The Phrogram team is pleased to announce that Phrogram 2.5 is now the shipping version. These notes are for existing Phrogram users who are considering upgrading to 2.5 - why it's worth doing, and what you need to do to make the upgrade happen smoothly. If you haven't tried Phrogram yet, you'll download 2.5 "right off the bat" when you do, so the issues noted here should not affect you.
Why Phrogram 2.5?
The main driver for this release was improving the product's built-in and web-based help resources. Phrogram has come a long way since we first released it almost two years ago, and we have much better resources for help. We decided to remove the User Guide PDF from the installation and replace it with both a link to online (web-based) help and local Windows client (.chm) help resources. The other major change that we made in this release had to do with the folder structure. We decided it could be clearer, and we also wanted to change the name of the "Converted KPL 1.1 files" folder to something else, as KPL is no longer distributed.
You need to uninstall the prior version (Phrogram 2.1 or 2.2)
I wish we did not have to do this, but due to how our Microsoft installer (.msi) file works, we could not easily make the upgrade work without asking the user to first uninstall the prior version. This is unlike the upgrade to 2.2 from 2.1 or 2.0, which did not require uninstallation. So, it's one extra step that we decided to ask our users to take to get 2.5 done now (rather than another month from now). If you have 2.2 (released Nov. '07), uninstalling is easy; just use the "Add or remove programs" feature in the Windows Control Panel. If you still have 2.0 or 2.1, it may be a little more challenging because there was an installer bug that we found and which we corrected in 2.2. If, for any reason, you can't uninstall 2.0 or 2.1, try the the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility.
Important note:
DO NOT delete the entire "c:\program files\The Phrogram Company" folder in uninstalling Phrogram. Or, if you do, first make sure that you either still have your license code (you will need to re-enter it, in that case) or that you have separately saved the Phrogram.lic and Phrogram.licx files, and can recopy them to this folder after you complete the 2.5 installation.
"My Phrogram Files" folders
Because we changed the names of some folders that contain Phrogram's extensive supply of sample programs, if you don't do anything with the "My Phrogram Files" folder (under your Documents folder), you may end up with sub-folders with different names but with duplicate contents. We recommend renaming the existing "My Phrogram Files" folder to something else - maybe "Prior Phrogram Files." Then, 2.5 will install a clean set of the latest subfolders containing the sample programs in a new "My Phrogram Files" folder. You can then go back to your "Prior Phrogram Files" folder and copy over to the new "My Phrogram Files" folder any programs that you want to appear in the Files pane in Phrogram's environment. Hope that's not too confusing!
So what exactly are the Phrogram help resources now?
Well, we still have the 2.2 user guide as a PDF download on the site. But the information in the web-based and Windows help systems is much improved and much easier to use. Also, we now have summary descriptions for most (not all) of the functions, methods and properties in the Game3D libraries. These descriptions are not necessarily identical with what is in the web-based and Windows help systems. Here again, synchronizing this data proved very time consuming and we decided that rather than try to make everything perfect, and delaying the release, we'd be better off getting it done and making changes later, either to the XML file (to improve the data in the class library browser) or in the web-based and Windows help systems. The differences are limited to the Game3D library and are usually not substantive, although the wording may differ. However, it is worth noting that if you have Phrogram Standard or Academic, and can access the Class Library Browser, the information there for the 3D libraries is to be preferred over what is in Windows help. I won't bore you with the why's and wherefore's of that - just take my word for it!
So, all things considered, 2.5 is a step forward because Phrogram's help documentation is now much improved. This is particularly important for sales in the educational market, which remains a primary focus of our company - although, when we finally get our act together and ship a 3.0 release (more on that later ;) - we expect to get more serious gamers excited as well.
Thanks for your ongoing interest and support of Phrogram. It's a fun, worthwhile and important project. For more information on why, you may want to take a look at this very complimentary recent blog post which we liked reading!
http://fadedmirror.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/phrogramming/
DavidW
for the Phrogram Team