Josh On Design

For the past few months I've been working on an open source UI toolkit called Amino. It has lots of cool features like a scenegraph, CSS control skinning, and dynamic translation editing. You just have write your app in Amino and you get the cool stuff for free. But what if you have an existing Swing application and don't want to rewrite it? Don't worry, Amino's got you covered.

We are making progress on the next release of Leonardo, an open source desktop Java drawing program. One of the key features scheduled for the next release is a webservice that lets users save and share reusable symbols they've created. For example, someone could create a set of GWT mockup widgets, then share this set with others.

Below is a screenshot of a debugging app I've been working on called SideHatch. It essentially lets you open up your Amino app from the side and poke around at the innards.

Ruby Red, the first full release of Leonardo Sketch is ready for download. Leonardo is a desktop open source drawing program written entirely in Java. In this first version of Leonardo, features include:

As I write this I'm flying home from New York City where we (Palm) threw an event known as the webOS Developer Day NYC. Really, we should have called it a party, due to the extreme fun and exhaustion we all experienced. But this post isn't really about the event, it's about the webOS developer community.

I finally watched Code Rush this weekend, a documentary about open sourcing mozilla and the sale of Netscape to AOL in the late 90s. There is no doubt that Netscape created the web as we know it. The web changed everything. But I wonder about Mozilla itself. Did open sourcing Mozilla really make a difference to it's success?

AKA: a Teachable Moment in Performance Tests, Profilers, and Debugging statements.

When you go to the polls today shouldn't you make sure you have the support of a drawing program that will fight for your interests in Washington?

The Deprecation

If you're reading this blog then there's a good chance you've heard Apple has deprecated their implementation of Java on the Mac. Contrary to the resulting outrage over the last few days, I don't find change to be a shocking surprise.

Jen was working today, so I spent the day fixing bugs and coding new features in Leonardo. Today's awesome feature: HTML Canvas Export. Yes, oh yes! You can draw anything you want in Leonardo, then export it to JavaScript code that draws into Canvas. Why would you want such a feature. Lots of reasons:

Most of of my free time work for the past few months has gone into Amino, the UI toolkit that Leonardo is built on, but Leo itself has gotten a few improvements as well. I'm happy to announce that the next beta of Leo is up, including:

As part of my ongoing efforts to create better designed software, I some how ended up creating my own new UI toolkit. This is really a part of my belief that a decade from now 90% of people will use phones, slates, or netbooks as their primary computing device. Amino is my experiment building software for that other 10%: the content creators who need killer desktop apps, the programmers who want great tools, and the knowledge workers who need to manage incredible amounts of information at lightning speed. Amino is the toolkit for these apps.

A decade from now 90% of people will use phones, slates, or netbooks as their primary computing device. This is a very exciting development in the software world and promises to reshape the way we make software (check out the great stuff our lead developer is doing in his day job at Palm), but Amino isn't for that world. Amino about that 10%: the content creators who need killer desktop apps, the programmers who want great tools, and the knowledge workers who need to manage incredible amounts of information at lightning speed. Amino is the toolkit to build these apps.

A decade from now 90% of people will use phones, slates, or netbooks as their primary computing device. This is a very exciting development in the software world and promises to reshape the way we make software (check out the great stuff our lead developer is doing in his day job at Palm), but Amino isn't for that world. Amino about that 10%: the content creators who need killer desktop apps, the programmers who want great tools, and the knowledge workers who need to manage incredible amounts of information at lightning speed. Amino is the toolkit to build these apps.

Today I am proud to announce a project I've been working on for the past few months called Leonardo. I've long believed there's a need for a good desktop drawing app that is completely cross platform, free, and open source. Leonardo is that app.

Yesterday Apple updated their Apple TV product, taking it into a new direction with a 99$ TV dongle that does only content streaming. Apple has long described Apple TV as a 'hobby' because they haven't figured out the right way to create a compelling TV product. Since they've spent millions of dollars building up a new data center in North Carolina to support the streaming catalog of the new Apple TV, then presumably they think they've got it figured out now.

Today I'm proud to announce a project I've been working on for the past few months called Leonardo. I've long believed there's a need for a good desktop drawing app that is completely cross platform, free, and open source. Leonardo is that app.

Over the years I've worked on a lot of open source projects. I've also worked on quite a few commercial projects. What a lot of them have in common is the need to market themselves to developers, but without any marketing budget. When I worked on JFXStudio my budget was 20$ a month from my own pocket.

Greetings Earthlings!

I'm speaking at OSCON in Portland next week, and what a busy week it will be. In addition to my personal session on marketing open source projects, I've added some Palm stuff in collaboration with HP. If you can't attend OSCON but will be in Portland I will also be speaking at the Portland Java Users Group. I'll also be working at the HP booth where we will be giving away phones, books, tshirts and some super nice water bottles. Here's the full schedule: