Hello, so recently I have been curious about how the user interface has changed through the years since 1992 upto a modern version (which could be version 6?). Would be glad if anyone has images to post.
And kudos to the developers. Seems like in recent years, KiCad is developing at superspeed
V9.0.3 is the current so kinda hard to take this too seriously?
The software tools used for building the gui have changed so the Kicad gui kept pace. Features added. Not really sure what you expect here?
By version 6, I meant it looks almost like the current version.
Google does t readily produce much results so would be nice of you people have some screenshots to share of the very old versions
There are some old screenshots on the wxWidgets website:
https://wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/
You can browse though and select a few pictures from:
KiCad V4.0.4
2022-01-19
KiCad’s own documentation goes back to V5.1
You can also try if the Windows versions from 4.0 until any newer run on your Windows: Downloads | KiCad EDA
Actually I was curious about the old UI. Like how it looked when it first came out in 1992 and in the 2000s
Before KiCad V4 there were no “mayor” version numbers, but KiCad “version numbers” tended to be Bazaar hash numbers (or dates?)
Before git / gitlab, KiCad development was on launchpad. The switch to git was around 2016-08-22 . See: Switch to Git : KiCad
Screenshots from before that date are rarer, but I do remember having seen a few with the “bazaar” numbering. Maybe you can search youtube specifically for KiCad video’s from before 2016.
Gosh, the EEVblog video’s of youtube are 13 years old. In the upper left corner you can see the date / version: KiCad (2012-01-19 BZR 3256) I’m not going to watch it (again), but it surely contains material for screenshots.
Chris Gammel with his Contextual Elextronics Youtube Channel also goes back to a bit further then KiCad Version: (2013-03-19 BZR 4004)-stable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLo4xQNHTcY
On google, you can search for: site: youtube.com for KiCad related stuff, and then you can also enter a date range by clicking on some menu’s.
The video below was uploaded on 2009-08-18 and the KiCad version is: (2009-0216-final) I’m not sure whether that’s optimistic or pessimistic.
Jose Luis Diez Rodriguez made a few Youtube video’s from KiCad: (2007-11-29)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF2dVk-x2dI
– And that also seems to be close to the oldest video’s about KiCad on youtube.
Wow cool. By the way when did the bottom layer become blue? V6?
Around the dates of KiCad V4 and V5 there were two different drawing canvases. The old canvas was Red / Green and it had some nice tricks, it could do XOR-ing between layers, and that was the default (at least for me on Linux back then). Via a configuration you could switch to the OpenGL canvas, which was Red/Blue. It did not have the XOR, but it does have transparency. The Interactive router also did not work in the old canvas, and that was a good motivation to switch to the OpenGL for me. So for a few years both the colors and functions depended on the used settings. There were also differences between the different supported OS-es.
I don’t worry too much about the UI, but the functionality has evolved significantly.
I started on V5.1 and liked it a lot. But the change to V6 was a major leap with new library formats. storing symbols with the schematic etc. V6 is the “mature basis” of KiCAD IMO.
V7, V8 are more evolutionary with incremental improvement. I’m still on V8, so can’t say about V9, but it seems to be evolutionary as well.
It is natural as time passed from V5 to V6 is the same as from V6 to V9.
The oldest versions alive which I found are here: iut-tice.ujf-grenoble.fr - /cao/old_versions/, but BE WARNED: Windows Security thought it found a trojan in eeschema.exe and quarantined the file. However, I fed it to VirusTotal (VirusTotal - Wikipedia) and no threats were found.
The oldest version there is from 2006.
EDIT:
These are the oldest versions: