MMB Alternative

[miscdas]

I was at one time an active forum member and user of MMB. It was, in its heyday, the most cost-effective authoring software for making some impressive applications while remaining relatively easy to learn by nearly anyone There was much discussion from about 2010 onwards about replacements for MMB. Most of the suggested alternatives were really too pricey, especially for the many hobbyists that build apps just for fun and personal use.

Now, LiveCode (formerly Runtime Revolution), has released an open source version of their software, thanks to funding via a KickStarter project. LiveCode is truly cross-platform, and includes output for smart phones as well as desktop. If you are a hard-core MMB lover, no reason to abandon MMB. But you may want to take LiveCode for a spin and see if it is another tool that would be useful to have in your toolbox.

There is a bit of a learning curve, because the syntax is more verbose than that used by MMB, and some nearly universal conventions, such as setting values of variables via an "=", take some adjustment.
MMB code: myVariable=1259
LiveCode: put 1259 into myVariable

Al-in-all, I'd say LiveCode is now THE cost-effective application builder for hobbyists and professionals alike.

The main negative I found is for the single-coder that wants to sell his work but not reveal the source code.

Any apps you create using LiveCode Community must themselves be open source. You can use it however you wish, you can even sell what you make, but you must make your source code public. At any time you want to create a professional app and protect your code, you can purchase a Commercial license for LiveCode which allows you to build a closed source app.

Pro version is currently $500 annual license.

http://www.runrev.com/products/Open-Sou ... -Overview/

miscdas

LiveCode empowers you to develop applications that run in any environment, using a fast-and-easy workflow. Our research shows that it takes less than half the time to build an app with LiveCode compared with any other environment.

Well, who can really say that building an app in LiveCode can be done in half the time as building in MMB, but I suspect they did not include MMB in their research. However, we know that MMB does lack some features--there was quite a long "desired features" list at one time. If you have plans for an app but discover MMB does not support all of your required features, maybe LiveCode has a solution.

[Valero7]

Hello fellow MMB Users. I used MMB for the last 11 years and made some money by selling educational software. I had several posts for finding a replacements for MMB. In 2010 when the word was out about Media Chance was no longer supporting MMB I published the following in the old MMB board:
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I’m sorry I’ve taken so long to accomplish this but the reasons are obvious.
On March 2010 after 10 months of researching more than 85 different programs that promised to be RAD (rapid application development) software, I considered the following 5 software as the best to replace MMB as a RAD tool for non-programmers and users with extensive ‘subject knowledge’ and in need of developing fast applications and presentations without the use of heavy scripting but with the capability of coding if needed (just as MMB used to do with the ‘Script Wizard’)
Software and their prices: (USD as of January 2010)

OPUS PRO...............594.00
NEOBOOK...............199.00
ADOBE CAPTIVATE.....300.00
VISUAL STUDIO.........299.00
RUNREV.................500.00

(Prices are in USD and as of January 2010)

This software were given to a group of 5 non-programmers with the task of developing a Multiple choice quiz like program composed of 3 questions and 4 answers for each question and a final result of the quiz taken by the user. All the non-programmers had a least 1 year experience using MMB on a weekly basis. The non-programmers were given 30 days to document the time it took them to finalize the quiz and to give a number from 0 to 10 (10 being the best) to show which software they like the most based solely on ease of use and price:
................................ Average Time...........Preferred
1..... OPUS PRO...................1.5 hours................. 9
2..... NEOBOOK................... 3.7 hours.................8
3..... ADOBE CAPTIVATE.........5.8 hours.................5
4..... VISUAL STUDIO.............6.2 hours.................2
5..... RUNREV................... never finished............1

6. (This was a non-scientific test and if you see my prior postings you can understand the purpose and reasoning behind it)
Thanks for your patience.
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During 2010 I used Opus Pro during the 30 days trial and I was impressed with it but not to the point that I would say it was better that MMB. Two months ago I was offered a discount by Opus pro and jumped into it and I can honestly say that I have finally found the replacement for MMB, and I also can add that Opus Pro 9.3 has surpassed MMB. If you download the trial, test it and hopefully you can start developing immediately since its so similar to MMB. I have developed an Android app in less than 10 days of using this software!!! I
In 2011 I migrated all my MMB programs to Adobe Captivate and continued my business with it. Now I'm doing the same with Opus Pro and I'm loving the "can do attitude" that it offers, a legacy MMB left me.
(BTW I'm still using MMB in Win 8.1 for minor and fast jobs!!!)

[miscdas]

[ I submitted a reply to this a few days ago, but strangely, it does not appear anywhere in the forum listings!]

I am recommending Processing as the most cost effective MMB replacement at this time; see below.

Thanks for that study, Valero7. I installed the Opus Pro trial. Although the GUI design is rather dated, it does indeed offer a tremendous number of options and abilities. Current price is $600. The Creator version is $100, and probably meets the needs of most users that have dealt with MMB. I noticed that when one registers for the trial, there is an option to include an email address to get a discount coupon.

LiveCode (RunRev) has a free Community edition, but it is open source GPL that REQUIRES including the source code for your app. To avoid including source code, you need a commercial license. They have gone to a pay-as-you-go monthly subscription plan that is $49/month!

However, recently, I came across the FREE, open source project Processing https://processing.org/. It is written in Java, but one does not really need to be a hard-core Java programmer to use it. Is does not have a built-in visual GUI IDE like MMB, but there are some add-on GUI packages that can be installed, such as ControlP5 http://www.sojamo.de/code/. It is possible to package stand-alone apps as well. One can also create Android apps; see http://blog.blprnt.com/blog/blprnt/proc ... -very-easy. This is a 5-year old post, but it shows how Processing already was capable then.

There is also a spin-off called ProcessingJS that runs in the browser (assuming Java is installed on the end user's system). A I recall, it uses Processing and HTML5 to accomplish this.

Download Processing (remember, totally free to use and can make commercial apps) and one of the Visual IDE packages and try re-doing one of your simple MMB projects. I think you will see the power...

[miscdas]

I came across another free programming language and system that I am surprised we MMB users have never discovered earlier. The language is Lite-C and the develpment app is GameStudio.

Lite-C was the language used on the Atari!! So you can be sure that it includes great graphics routines and is speed optimized.

A tutorial for beginners in available. They have several packages of free add-on material as well.

From their Home page

Realtime 3D Authoring System
Gamestudio is the world's fastest authoring system for interactive 2D and 3D applications - such as multimedia tools, video games, simulations, or any other software program.
Gamestudio comes with all required tools and editors for designing great 3D video games. But as it's a complete development system, users have created almost anything with it - even a stock trading software! A free, fully functional version, and a free game creating magazine for developers are available on the download page

If a trading application can be made with this, I am sure that almost anything MMB users can think of can be accomplished with it.

Lite-C is only a bit more complex than the scripting language of MMB. However, it is a subset of C language, so is a nice way to get introduced to C, especially if you think you might want to progress later to another language like C, C++, or C#.

miscdas

[miscdas]

Another year nearly finished....

Since my evaluation of the OpusPro (not free) application last year, I must concur with Valero's evaluation group results that of the commercial applications that I have evaluated, Opus is the best paid alternative to MMB when considering usability, features, and price.
You can check here for their overview.

Currently, until 4 January, 2017, the price is $278. However, Opus Creator version 9 is $65. It contains most of the features and functionality of the Pro version; I would say there a very few features that typical MMB users would miss.

miscdas

[SlowJC]

Thanks for sharing this!

[Valero7]

Hello fellow MMBuilders. 7 yrs. ago I researched and posted alternatives to MMB. I saw Opus Pro as the perfect alternative, now about 3 years ago Opus Pro has also gone under. Luckily I saw this coming and started migrating to "App Inventor 2" and during the last 4 yrs AI2 has been my bread and butter and I've published 9 android apps from all my migrating software. I'm a romantic, I'm still looking for a fair replacement for MMB, but so far AI2, which is free, extra well supported and extremely powerful , has served me very very well, my only problem with it is that it does not publish to desktop, ONLY TO ANDROID.