Blog - The Costa GUI

Celebrating 20 years of Costa

Posted on the 1st of February, 2024

Today marks a special occasion. On the 1st of February 2004, I released the first BETA version of Costa to the public. Its version was numbered 0.0.1, and it came as a successor to another DOS shell project of mine - JEM Systems. Over the years much has changed, both with Costa and the world of IT, but I still find time occasionally to work on Costa. In this post, I’ll take a brisk walk down memory lane and talk about the roots and evolution of Costa.

Get a move on!

Posted on the 27th of January, 2024

Recently, a Github user named Axle sent me a feature request for the next version of Costa: The ability to move icons between desktops.

Costa 1.7.4 released

Posted on the 1st of October, 2023

Costa 1.7.4 has landed, and includes - like previous versions in the 1.7.x series - mostly fixes and performance improvements.

The big news this time, however, is the release to the public of the Minesweeper game previously mentioned here on the blog.

Optimizing the mouse

Posted on the 20th of August, 2023

One of the goals when developing Costa is to include full - but optional - mouse support. Everything should be accessible via keyboard only, even the icon editor can be used with the arrow keys for drawing. But for those with a mouse, certain operations are easier. Now, how can something like the mouse be optimized, you might ask?

Bring out the metal detector...

Posted on the 13th of August, 2023

…because it’s time to clear the minefield in the classic PC game Minesweeper! After a couple of months of development when my free time allowed it, the game is finally tested and ready for release as part of Costa version 1.7.4.