MUI
  3. ↑ List of popular MUI programs
  4. ↑ a b MUI: program and version history
  5. ↑ MUI: Official download page
  6. ^ MUI: Information on distribution
  7. ↑ Amiga Status Announcements OS News
  8. ↑ More AmigaOS4 Details Emerge OS News
  9. ↑ Overview - GUI Toolkit MUI. MorpOS
  10. ↑ Zune Application Development Manual ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. AROS @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / aros.sourceforge.net
  11. ↑ MUI: order and registration