When you start Dream Maker it should show the developer's home page, similar to how other IDEs have welcome pages. Here are some examples:
http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/images/33493/03000005.png
http://www.visualcplusdotnet.com/javaopensource/ eclipseandmyeclipseideinstallanduse_files/ eclipsemyeclipseideuseinstalluse017.png
http://monodevelop.com/@api/deki/files/ 43/=CapturaWelcomePage.png?size=bestfit&width=200&height=159
http://blogshare.members.winisp.net/images/VSStartupPage.png
This welcome page makes much more sense for DM than it does for other IDEs. Most people opening Visual Studio (the last screenshot) won't care about "Accessing Team Foundation Server" because a wide variety of developers use Visual Studio. DM development is much more narrow in scope, so there's a better chance that the content on the web page will be of interest to the person opening Dream Maker.
BYOND game players have a lot of site-based and pager-based features to promote the sense of community. DM programmers don't have much. I can't say with any certainty that a better, more active development community would attract (and keep) better developers but it's certainly worth a shot. The developer's home page already exists so this is an easy feature to add.
ID:104700
 Nov 17 2010, 4:56 pm
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Dream Maker is for developers. The pager is primarily for game players. It doesn't make sense to push developer news through the pager.
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I'm not sure why you think that the 'pager' is mainly for players, given that it is really just a central point to access all the tools that together make the software suite. It isn't in any shape or form specifically customised for 'players'.
As for advantages of using the pager, I'd see a couple:
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Schnitzelnagler wrote:
I'm not sure why you think that the 'pager' is mainly for players, given that it is really just a central point to access all the tools that together make the software suite. It isn't in any shape or form specifically customised for 'players'. Pager features that relate to game playing: * View a list of your favorite games * See what games your friends are playing * Join a game that a friend is playing * Invite a friend to join the game you're playing * Open http://www.byond.com/games/ directly * View the list of games you've downloaded Pager features related to development: * Run Dream Maker * View the libraries and demos you've downloaded I'm not sure you understand the purpose of the welcome page. The purpose is to increase traffic to the developer's home page (http://www.byond.com/developer/) with the hope of increasing activity in the developer community. The focus here is "developer community". The pager functions related to development have nothing to do with the community. The pager is a game player's connection to the gaming community, not a developer's connection to the development community. You're probably correct that more people use the pager than Dream Maker but that's because there are more game players than developers. Since the welcome page is specifically for DM development news it would be irrelevant for the majority of people using the pager. It's also possible to run Dream Maker and work on a project for hours without ever seeing the pager. All DM developers run Dream Maker. There just isn't a better way to reach developers than through the tool they're all already using. | |
99% of people on BYOND are only players, not developers, so displaying this on the pager wouldn't be relevant to vast majority of its users. I don't see a way this could effectively be displayed on the pager. A basic link couldn't hurt, but that's not really whats being requested. As for this showing up in Dream Maker, I don't see a downside to it. Instead of opening up to an empty file, that space could be some sort of developer homepage.
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Well, but if you're a Developer you may want to have it. An option would be to check in your site if you want to have that Welcome.
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Not to mention that I think a lot of people use the pager more frequently than they do with Dream Maker.