Mac Forum / General / Networking / November 2005

Welcome to a work in progress!

After a year filled will excitement - and after over two years of
planning - I have been hard at work bringing The Mac Orchard
(<http://www.macorchard.com/>) into its 4th generation to serve all of
your Macintosh Internet software needs.

The new Mac Orchard - which will be finished in time for the site's 10th
anniversary on December 17, 2005 - sports a new organization, a new look
and feel, and several other enhancements. A whole lot has been done to
make The Mac Orchard a more useful resource for everybody. Highlights
include:

1) A new look and feel, implemented using XHTML and CSS2 for
accessibility, and featuring far greater readability;

2) A focus on Mac OS X-compatible applications, with non-Mac OS X
compatible apps moved to a "Classics" area;

3) No more frames;

4) Each application is available on its own page, for easier searching
and browsing;

4) A new page organization that is designed to offer more information
for each application, as well as a wealth of related information for
each application category;

5) Commercial applications are no longer segregated into their own
category, making "shopping around" a whole lot easier.

That said, I'm not done with all of the work that will be required to
complete this transition. Most notably:

- Not all of the commercial applications (there are approximately 120
remaining) have been ported over into the new pages, where they will sit
alongside shareware and freeware applications, no longer segregated as
outcasts. In the meanwhile, these applications are present in a "legacy"
format (on the old "Commercial Applications" page, and linked from
httpw://www.macorchard.com/commercial.html) as they are being
transitioned to the new format.

- Helper applications have also not been ported over into their new
format yet.

- The search capability is not completely optimized, although it's a
whole lot more useful than it was before.

- Some applications that support older protocols - such as Gopher, WAIS,
and VRML - will be housed in an "Older Protocols" section for historic
purposes, and this section is also not quite ready.

- The right-hand columns of each page will house even more information
than they do currently, including "Drew's Picks" (which will detail my
favorite choices in each application category) as well as "Also
Consider...," which will highlight newer applications that are worthy of
attention, but which I haven't yet selected for permanent inclusion.

- Many applications do not yet have graphical links to release notes,
license information, etc. I'll be working on these as time allows. In
the meanwhile, much of this information may already be contained within
the text of each application.

In the meanwhile, please excuse the mess, and rest assured that the
transition will be complete by the Orchard's 10th anniversary, on
December 17, 2005! You can keep track of the progress on the Orchard's
forums, at:

<http://www.macorchard.com/forums/?board=news;action=display;num=11311038
65>

Enjoy, and send me your feedback!

Drew