Animation, Filthy-Rich Clients, and the Rebirth of Java Swing

As my follow-up act to JFugue, which brings easy music programming to the masses, I had already started work on another API that would allow for easy animation programming. Sprites and animated graphics are not trivial; like JFugue, my new animation API would make animation possible in only a few lines.

However, it’s possible that my animation API has been made redundant by some things I’ve seen recently on the JDesktop and SwingLabs sites. Specifically, Chet Haase has been working on a timing framework that makes animation (and other time-based control) easier. I’m pleased that Chet and I had very similar architectures for our timing mechanisms (including the use of interpolators). I might as well use his, since it’s already out there!

Switching gears ever so slightly, Romain Guy is one of the people behind Aerith, a very cool “smashup” (Swing mashup) of Google Maps, Flickr, and Yahoo’s geoocoding webservice. The UI is incredibly pretty, and it’s easy-to-create Web 2.0-ish client apps like this that will result in a resurged interest and appreciation for Swing.

Chet and Romain are working on a book, Filthy-Rich Clients (here’s a related presentation), about these super-pretty user interfaces that use motion and animation to produce a more engaging user experience. Their book will be released in time for JavaOne – I am very much looking forward to getting my own copy!

Finally, I can’t mention all of that without also mentioning that Joshua Marinacci, also one of the Aerith guys, has been working on Painters, which are encapsulate bits of graphic code. Painters were used to do some of the neat Aerith effects.

So, what does this mean for my animation API? Well, it seems that there’s still no good sprite/graphic animation API out there. I think I’ll continue my development, but I’ll leverage Chet’s timing framework. And depending on how much time I have, you might get a sneak peak of my new API in action during my JavaOne technical session!

Just saw the One Laptop Per Child prototype

I just had a personal demonstration of One Laptop Per Child, thanks to my friend SJ [blog]. I am incredibly impressed – I have no doubt that this is going to revolutionize learning and knowledge across the world. Many other patrons at Z Square looked over our shoulders and asked about the perfectly-sized device.

This machine is amazing – and it has a bunch of features. I’ve taken the liberty of borrowing the image below from the OLPC Wikipedia entry – please note that the image is shared under a Creative Commons ShareAlike license. Just look at everything they’ve packed into the little wonder! The real amazing thing will be when this gets distributed to children in countries that don’t have strong libraries, educational facilities, and so on. Kids can take this, sit under a tree, and read any book they have on their computer, or peek at the workings of the programs on the system, or create ad-hoc networks with each other and share pictures and videos… the possibilities are really limitless.