Brand-New Deneb - Trident errors out...

[save2600]

Excuse me for stating the obvious - but MUI and ANY other necessary programs, should be included with Deneb on a friggin' floppy or two or at the very least OR "hidden" inside the protected RAM on the card itself. DUH. The few people left supporting this platform on the level they do should have realized this loooooong ago. As if AmigaOS users don't have enough problems getting this expensive legacy shit to work on their systems without being forced to jump through cryptic hoops, eventually and accidentally getting this stuff to "almost" meet their expectations, if they're lucky.  

MUI? Magic User Interface?? First time I heard of that (early 2000's), I thought WTF? A program that sorta/kinda replaces Amiga GUI/Intuition or whatever - that seemingly does nothing different, takes forever to load and utilizes a squished screenmode. Great. I still don't understand why Trident *needs* this program in order to run - but I'm sure there's a good explanation - there always is.  lol

[save2600]

Miami and its keys... LOL! Oh c'mon. No real disrespect to Michael or his products. The phrase 'expensive legacy shit' is just tongue in cheek and wasn't even specifically directed to his gear. More like the computers themselves and the investment they represent. Just my dark humor. Didn't mean to infer that anything was "shit" or for anyone to get bent. Yes, the frustration level can be high at first. But after fiddle-screwing around, posting questions or dealing with manufacturers, we usually almost always end up getting whatever to work. The support that way cannot be denied and yes, we all appreciate the continued upgrades to firmware as well  

And for the record, I'm happy with any and all of these new products from Michael, Jens, Chris, etc. Support has been great, when/if I ever had a problem. Was mirroring the frustration of a new Deneb user is all. Just seems to be a pattern that crops up every month or so, why they have trouble getting it installed. Missing MUI program (whether it's missing on their hard drive or missing from the install software) is almost always the culprit. I just think it would be easier to include MUI in some shape or form than to be fielding the same issues time and time again.

[save2600]

You had not hear about MUI until 2000? Were you hidding behind a rock? And what programs did you use in 2000 to connect to internet? Almost all Amiga internet software uses and used MUI. Didn't you use Miami, YAM, IBrowse, AmIRC, Amster (napster)...?

Nope, never used any of this stuff until the early to mid 2000's on an Amiga. I took a long reprieve doing anything "serious" on the Amiga starting in the early 90's when I was seduced by the 386's, 486's and eventually the 586's & AMDK6 of the time - so I totally missed out on all these new libs, plug-ins, etc.

I guess you would also complain when a program required bgui, gtlayout, classact or any 3rd party library.

At one time, of course! lol  First time you have to go searching all over creation in order to get someone else's program to work, it's definitely an exercise! But that's become expected in the world of Amiga.

MUI is not a "program", it's a set of libraries and classes that allow Amiga coders to produce decent GUIs, something very difficult with crappy gadtools or other primitive graphic toolkits.

Have you ever tried out MUI examples? You have all kind of different classes, you have drag'n'drop everywhere and it's a pleasure from a programmer user point. You can set per-application preferences depending on the preferences you want

IIRC MUI3.8 is even included with AmigaOS3.9 as contribution.

BTW, MUI is not slow, try to build similar complex interfaces with Reaction and you will notice it. People who claim MUI is slow usually fill every gui element with textures and later complain about slowness.

Thanks for the explanations. I guess I get some of what MUI is supposed to be about (standardization and simplicity for programmers/end users), but am still "sticker shocked" when I see all the options available for some of these programs. I bet it's great from a programmers or developers point of view, but for an end user that was used to how most OS1.3-3.1 programs handled themselves, MUI at times seems to be "too much", too feature ridden almost.

And the slowness thing, no... always just use the plain and simple grey backgrounds. No fancy graphics and textures.

[save2600]

Partly my fault - sorry. Even though you took offense to some of those comments, they were directed at me. I can be abrasive sometimes, phrase things poorly and (usually) accidentally offend. A lot of the guys here are pretty passionate and understandably, so are the developers  

[save2600]

Unpack it on your Amiga, not on your PC.

...and if it fails to install or work after that, be prepared to start messing with protection bits. Many times, these need to be enabled or checked before you can execute a file or install a program. Typical Amiga downloading fare.

[save2600]

It's okay that you never heard of MUI, but then not really informing yourself and rather posting phrases like the ones above, somewhat disqualifies you, which I think, is a bit sad.

Great write up as usual Chris, but the phrase you're talking about was to be taken in the context of my thoughts, the very first time I was exposed to MUI. After taking a long sabbatical from Amiga, coming back and using OS3.5/3.9 in the early 2000's, I was initially surprised to see there was such an "add on" or replacement GUI toolkit instead of utilizing pull down windows or config screens natively in Workbench or a given programs own windows or config screen. As a user that was used to programs that were shipped either complete with all necessary files or just plain worked back in the ≤OS3.1 days, I come back to discover that *AFTER* I purchased and installed OS3.9, that you still have to hunt and peck for all these extra files, programs, libs, classes, plug-ins, whatever - before you can even install some of these other 3rd party programs that were written before 3.9 was released. YAM for instance. Makes sense why you might need to add new libs & classes for stuff released afterwards and that's part of the Amiga experience we all know and 'love'.