BYOND

BYOND 507.1283 has been released publicly this past week. This is the first public build that features the new Webclient, which is a HTML5 alternative to Dream Seeker, and boasts the advantage of being able to be used on any modern browser, on any operating system. In most cases, using the Webclient is as simple as selecting "Allow Dream Seeker and Webclient" from the drop down menu below the port/security/visibility boxes in dream daemon. The Webclient will be under continued development as the developers work to make the client run smoother and less taxing on the server. If you have any questions, post them in the Beta Testers subforum, and if something doesn't work quite right, report it in the Beta Bugs subforum.

For developers, two new features have been set to be added in the language by version 508. The first is a new appearance variable for atoms, which contains a snapshot of the atom's current appearance, and can be user-settable. When set to a different appearance (or an object, whose appearance will be copied), it will copy everything except density, dir, screen_loc, and verbs. Images too! This gives developers the power to easily visually clone anything.

The second big feature is expanded error handling, which can be used in place of the traditional proc crash upon hitting an error. Try, catch, and throw keywords can be used. With the exception of excessive loops, runtime error will be treated like throwing a string. Using the thrown value in the catch, or even doing anything in the catch at all, is optional.