Backward compatibility

[Aerilius]

Having developer tools support older SketchUp versions helps extension developers to debug when they want to support users of older SketchUp versions.

• Which versions of Internet Explorer do we want to support? This means avoiding modern JavaScript features and eventually debugging and patching ace…
• Bridge works significantly different for HtmlDialog (mostly the Bridge API) and WebDialog (message pipe and asynchronous dispatch, hidden text element). Most changes are in the Request Handler. Probably we need to load specific files depending on which dialog we use.
• Which versions of Ruby do we want to support? Check for used Ruby 2.2.4 / 2.0.0 features, e.g. changes to Binding.
• If not adding backwards compatibility, we could use require_relative instead of composing absolute paths.

[Aerilius]

Most show-stopper issues for backward-compatibility have been ironed out and tested in WebDialog/IE11 and Ruby 2.0.0, which should enable developers to debug plugins for older versions down to SketchUp 2014.

• Bridge support for WebDialog 22856f3336e2feaf6fe9dc67831571e55d918494 be6efe38d871baef8ca04217ddabadd79bda297e
• Bugs:
  • toolbar layout overflow 0cb2a06c246f923c0f7d91fcef198125a097110e
  • scrollbar always showing in WebDialog/MSIE 9a3728446d6ecacc84fdd948f8209575dd487f3c
  • SVG being rendered too big in WebDialog/MSIE 57770e32028ef4e08d3712030a1f7fbf05e4423f
  • ace editor losing focus on click Issue #14

While there are still users on SketchUp 8, the missing Ruby features would be a limitation in the long term development of this console. Since this console is targeted to developers, I think it's not worth to make it work in older versions than 2014 (but it does not hinder developers to develop plugins that also work in older versions).