So far so good with the latest release—the only reported issues with Boxer 0.8 have been rare and mostly minor. I’m putting a 0.81 release together to address what issues there are, the most important of which are fixing keyboard detection on PowerPC macs and adding compatibility for poor old G3 PowerPCs. This should be released sometime this week, and should appear as an automatic update when you start up Boxer.
Edit: as of 0.81, Boxer will no longer disable OS X spaces while playing a DOS game. That feature was useful for games that use the Ctrl key, but was much too unreliable and intrusive for people who use Spaces seriously. If do you find that Spaces shortcuts are interfering with your game, better to run the game in fullscreen or change the game’s controls.
Comments are now working for blog posts, so if there’s anything else you’d like to see improved, post a comment or get in touch directly.
Get it now! The major changes are summarised breathlessly on the main download page, while the tedious nitty-gritty is in the changelog.
Despite the tiny 0.1 version increment, this version has the most improvements so far. Boxer 0.8 is a lot smarter about your Mac, more reliable, starts up faster, and asks fewer naggy questions. It also comes with a drag-drop game installer, which should take the guesswork out of installing and packaging games.
The riskiest change in Boxer 0.8 is that doubleclicking on Boxer no longer opens a DOS prompt: instead it shows your DOS games folder in Finder so you can browse your games. To get a DOS prompt now, you can either click on the DOS prompt icon in the DOS games folder, or just hold down Option as you start up Boxer.
For most users this should simply cut out the chore of navigating to the DOS games folder before launching a game. However, I expect there are users who prefer to fly by the seat of their pants and would rather have the old behaviour back. If the new behaviour bothers you, please get in touch and I can offer a custom workaround for now.
As astute readers may notice, the website has been reorganised and sports this spiffy new diary. I'm hoping this will be a good way for me to discuss where Boxer is going in future versions, and get feedback on where it has already gone. That is, as soon as I can work out how to get the comments module to work properly.
Design by 40watt.