RC2022/10: Project Introduction
This tweet says it all really:
New RC2022/10 entry from @mich181189
— RetroChallenge (@retrochallenge) September 28, 2022
Platform: Windows 2000/XP
Project : make a Twitter client for Windows 2000/XP (maybe also Win 98). Maybe Retro Challenge is enough of a motivation to revive this project?
It's going to be an awful twitter client, but I think it should work!
So yeah… I signed up for the Retro Challenge 2022/10, my project is a Twitter client that’s compatible with Windows 2000/XP and maybe even Windows 98.
Why does this exist?!
The idea came from another very daft project I was working on, flingwords.com - this is a twitter-like site that’s usable on dial-up connections, while also being usable on modern browsers. I thought it would be cool if there was a desktop client for it. Of course, scope creep happened and I didn’t get most of it implemented. My plan for this RC2022/10 entry is to make the Twitter part of it functional.
What do I have so far?
I have the basic skeleton of two pure win32 UIs written, with the dafter MDI version somewhat more complete:
I also made a more “traditional” twitter-like app shape, but didn’t do so much with it
I also have various external dependencies built with the target toolchain (more on that later) for things like TLS and image loading.
How is it built?
I started developing in Microsoft VC6 however the number of compiler bugs and difficulty compiling more modern software led me to switch to the (still old) VS2005 - the last version that officially supports Windows 98.
The code is win32 with some C++ - I’m not using MFC or any of the helpers (yet anyway, I have considered pulling in some for specific parts if needed). I might need to build a server component to interface with Twitter for various reasons. I’ll explain those when (if!) I get to that point.
What is the goal?
My aim is to get the MDI version usable enough to post a tweet. The inspiration for this is basically “What if MS Outlook (or Access!) was a Twitter client?”
A stretch goal is to get the UI working on Windows 98 - the grid view control I’m using doesn’t work correctly in the win98 version, so I either need to work around the missing features or replace it
Will Source Code Be Available?
Yeah, don’t see why not - though I warn you, the weird mix of C++ and win32 isn’t especially pretty…