The warm feel of Thermo

Some time ago I watched the presentation about Thermo. You can read Thermo description or you can jump start to the presentation.

Well, Thermo is a tool not for Java, this is certain, but is built with Java and Eclipse. When you first see you will doubt, but it really is built on Eclipse. Anyway, IBM does a good job of changing Eclipse not-so-attractive appearance in its Lotus Symphony office suite and Lotus Notes app, which, I dare to say, share some good amount of source code.

After watching presentation I think some designer will certainly find Thermo useful ;). I am eagerly waiting for new designer tool from Sun.

Death of e-zealotery

It is so human to allow yourself a little bit of bias, unjust judgment, close your eyes and open your mouth to only say 'it's my way or highway'. How many more time shall we see post about this and that being death chicken not realizing its head being chopped of its rotten body?

We need some heat, those unfair opinion and numbers taken from the sky, performance measures giving us pure bullshit facts are motivations to clarify, explain and develop. Man, I am lazy and I write seldom, but you see I just can't stand when someone misses the fact train and goes on the bias side. Give me flames so they can burn my laziness :)!

Of course the linked post is in many points right - I especially would like to see delta patches for Java and better modularity, but I'd also like to see those for other software like that developed using Eclipse RCP. I think it is not just a matter of some developer lazy decision - KISS I guess played its role here. About the patches for Solaris. My guess is that Sun's engineers wanted to make sure every patch is installed. The implementation is quite funky, but the goals is met. And I don't think it is big issue for admins in military area or any other high profile deployment. Well, one have to remember that Java and Solaris just only entered desktop market. Both are still looking for solutions to problems meet on the field of end customer shiny desktop :). Project Indiana and Java 6 Update N are still quite young projects.

So anyway, I am more relaxed when I publish this post when I was when I had written it. I guess it is still worth to express my feelings and share my look at some issues.

My vote clarification

In previous post I decided to vote for Java for OSX the way I saw suggested on the JavaLobby, but I'd like to say that I don't think not having Java 6 on the MacOS X right now is a good reason to be scared by Java future on this platform. I know, and you can check here that waiting for Java 6 might take some time.

On the other hand just waiting patiently is not enough. What worries me the most is Apple's attitude to developers. Their silence is really annoying for many people. Secrecy might be good for projects involving some cool new changing industry hardware, but for implementing JVM? Come on! I don't get it why Apple just can't say "You all act like a bunch of. Of course Java 6 is coming for Leopard!". Instead Apple is acting like a stubborn kid that is afraid of telling anyone what is he doing for some insane reason.

So for me the problem isn't really the lack of Java 6 on Leopard. It is the Apple secrecy policy that make some people pretty worried. If you would like to move to Java 6 and you'd known that your users use Macs what questions would you ask? My take:

1. Will there be Java 6 on the Mac?
2. When will there be Java 6 on the Mac?
3. Will Java 6 on the Mac run on older hardware, on PowerPC or will it be Intel only?

Apple answers: no comments... Is this answer encouraging further investment in switching to Java 6? Is it satisfying? What did you get from the answers? How do you feel as a customer of Apple?

I think Java 6 on Mac OS X will be a decent, well implemented and performing platform. Will it make the bad taste go away? No comments...

I don't use Mac so why should I care?

As much as I'd love to own a Mac I can't just yet :(, but even though I don't have one I don't think I shouldn't care about those who do. Having a decent and current Java on the Mac would make many faces relaxed and smiled :).

So I decided to vote for Java 6 on Leopard (I think it is just a matter of time, hopefully):

13949712720901ForOSX

AIR in RIA

When I listened to one of java posse episode, one of the members pointed out that SavaJe is an anagram of JavaSE. So now you know. I am not a superb observant person and Adobe marketing is pretty much smart.

And not only marketing. AIR allows quite smooth transition from web developer space to desktop. How else would you describe ability to write desktop apps in html + javascript mix? And for more advanced solutions you can also use Flex and Flash. I've tried kuler desktop app and it is OK. But it is just one of many. Adobe also renewed its developer oriented site - Adobe Developer Connection. There is very interesting article about eBay desktop development and lots of other content. Adobe engineers prepared AIR extensions for Dreamweaver and Flash, no to mention Flex SDK and Builder 3 that have AIR support built-in.

Apart from those known for some time technologies and programs Adobe is working on AIF and Thermo. Respectively to bring fast image operations to Flash and build a bridge tool between designers and developer just like Microsoft touts its Expression Blend 2 software.

So, all of this shows, that Adobe pumped some fresh air in the RIA space :). And is surely aiming at the second target - designers: check!, now let's move on those developers... ;). Certainly Adobe gives its competitors good hard time.

Air and java weight

Some time ago I had a conversation on the Java Lobby page. It was about JavaFX Script and its chances to succeed. At least it started this way. Of course, as in every conversation about RIA market and Java, Flash/Flex were brought into play. Which I think is good and bad at the same time. I myself am kind of unhappy of my posts in this conversation - I wasn't paying enough attention to get the meaning of Alex's posts. But nevertheless, even after admitting I've made some mistakes with understanding what he meant I still have to point out that Alex missed some numbers for sizes of JavaFX Script runtime.

So to make it clear: JavaFX Script runtime file javafxrt.jar is 1965kB so it is bigger than Flash, but when you pack200 it it becomes 629kB! You have to add Filters.jar (262kB, pack200ed 81kB) and swing-layout.jar (140kB, pack200ed 27kB). So, one can say that JavaFX Script adds 737kB when packed. And why shouldn't you send it packed to the client when you know that she has JRE installed?

I've seen that (scroll down to the graph at paragraph about Java Kernel) you could need just under 4MB of JRE to run day-to-day useful Swing app. I wonder how big should be the JRE to run JavaFX Script. I guess it would be around 4MB. Do you know any numbers? Comment, please.

I myself think that comparing Java applet runtime (which is full JRE right now) and Flash is like comparing whole school to arts class :). I mean you can do a lot with Flash, but you certainly can do a lot less with it than with Java. Flex ads some flexes to Flash of course, but still it is in different category.

But now, when Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) beta is out we can really compare Adobe and Sun Microsystems solutions. At least in the space of application runtime sizes.

And you certainly know how big is JRE, don't you? Well, just listen to the interview with Roman Guy at Infoq to hear that he missed some megabytes of the JRE :).

I can understand that - I would estimate that last time Roman downloaded JRE at the time when it was of the size he mentions in the interview.

AIR = 9MB, Java 6 = 13.93MB. At least comparing those is more sane then comparing JRE to Flash Player. It seems like you have to weigh a bit to be a platform of today ;).

Coming back to the Roman Guy interview. I agree with him on the size issue, but I'd like to ask average computer user (ACU for short :)) why would he/she download JRE. Is there any Java application that is a must have? I've heard there is certain interest in the Azureus, but I won't count that one, because there is too much dark buzz around bittorrent these days. I've seen Aerith and it was cool, IRIS is cool too. Don't they lack marketing? Is Aerith still developed? I wish it was. It would be nice to show friends pictures from a trip using it. And see their jaws on the floor ;)!

Show to share

I've just paused a show I've have been watching for a few minutes. It is funny and relevant, with good examples. Watch it. It is worth your time to smile and learn simultaneously.

Link to the video

Cheers!

Design tip from bug tracking

I read IntelliJ IDEA's EAP news list almost daily. I find it quite interesting. It is really a good proof to see why IDEA is so good and to see its worsts and bests :). One the one side there are wows and, on the second loud whines, on the third lots of good, intelligent and thoughtful suggestions. Some of the whines and worsts get addressed quite quickly as one can see from the Selena builds' (codename for IDEA EAP release) changelogs and numbers of closed bugs from IDEA's Jira. Some don't.

One post I've read today have given me nice tip about ui design. It mentioned this bug.

Illuminating bug!

Good news about JetBrains Omea

If you know JetBrains Omea Pro, you know that it was anounced to be open sourced a long time ago. After months of silence from JetBrains today I've read a news post on the jetbrains.omea.pro news list that finalizing open sourcing Omea now is a matter of time. Yay!

When I look at Omea I come to the sad conclusion that I have yet to find such a nice and useful tool in the Java realm. Maybe you could point me to some software that at least tries to be what Omea is? In fact some of the Omea's users as annoyed as they could be by the lack of feedback from JetBrains about Omea's future and yet couldn't just turn around to it.

Hopefully open sourcing Omea will bring new quality to this wonderfull tool.

Does it really ad(d)s sense?

I recently stumbled a few time at ads like this:



For those not speaking Polish language it says: Visual Studio 2005 perfect set of tools for developers!

How is that connected to my search which was 'project darkstar java' (apart from that the ad's title says Java Project, of course ;))?! When I look for Java I'd rather not to see any Microsoft related tools - they don't support Java and they even cannot spell its name (think JScript and J# or J++ or whatever) on their website. Anyway, I'd call it adAbuse :/.

Cheers!

Wow! Yahoo Mail bugs

Sometime ago I've heard about new and shiny Yahoo Mail and I couldn't resist to try it. It sure looks nice, I haven't yet got deep into it, but I've encountered bugs. Just two frankly or maybe one and a half - I'm not sure whether one of them isn't in SourceForge mailing lists configuration. Numero uno - Yahoo Mail doesn't recognize posts from SourceForge mailing list - it replies to the sender to the list so I have to work around with 'reply to all' and manually delete the wrong e-mail. Numero duo:

Hm... I hope you've spotted the bug, have you? Have you seen it anywhere else then Yahoo Mail? I'd like to check the search feature of this Y!Mail - I know that someone had problem with GMail search feature. I'd had to use it more to confirm or deny, but I have a feeling it also once failed me.

Living in a post JavaONE world

Now, just after JavaONE we all know that Java is now on the client quest.

Almost everyone is speaking about JavaFX, but there is Consumer JRE . All of these are steps in the right direction- smaller Java package and easier creation of rich Swing/Java2D content are very good first steps.

Many of people around are talking about post JavaONE Java is after Flash. JavaFX Script/F3 demos are all copies of Flash based products, but there are all WebStart applications not applets. So those aren't competitors for web arena, rather for RIA's. So what about Web in-browser? What about all those flashy, colorful animations, buttons, small sized and easy to create? BTW, do you know that there is already a tool for JavaFX visual creation? It's called JFXBuilder. IMHO Reportmill is one of those companies that have problems with marketing. When I first enetered their site I thought "this site doesn't look good, this JFXBuilder might be disappointing" seriously I was worried that this JFXBuilder is a software not worth looking at. I was wrong. Although time management in animation is kind of awkward, because there is no timeline, overall this tool shows the possibilties that JavaFX Script might bring to conent creator, but more importantly it shows that developing authoring tools for JavaFX Script is easy.

And audio/video, what about Java codecs? I'd like to know what Sun's engineers think about Ogg codec family... Are those might be the answer for Java multimedia problem? Ogg codec family is open source, works and performs well right now so why not? And being open they are ready to be even more fine-tuned by Sun and community around OpenJDK. Fluendo has an Java applet that shows the quality of Ogg/Vorbis/Theora video playback compared to wmv and Flash. It plays video, but a little worse then competition. Not to mention applet start up time in comparison to flashy Flash or WMP, but it's being addressed by Sun's engineers.

In one of Java Posse's podcast one javaposser, I believe it was Tor, mentioned that open sourced media solutions in existence might not be enough due to quality (but this can be improved, since it is open source, right?). I was surprised that they didn't know there is Ogg video codec. Not that Java Posse creators are media gurus, but I thought they had some time and interest to investigate that. Not that they are always well prepared for theirs podcasts ;).

I've seen JMC (Java Media Components) proposal by Chet Haase on his blog and I have to admit that it produced mixed feelings. Media is surely an important issue for Sun, but not enough important to pay for codecs. Sun has developed JMF, but don't want to continue it and is comming with JMC (at least this acronym sound kind of cool to me :)). I think two way (interface with native solutions and bring decent cross-platform codec to Java) solution will certainly cover the Java media problem well enough. What native solution Java will bind to? WMP on Windows I guess, QuickTime on MacOS X. And on Linux? Theora? This binding-to-native will certainly bring some problems (remember QuickTime bug that Java bindings caught?). In a Chet Haase IT Conversation's interview and comments to above mentioned blog post there suggestions that it'd be nice Java would use the same video codec that Flash has, but as I stated above Sun doesn't want to do this, because this is too expensive or put even better it doesn't fit into Sun's business model (they still want to concentrate on big clients - enterprises that is). And at the same time they want to aggressively improve client side experience? At least they don't want to over invest this.

Anyway, I am happy that Sun is looking at client side Java stuff. Be it better performance, media intergration, better features or tools. I'll take'em all with pleasure! :)

Lack of time is notorious friend of mine

My time is consumed mainly by arranging our new flat. It takes awful lot of time :).

So anyway, last time I presented you a screenshot from NetBeans' plugin that I believe has been abondoned due to high quality built-in refactorings provided in Java IDE's. I said it was borderfull. So there were three levels of border, something like a dozen unnecessary IMHO lines. I mean what do they add to this very design? Sure they sometimes help to organize controls through making 'field of funconality', but this dialog is divided in fields by using JScrollPanes. Why add noise with borders? Other than that there is just one thing that annoys me a little bit. In the 'Target class' pane in list 'Probable target classes' string shouldn't touch border (again! :)) of the scroll pane. It creates tension and steals attention of the eye. Eye mind you, not attention of the user although it distracts her for sure. So let it be RefactorIT dialog redone my way!


As much as Ocean look and feel is fontwise crippled for me this dialog looks simple enough. The worst thing here is tension created by 'Resolve' and 'Ok' button. And of course it should state 'OK' (like on Plastic3D look and feel) ;). I didn't wanted to place 'Resolve' button in one row with 'standard' buttons - they differ in functionality a lot.

And on the side note - I won 25$ for filling OSTG survey :)! Hopefully I will have more time for Tonic soon. Otherwise I forgot how to code.

Video-killed-the-radio-star case

It might be surprising, but I won't boast my new dialog login design for Tonic this time - I haven't got enough 'power' to create it yet, but I decided to take a look at NetBeans site since Eclipse 3.3M6 hit the mirror last Sunday and I thought it would be nice to see if coincidences happen in IDE's wars. They do - but you have to forgive release engineers not being as fast as content writers. M8 will happen soon. BTW, when reading this wiki a had feeling I saw requests about features showed, but I could swear the url had nothing to do with NetBeans :). Maybe I was tired? ;) Anyway, I decided to take a look at NetBeans plugins and as I know NetBeans 6.0 milestones hadn't sophisticated refactoring capabilities due to new editor introduction I decided to look for refactoring solutions and I found RefactorIT.

Even though some people at some companies didn't know it for a long time[1] refactoring is a feature that good IDE cannot miss - it is in the bussiness too long and is soo useful. Even I, forbid humbleness, use it from time to time. And it shows that it is a area were IDEs do compete - there are many refactorings provided out-of-box by then so plugins providing refactorings are losing ground. Just like RefactorIT. Correct me if I'm wrong, but seeing last news item (about release) from 2005 I concluded RefactorIT is no longer developed. But I am a curious person and wanted to see flash demo they are still providing. And watching it I saw it:

Hm. Quite a borderfull dialog isn't? I will post something explaining why I showed you this some time soon (I believe). BTW, I liked the demo.

[1] I mean VS 2005 was released after IntelliJ IDEA 5, Eclipse 3.0.

Coming back to Tonic's ui.

Some time ago I posted this screenshot.
I saw this dialog (it is modal) often and it really doesn't scare me ;). So let's count: 4 buttons, 3 combo boxes, 2 text fields, 1 password field, 1 check box. 5 areas.

Pros:
1. Do I have any pros for it? Well, some components are align, somewhat. But suriously. I like that 'Server:' and 'Account:' are aligned. And so are 'Login as guest', 'Register' buttons aligned with text field for handle and password. So are the panels 'Guests' and 'Advanced options' .
2. 'Connect' is the default button - the one user wants to click as quick as possible.

Cons:
1. Labels after the components. With left-to-right reading it is hard to read what is control for.
2. Horizontally misaligned components through panels. Look at the buttons in 'Guest' panel and controls in 'Advanced options' for example.
3. The vertical space between components is different through the dialog. Ideally it should be consistent through the whole application.
4. Karsten Lentzsch noted that using titled borders is risky - they take the space, take the attention and produce noise. I know they are wildly use, but it doesn't mean they are the way to go in this dialog.
5. Once again I am presented with information that I cannot access - the menus in the back.
6. The fonts are out-of-any OS default. This is Java cross platform Metal look and feel issue though. I hope next iteration of default Java look and feel would look great. It seems strange to me that I liked (and I still do) old and new Metal lafs. I admit it is totally irrational.
7. 'Connect' and 'Cancel' buttons are on the opposite sides of the dialog. Just note that you could easily treat 'Connect' as 'OK' and now you know why this is contra.

Do user really needs this awful lots of options to choose? I think one could easily hide the 'Advanced options'. And omit the register button as well. To not to just whine I'll do my best to create an alternative for this dialog in which I visualize my propositions :). I would have to do it anyway since after this post I cannot put off a redesign of this dialog too long :).

Anyway, if you have thoughts on this dialog or my post comment please. I will update this small analysis if I come to some new observations.

I love Blogger spellchecking.

New features in Tonic in comparison to Jin

I'd like to put to this post all features that make Tonic different from Jin. I'll be updating it when new features come. If you would like to read about my thought on some of the mentioned features you can read posts labeled 'feature'.

In short:
Multiple consoles with multiple types.
Channels in tabs.
Shouts, cshouts in tabs.
Text field easing user from retyping commands.
GUI for adding/removing many channels at once.
Timestamp in Channels Manager consoles (optional).
Tray Icon (optional) with closing without confirmation and move/game end notification.

1. In Tonic you can have multiple consoles.
You can specify the type of each created console and it will be created with editable field that will help to send similar commands to server. For example you can create console for chess shout and have a text field that will save you typing 'cshout' every time you want to chess-shout :).

You can also create console that will receive multiple types of messages. Just choose 'custom' and type in what type you want it to be.

And you can also choose 'Talk with' menu item from context menu in consoles. Of course it works only if you have someone's name highlighted.

2. Tonic has Channels Manager.
First of all it show channels content in tabs. Shouts (both 'shout' and 'it' or '-->'), chess shouts and all other text - tells feedback (like '(told 106 players in channel 106'), finger notes, variables etcetera.

You can remove channel from channels list just by closing the channels tabs or you can use a dialog for adding/removing channel and you can do it with many at once. You can call this dialog by clicking right mouse button over the tab.

You can set up Tonic to append timestamp in front of chat messages in channel tabs.

3. Tray icon.
Tray icon is optional so if your system tray is full of icons you spare it the pleasure of hosting Tonic's one.

Tray icon have context menu which provides user possibilty to close Tonic without confiramtion, you can also reconnect and minimize Tonic (when in MDI mode).

Icon in the system tray/notification area changes when game ends, move is made and so on.

Enjoy Tonic!

to be contiued...

To buggy to not to bug

I just couldn't stand JavaHelp font chooser design not being a bug. I checked Sun bug database looking for a bug concerning it, but I didn't find any so I decided to give it a try and filled a report myself. When I was in the middle of doing it I wondered why there are so many badly designed Java apps. Is this problem really getting the attention it needs to be solve? And is it really that important to have a well ui-wise designed apps? Is it hard to scary user away with bad ui?

Let's look at the context.

1. Programming is hard, but there are hundreds of thousands developers out there and part of the is doing desktop application so at this very moment there are many desktop applications and there will be more.

2. There is a big information sea (and it is not a very clean sea :)) around us and the life keeps us running, we need to get information now and without a hassle so we will avoid situation when this is not possible.

3. Image says more then thousand words.

4. The presentation of data has a role in understanding it.

All of above is really trivial and well known, so why are there so many bad designed ui?

My solution: ask for well designed ui loudly! :)

Something really big ;)

Surely off-tonic, but not for long :).

Ok, so I am evaluating JavaHelp from https://javahelp.dev.java.net/ for using it in Tonic. I was looking through the user guide made with JavaHelp and I like, but the fonts were a little bit too little :) for me so I decided to change them. AndTHAT was shown. My, oh my. I got so surprised by this dialog horrible design that I wanted to check whether this is the latest version of JavaHelp. It appeared to me that the version from Sun's page has the same BUG ;). I am curious if Romain Guy or Chet Haase ever used JavaHelp. Looks like they didn't.

And to not just whine, but to whine more :) I sat for a couple of minutes and crafted a little alter ego of Mr. Jekuil with the fine IntelliJ IDEA gui designer.
I wanted to use the same components as in the JavaHelp font chooser, but I couldn't live with JComboBox for font size choosing so there's the spinner. If you want to take a look at better design font chooser you should watch IDEA gui designer demo and look for "Designing the form" part of presentation or you can go with Java WebStart demo from L2FProd.com.

This post was sponsored by letter H like 'horrible ui design' and G like 'google is you web search friend' ;).

UI analysis part II and logo proposition.

First I'd like to introduce new logo. It is just a proposition if you have any thought about it comment, please.
The second part is about second part :) of my Tonic's UI design analysis. This time I'll let you first look at it for a while :), don't hesitate to comment it. When I find time (sigh!) I'll post some thoughts about it.

Tonic is source kibitzed

If you ever wanted to know how many lines of code I change in Tonic in a certain period of time you can now check it here.

I submitted Tonic to www.sourcekibitzer.org not a long ago. I know there is CIA project. I like statistics so maybe I will add Tonic to CIA too... Being watched doesn't always mean something bad. It really shows how open we can be and it motivates authors to make better software. Or at least better commit comments ;).

Lately I've been doing some UI in NetBeans using new layout manager in Java 6 - GroupLayout. My design were far, far away from being complex and doing them in GroupLayout has proven that, but when I wanted to recreate them in GridBagLayout... Well, maybe I just got spoiled?

First time look at Tonic

As I have written in my last post I want to take a look at Jin/Tonic's UI.

This is what users usually see when they first start Tonic (apart from splash screen, but this is true for Windows users only).

Pro
1. One font face, same as system font, no bold or italic font (I think it isn't necessary here).
2. No unnecessary borders in the "Choose server" dialog.
3. Only the needed information is displayed, the start is pretty simple - you just choose a server and that is it (this counts for dialog mainly read 1st cons).

Cons
1. It is misleading to show main app window with menus - try to click them, you cannot.
2. Component with scroll bar isn't a good for displaying just a two servers you can connect.
3. The buttons aren't align with a control displaying servers.
4. "Choose server" dialog title and "Choose a server to connect to" label is redundant, but it is disputable whether it's pro or con.
5. It is not attractive :).
6. "Choose sever" window is modal so it makes quiting application harder. You cannot even resize the app window.

Do not hesitate to add something to both lists.

What should I do for Tonic and what should I undone

After watching this presentation of JavaOne 2006 conference quite a while ago I got quite excited about UI design part of designing software. I had some thoughts about it when I was implementing new preferences UI (for Channels Manager for example). I have to admit that my education should have help me, but my eyes were rather closed at the right solutions. You know, sometimes one needs some little mind push or clarification. Now when I had seen the presentation mentioned above I know I was taught what Karsten was saying - omit clutter, reduce noise, KISS.

So, what should I do now? I will see Karsten's presentation again and again (it isn't enough to see it three times :)) and his Metamorphosis demo. Simultaneously I will do a little measurement of UI design principles correctness against Tonic/Jin (at the moment these are almost identical). I hope I will come to the right observation :).

Coding back to Tonic

This time I present all of you screenshot with strange chess position. Note this is examined game and you can see what kind of variant it is (be it Bughouse, Suicide or any other). It is something that Tonic's parent couldn't do when I started working with its source code.



Starting a chess game from some nonstandard chess positions (other then well known Fischer random chess and pawns-only) is a feature of Free Internet Chess Server I didn't know until I tried to investigate this bug. And while I was talking on the server with ryoshu about pawns-only variant I was told that there are some boards on fics. Well, one can even check what boards are for each category. You can do it by typing "boards" and then, for example "boards uwild". I did and... this bug occured.
So you have to restart Tonic if you want to get rid of what you see in Channels Manager window, sorry :). I haven't fixed this bug yet, but I have an idea how to do it ;). Anyway, I am happy I found some time to code back to Tonic. And I am glad I kind of remember what I changed in it already :].

Freshmeat efect

One day when I checked Google Analytics page for this blog I first thought I had clicked wrong link. From abysmal few visits a day to somehow less abysmal :) 63. Well, and most of this comes from freshmeat.net. Anyone who wants to get some attention to its open sourced project should consider submitting to freshmeat.net.

I have been using Google Analytics for www.tonic-chess.blogspot.com just for a couple of days and I wonder why there is no referral statistics from sourceforge.net project site...

And about freshmeat.net it is a good place to promote your project and aside of that seeing this effect in visits:
And it makes you really want to release early, release often. You know, I just don't have time - I have to write this blog and read so many others ;)! Is addictive reading blogs makes me competent to go for blog aggregator? I think there is more to blogging then writing :). Anyway, I recommend reading this post regarding blogoboom (if you are lazy just go for number 4) on Chat Haase blog (sic!). This human being is really a humor beast.

And btw, anybody has some spare time to giva away? ... thought so.

It's unfair ;), but it is ok nevertheless

I cannot find any time to develop Tonic. I cannot even find time to play a chess game or two :(... Ok, I have some time in the morning to play on Tibia server, but it is just 15 minutes... Maybe this weekend I'll find some time to test my new component for Bughouse. I have to admit that code for laying out component in the chessboard window is rather hard to read for me - Jin/Tonic doesn't use any layout manager there, instead the position and appearance of components are controlled "manually" - you should see the code to understand. One more thing I'd like to change.

On the bright side other developer of free chess software have more time - there is a 5th beta release of pychess, completly refreshed eboard is out and author states he wants to release often. glChess is alive and kicking too. Good for them! I just wish I had more time.

Happy New Year to everyone!

I wish you all great chess games, interesting blunders ;) and much fun from playing chess. I hope Tonic will grow in feature richness, usability and be more and more popular :). I wish I had more time to develop it. By the way, do you know that new Jin is out? It seems Alexander has found the time to push new release. I hope to do so too in near future. I just need to find a good place in board window to put panel with available pieces for dropping :).

And good news for me is that my beloved wife... ekhem! I mean Santa Claus, brought me Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in Java" 3rd edition. Now I can enjoy reading about Java in my native language. I hope your gifts were nice as well!