Lily is a browser-based, visual programming environment that lets people create programs graphically, without writing code, by drawing connections between data, images, sounds, text and graphics. Lily's cross-platform, free, open source and is written in JavaScript. Did we mention it's fun? Download it, check out the demos or read more about it.
I've added a new external object called "processing" to Lily today to take advantage of John Resig's wonderful new library Processing.js. Processing.js is a Canvas based implementation of the processing language in Javascript. Unlike my own port of the processing API, John's library includes a parser for near total compatibility with the language. Awesome.
I haven't had much time to play with it yet (John only released it last night), but it's been interesting to compare it with my own SVG based implementation. SVG, being DOM-based, seems to have a ceiling for the number of objects that can be included in an animation- once that ceiling is exceeded performance begins to suffer noticeably. John's Canvas-based version seems to handle much more complex animations without pinning the meter. There are also a couple of features in John's library that take advantage of the new Canvas functionality in Firefox 3. I'm really looking forward to spending more time playing it. Great work John!
You can download the latest Lily beta here - it includes the "processing" external.
Good news- it was announced earlier this month that Lily received a $500 grant from the Shiftspace Commission program to develop a project that integrates Lily with the metaweb application ShiftSpace. I'm a huge fan of Shiftspace so getting a grant to do this work is a very good thing.
As part of this project, I'll be making the necessary changes to enable Lily to run in the content window of the browser (as opposed to the chrome XUL window that Firefox addons run in). This is a first step on the long road to adding a "Save as webpage" option to Lily.
I'm happy to announce that the Lily source has finally landed in the public repository.
You can now check out the latest code anonymously with the command:
svn co http://svn.devjavu.com/lily/
(if you're unfamiliar with subversion version control, here's a
resource)
The development project homepage is here- http://lily.devjavu.com/. There's a Trac installation with integrated issue tracking, browsable source, timelines, etc. For now, I'll leave the current bugs open on bugzilla, but future bugs should be filed on Trac.
Just wanted to let everyone know that I've officially buried Lily public beta 1. Security changes in Firefox 2.0.0.13 killed it and since Firefox 3 is now just around the corner, its not worth the effort to resuscitate it.
The good news is that Lily public beta 2 is now ready for prime time. It's been tested thoroughly on Windows, Mac & Linux with Firefox 3 beta 5 and is feeling fast and solid. I will continue updating it as the Firefox 3 release cycle progresses and "officially" release it once Firefox 3 launches, probably sometime next month.
You can download Lily public beta 2 here and pick up the latest Firefox 3 beta here.
