Blog - The Costa GUI

1.7.2 released - bug fixes

Posted on the 29th of May, 2023

Keeping up with the spirit of 1.7.1, this new release does not bring many new features, but focuses on improvements instead.

A grid has been implemented on the desktop, making icons move in 8 pixel increments. This makes it vastly easier to align the icons nicely on the desktop, both using the mouse and the keyboard, and I am quite please with it. It’s a small thing, but the effect is great!

1.7.1 released - speed and size is key

Posted on the 10th of April, 2023

For once, a new version of Costa - version 1.7.1 - does not bring any new features. Instead, focus has been on improving performance, and on reducing the size of Costa on disk.

New year, new release of Costa

Posted on the 7th of January, 2023

2023 has arrived, and with it comes a new release of Costa - version 1.7.0. This version brings a lot of small improvements, but also one major new feature: A file selection dialog. Gone are the days when users would have to enter paths and filenames when adding links to the desktop. Now, users can visually select the file they want to open.

Building a better feature

Posted on the 27th of October, 2022

When I started developing for DOS some 20+ years ago, I knew nothing about code versioning systems like Git, nor did I have any idea about automating builds. I just did everything manually, building each separate program from within the IDE before loading the next. Obviously, I have learned a lot since then, but I never really changed the way I did things when it came to Costa. But now I’ve made some changes to make things easier for myself.

Where's my file?

Posted on the 30th of September, 2022

One of the aims of Costa has always been to make it easier for the average person to launch their games and programs, on real DOS machines and in emulators such as DOSBox. This is accomplished by having easy access through links on the desktop. However, creating these links is a manual process, where the executable name and path must be known beforehand. Not a very user-friendly solution - but that’s about to change.