Poster: MarkChristensen.pdf

Rough Draft

Mitch's Portion

Who We Need
-----------

• Programmers: Individuals with a lot of Java and Object Oriented coding
  experience are a strong plus.
• Designers: Knowledge of Human Computer Interaction, interface design, as well
  graphic designers are all greatly needed to help further develop
  Fluency.
• Testers: Fluency is still a beta work in progress, thus anyone who can
  run Fluency and help find bugs or usability issues will be greatly
  appreciated.

How to Get Involved
-------------------

• Visit and signup on the Fluency Wiki @ http://fluency.knownspace.org.
• Run the latest version of Fluency via Java Web Start, available on the wiki.

Fluency Features
----------------

• Widgets: These are the components that make up a Fluency application, both
  visual and non-visual. Widgets are able to perform various
  tasks, such as reading and saving to a file, or displaying text
  in scrollable text area. Widgets are created by Fluency
  programmers, whereas Fluency authors know how to use the widgets
  to build their desired application without writing any code.
• Connections: Widgets must be able to communicate information to one another
  when certain events are triggered. For instance, a connection
  between a Button widget and a File Reader widget might be
  established so that when the Button is clicked, the contents of
  a file are read and then displayed to the user via another
  connection to a Text Area widget.
• Standalone Applications: Fluency authors may export their application as a
  standalone application so that any user may simply
  double click an icon and run the program without
  any editor necessary.

Dennis's Portion

Current Editor Features

• Cut/Copy/Paste
• Undo/Redo
• Saving/Loading
• Exporting applications to runnable JARs
• Ability to take snapshots of applications throughout their development.
• Plugin Framework for easily created and managed, fully encapsulated functions that extend the usefulness of the editor.
• Current Plugins:
  • Default Plugin that provides tools for widget layout, text, color and connection editing.
  • Connection Paths for managing complex applications and complex sets of connections.
  • A listbox linkage view of the connections that is kept in sync with the normal linkage view through virtue of the way plugins work. Provides an alternate view of the connection graph.
  • Widget Finder for looking for and using large numbers of Widgets.
  • Side Dock for moving Widgets out of the way, but still having them available for interaction.
  • Gesture recognition for common commands such as switching between visual and non-visual layers.
  • In-editor runnable engine for testing applications while building them.

Screenshots of AIM Client

Notes:

• There is an attached zip of all these screenshots for convenience. Just go to attachments and you should be able to download it.
• There is a transparent and an opaque version both for some of the "complete" steps. The transparent version sometimes shows off the links better.