Bits and bytes on developing rich desktop applications and deciphering bird languages from Twitter

1. Story of A Thousand Birds Bits and bytes on developing rich desktop applications and deciphering bird languages from Twitter @cheeaun #geekcamp 30.5.2009

2. Why a “story”? Noun (pl. stories) 1 an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment. 2 an account of past events, experiences, etc.

3. Why a “thousand birds”? Photo from: http://flic.kr/p/5CDQEL

4. So, what is “Rich Desktop Application”? Something sexy.

5. Adobe AIR http://www.adobe.com/products/air/ Appcelerator Titanium http://titaniumapp.com/

7. To learn Adobe AIR, I’ve tried to create a Tumblr desktop client. … and it went into flames. In case you don’t know what is Tumblr, go to http://tumblr.com/

8. Because I hit a road block with WYSIWYG editors. That’s when another story chips in.

9. MooEditable http://cheeaun.github.com/mooeditable/

10. I lost interest in developing the app, and no more AIR for me. Things gotten quiet as I focus on other stuff.

11. Oh well, at least, I did something and created Fx.WindowBounds A MooTools class for animating AIR windows. http://code.google.com/p/fx-windowbounds/ which is now outdated and preceded by @kassens ’s MooTools Fire http://github.com/kassens/fire

12. One day, I found Titanium. Photo from: http://flic.kr/p/5rcxS7

14. Yahoo Sideline port uses ¼ memory of AIR app http://www.slideshare.net/jhaynie/desktop-applications-using-html-and-javascript

15. Titanium Developer

18. Don’t worry. Beta is coming on June 9 th 2009. http://www.appcelerant.com/titanium-beta-launch-party-wwdc-june-9th-6-9pm.html

19. Now, let’s talk about WebKit. It’s everywhere. AIR. Titanium. Safari. Chrome. Adium. Palm Web OS. Even your backyard.

21. This is cool, but something’s missing. I’ve already started enjoying some of these CSS3 goodness when developing Firefox theme(s) – Gecko rendering engine.

23. To learn Titanium, I try to create a Twitter desktop client. Photo from: http://flic.kr/p/66zSwM

24. Oh wait, before that, there’s this Twitter clone... Another abandoned project of mine, sadly speaking.

25. Twig http://twig.appspot.com/ Open-sourced http://twig.googlecode.com/

26. It was fun. And now, back to the Twitter client. Google App Engine rocks, by the way.

27. Introducing Chidori. Photo from Naruto animation episodes, basically found from Google Image Search.

28. Chidori on Windows Vista and Mac OSX (The app is still alpha at this point and the UI might change)

29. Stay tuned. Follow @chidoriapp or watch http://github.com/cheeaun/chidori for updates.

30. Thank you. Hope you enjoy the story.