Oct 2024 How to get into Win 3.11 programming

First you'll need the book Programming Windows 3.1 by Charles Petzold and get a little bit onboarded to writing Windows apps. There is no way around it ^^ Windows applications written in C follow a very predictable pattern so it's not gonna be as hard to master it as it first seems, well... depending on your existing skills.

The instructions are for compiling programs in DOS, however I think it's better to do Visual C++ 1.52 where it's easy to compile and run applications with just a key press. It also comes with debugging tools and a resource editor where you can easily build UI, dialogs, even draw icons. The helpfiles are quite good, especially useful is the Windows 3.1 API reference.

16-bit Windows had cooperative multitasking. This means, the OS and applications pass on control to each other constantly. At every little thing the OS does (e.g. before starting to draw a button), you can take control and even override the OS's action, e.g. to behave differently or render something differently than normal. But at the end the OS always has to get back control, otherwise the system will freeze. It's btw crazy how permissive the system was compared to anything today.

Why not Visual Basic though?

VB is easier to learn but very limited compared to C. It has a drag and drop UI editor combined with a simple high level language that does not allow to do anything hacky with the system. It was mainly designed to create friendly front-ends to database driven apps. Also, VB apps must be distributed with an installer so they are not portable and won't fit on a singly floppy disc.

Side note: it's technically possible to combine the simplicity of VB and the power of C by coding C components and embedding them in your VB application.

Level up

Once you're comfortable writing Windows applications in C and you want to learn real insider tricks, check out MSDN CDs from around 1994-1995. I'm currently looking into how to display 256 color images from file. This is not straightforward and not described in any Win 3.11 API documentation or books, but I've found an example application for it on MSDN. [Would be awesome to create a 256-color game or multimedia CD for Win 3.11 (and Mac OS9 as well!)].

If you're interested in graphics, you can go beyond Windows's default graphics device interface (GDI) and utilize WinG, which is rather similar to DirectX and allows direct hardware access. Also with Win32s it's possible to run 32-bit programs and libraries (I think in practice that just means: newer ones that were designed for Win95), but note that WinG and Win32s are not part of a default Win3.x install, so if you application requires them it has to be distributed with them. I prefer compact .exe applications without installers so I don't use these.

If you get into Win3.x programming, let me know, I'm curious why and what you create!

Oct 2024 Let's buy into the PowerPC ecosystem

Classic Mac programming (I'm most focused on the late 90s era) is a little bit different from Windows. Apparently native coding was so complicated that nobody actually bothered doing it, in some cases not even Apple. Instead developers used Metrowerks PowerPlant/CodeWarrior. It's a software development kit that makes it relatively easy to write and compile native applications - I mean, not just something that relies on additional software like HyperCard - you can even create "Fat binaries" that run natively both on Motorola and PowerPC Macs!

Here is the path I took to get started development for OS9. Note that I'm not a professional programmer by any sense.

To get started you need:

• Actual hardware if possible, a PowerPC Mac (but not G4). The snow iBook G3 sells for real cheap in some countries. I don't know much about the emulator route unfortunately.
• A fresh install of MacOS9 lives on it.
• Archive managers like Roxio Toast and StuffIt, because everything from that era is distributed in these formats.
• "CodeWarrior 5 Gold" on a CD
• The book and CD: "Metrowerks CodeWarrior Programming" (1995) by Dan Parks Sydow

Setting up was so not straightforward so I took notes how to do the next time. Please mind, there might be slight inaccuracies here! Also my setup is specifically for developing PowerPC applications, the book will guide you through other options as well.

1. Install MacOS9 Lives
2. Copy the entire CW5 Gold CD to the HDD. Don't install it, it will screw up the system
3. Copy the book's CD as well
4. Copy the contents of the relevant folders from CW5 Gold/"Metrowerks C/C++ f"/(System Folder Items)/Will install in PPC f/ to the Extensions and Startup folders of your system. The source folder names will make this self-explanatory.
5. Configure the Find feature - Explained in pages 68-71 in the book, you dont necessarily need to do it now, but it's part of a working setup. You'll need to add this folder: CW5 Gold/"Metrowerks C/C++ f"/Headers f/Universal Headers 2.0a3 f

Then it's useful to create desktop aliases for apps you'll often need:

• The Metrowerks code editor and compiler: CW5 Gold/"Metrowerks C/C++ f"/"MW C/C++ PPC 1.2"
• "ResEdit" for creating resources such as dialogs with a user interface: CW5 Gold/Apple Development Products f/ResEdit 2.1.3
• "Constructor" for creating PowerPlant-speficific resources: CW5 Gold/Metrowerks PowerPlant f/Constructor 1.0.1

Then: go ahead with the book! It's super well written and easy to follow. I really hope I can get back to this soon because it's heaps of fun. But I'm quite Mac'd out on another project that I'll soon reveal.

(post rewritten in Sep 2025).

May 2025 Styling selection (highlighting)

You can change what selection looks like on your website. Select this text to see the effect!

Right now it seems underlining only works in Chromium browsers, not Firefox :/

You can define selection style in CSS like this:

::selection{
    background: fuchsia; 
    color: yellow; 
    text-decoration: lime wavy underline; 
    text-shadow: 1px 1px 0px darkblue; 
}

More info at MDN

Nov 2024 Tips for your website

• Target your external links, so they open in a new tab:
  <a href="example.org" target="_blank">example</a>
  
  
• Use shrunken images as thumbnails to save on bandwidth and make your web page load faster.
  I use BIMP for bulk shrinking images in GIMP, but you may find some other software that's easier to use :)
  
  
• Host all scripts and web fonts together with your site, don't rely on external sources (Google, Github, etc). Cuz the web is always changing but your site is worth preserving! Here is how to embed your self-hosted fonts.
  
  

Nov 2024

My pet peeve is that I don't want external code (especially trackers!) to load automatically on a website because of embedded stuff. I obv make an exception with cbox, but I embed everything else only on user request like this:

No Google code is loaded until I click the link. That's because the embed doesn't really exist until then, it's only stored in memory as a string.

You can create such embed code with this generator:

<div class="privembed" style="width: 560px; height: 316px; background: black">
    <script>
        embed00000 = function(anchor){
            let privembedbox = anchor.closest(".privembed");
            privembedbox.innerHTML = `insert the "real" embed code from YT or another site here. The code starts with <iframe...`;
        }
    </script>
    <a style="color: white" onclick="embed00000(this)">Load YouTube</a>
</div>

Credits:
Auto-select script from datacadamia.com
Doggie (Rover) from Microsoft Bob.

Scroll down for a code generator to create embeds like this. Woof.

Note to self: I will def need to polish and simplify this code.

If you manually edit this code, the embedXXXXX parts should be always the same for the same embed, but unique to the web page (if you have multiple embeds, and you copypasted them, then change these parts in pairs).

Thank you gifcities.org for the high quality illustrations

FFMPEG is an open source, command line tool for conversion between all kinds of audio- and video formats. It's in the core of most video conversion tools, even YouTube uses it for reencoding videos.

There are graphical front-ends for FFMPEG, however I think learning the command line pays off eventually, e.g. by having access to all features and having great community support.

How to do this?

You have to have FFMPEG installed on your computer first. In many Linux distros it's installed by default. Then, the examples below will work within your Terminal/Command prompt. In Windows you might have to add FFMPEG to PATH for it to work.

Sep 2025 MPEG-1/VCD: A versatile video format for old hardware

I use a Video CD (VCD)-compatible MPEG-1 video preset to reencode for old hardware because it's extremely versatile.

It plays smoothly on: Apple G3 computers in Mac OS9 / QuickTime Player (you might need to find a registered version for fullscreen) Windows 3.1 in Xing Media Player (speed depends on hardware of course, my setup has a Pentium MMX)

Or when burned on CD*: Philips CD-i with a video cartridge (pretty much the originator of the format) PS1 with VCD extension Any DVD player ever Portable VCD players (ok they are rare) Probably many more... *To create a working video CD, you'll need to use the VCD preset of your CD burning software, I use K3b (Linux) for that.

How to encode VCD

Open terminal/command line in your operating system and paste the lines that you need:

Optional steps before encoding

Crop the video to a 4:3 aspect ratio. This can look better on old TVs and monitors, but part of the image will be missing.

Copy

ffmpeg -i "input.mp4" -filter:v 'crop=ih/3*4:ih' -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -preset veryfast -c:a copy "cropped.mp4"

Slice long videos: If you want to burn a long video to CD, mind that a VCD only holds 60 minutes of video. You must slice longer videos to parts. Here the the file is sliced at 55 minutes:

Copy

ffmpeg -i "input.mp4" -t 00:55:00 -c copy "part_1.mp4" -ss 00:55:00 -c copy "part_2.mp4"

Encoding a single file

In this example, we convert a single video to a PAL VCD-compatible .mpg file.

Copy

ffmpeg -i "input.mp4" -target pal-vcd "output.mpg"

Or if you have NTSC devices (mostly North America) then:

Copy

ffmpeg -i "input.mp4" -target ntsc-vcd "output.mpg"

Encoding with subtitles

Hardcoding subtitles to the video (because most old players don't support subtitles otherwise). It takes the subtitles from subtitlesan srt files, burns into the video track. Feel free to adjust font size or style if needed.

Copy

ffmpeg -i "input.mp4" -vf "subtitles=subtitles.srt:force_style='Fontsize=28,Bold=1,Outline=2'" -target pal-vcd "output_with_subs.mpg"

Bulk conversion

Converting all files in a folder with a single command. The command takes all the .mp4 files from the source folder, creates a VCD folder and puts all output files there. Input file format can be .mov or any other format of course.

Linux*:

Copy

mkdir "VCD"; for i in *.mp4; do ffmpeg -i "$i" -target pal-vcd "./VCD/${i%.*}.mpg"; done

*Run this command from within the folder.

Windows¹·² (I couldn't test it recently, I used to use this prompt):

Copy

for /r C:\MYVIDEOFILES\ %a in (*.mp4) do ffmpeg -i "%a" -target pal-vcd "%~paVCD\%~na.mpg"

¹ don't forget to have ffmpeg.exe in the same folder or add ffmpeg to path so it works anywhere in the system

² I think this command will recursively convert files in all subfolders as well. Have to test.