"wxWidgets" archive
Friday 4 November
- Thou shalt not steal my focus (17:21) - One of the few remaining bugs in BitWise that classified as "thorn in our side" has, at long last, been squished. On Windows, new windows would steal focus for a split second and then drop into the background (unless the "steal focus" preference was enable, of course). This had all sorts of nasty side effects, including dumping people out of full-screen games, closing any open window menus, randomly stealing a keypress here and there, etc. After taking what must be...
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Saturday 29 October
- Are you allowed to gloat after being internationally published and translated? (10:37) - Co-writing the wxWidgets book was an amazing opportunity. I was lucky enough to find a followup opportunity by using my leverage as co-author of the book to write an article about wxWidgets that was accepted for publication in Software Developer's Journal. Even more amazing, the article was translated into Polish, German and French, and included in each country's corresponding version of the magazine. The original English article will be published in SDJ's electronic-only English magazine in November. If you live...
Monday 29 August
- And then there was one [BitWise download for Linux] (10:06) - Thanks to some recent improvements in wxWidgets, we will be able to release just one version of BitWise for Linux that will work on versions of GTK down to 2.0. This will make downloading BitWise for Linux much simpler, since you won't have to choose a download based on your GTK version. The "all-in-one" BitWise will be compiled against GTK 2.6.10, and will be moved to 2.8 in a future release. The upcoming BitWise 1.0.6 Beta 2 will be the...
Saturday 13 August
- San Francisco is a lot like fun and success (19:28) - Sorry, I couldn't resist wrapping up with a last San Francisco is a lot like thread now that I'm safely back in Ohio. It was great to be away but it is also nice to be back! The LinuxWorld presentations were definitely a success, and I'm glad I went because I got to meet many of the people involved with the book on the publisher's side as well as interact with many interesting people. I was encouraged by the number...
Wednesday 10 August
- LinuxWorld Brief Update (22:43) - Today was the second day of LinuxWorld, and was the first day of my presentations. I actually got to go twice, presenting over the lunch hour at 12:30 when no one else was scheduled. May as well make the best of it, right? The talks have gone very well, and I have been very happy to sell and autograph quite a few copies. Perhaps one of the most interesting coincidences was the Kirix Strata booth being next to the Prentice-Hall...
Thursday 28 July
- Wow, the book really exists! (19:56) - After many months of work, I finally have a physical copy of the wxWidgets book in my hands. Coupled with a great jog on a beautiful morning (weather in the 70s instead of the 90s like it has been the last 2 weeks), today has been one of the most uplifting days I've had in a while. Hopefully copies of the book will begin flowing through retail channels shortly. It's very exciting (but a bit nerve-wracking) waiting to hear what...
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Thursday 21 July
- Book delay & Presentation title (19:28) - Here's something a bit more on-topic for today after my previous post. There was a delay with the printing of the wxWidgets book, so the release date of the book has slipped to Wednesday, July 27th. :( I have begun working on my presentation for the LinuxWorld Expo. The title is: "Dispelling cross-platform software development myths." The bulk of the presentation gives the advantages of wxWidgets by showing how wxWidgets is unlike the common cross-platform development myths. For example: one...
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Tuesday 19 July
- Sneak peek of the wxWidgets book (17:57) - Head on over to the O'Reilly Network Safari Bookshelf and you can see some excerpts from the wxWidgets book. I especially like Appendix F. Too bad the screenshot doesn't have the new icons. Grr. The publisher's web site now lists tomorrow, July 20, as the publication date, so I think that means we should be seeing the book in stores and available online very soon!...
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Saturday 2 July
- Books, not a DOS attack (10:24) - Well, here it is, another year older and another year wiser. Last year, someone out there must have thought I wanted a DOS attack for my birthday (remember this?). Fortunately, this year, someone figured out that I would much rather have a book published. With an upgrade like that, what's due for next year? A private jet? :) Here's the final scoop on the availability of Cross-Platform GUI Programming with wxWidgets. The book is scheduled to be delivered to the...
Saturday 25 June
- wxWidgets on Intel Macs (09:48) - While the news about Apple switching to Intel chips next year is pretty stale now, we have received some inquiries about BitWise support on Intel-based Macs. We don't anticipate any problems, using either the G3 emulation or the new fat binaries. Without any changes, BitWise should run as-is on Intel Macs using the G3 emulation mode. I don't have access to one of the test machines, and we probably won't be purchasing preliminary hardware, but given the reports of success...
Thursday 16 June
- Presenting at LinuxWorld in San Francisco (10:18) - Over a week ago I posted that I will be presenting at LinuxWorld in the Prentice Hall booth to talk about wxWidgets and the wxWidgets book. I will be giving my presentation twice during the Expo:Wednesday, August 10th at 4:30 p.m.Thursday, August 11th at 11:30 a.m. Registration for the Expo is free if done in advance. You can register online. I invite anyone to come and see the presentation and to visit before or after the presentations. Or, let me...
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Sunday 5 June
- The book and LinuxWorld (14:42) - As originally slated months ago, the book is on schedule to go to the printer this week. A recent message from Julian implied a release date of July 8th, but I don't think it's final or confirmed. You will see that I have added a link to the book at Amazon.com in left sidebar; if you are purchasing the book, I would kindly ask that you purchase it through this link as it will keep a small portion of the...
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Thursday 19 May
- Connect with the originals, it does (22:53) - There are no spoilers in this post. Unless you either live under a rock or have pretty much no interest in any pop culture, you probably are aware that the final Star Wars movie was released today. Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith lives up to the original trilogy much better than Episodes 1 or 2. I had been looking forward to its release for months and this afternoon I saw it. The acting is better, the pacing is better,...
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Monday 21 March
- Get the book sometime after June 10th (22:00) - We have received a fairly detailed schedule for proofreading the wxWidgets book, and the final copy is currently slated to go to the printer on June 10th. I can only assume that availability will follow shortly thereafter. I'll post again if/when I know substantially more about when exactly it will be available. Work on the new web site continues, and hopefully this week we can open it to wider audiences for feedback and testing....
Wednesday 9 March
- Will you be my moo? (21:23) - You know it's a good day when you ask someone, "Will you be my moo?" The best part is I don't know what it means, I just thought it sounded funny. Plus I really need to start living up the craziness of the aoeu message from last week... :0 Potpourri this evening: - The wxWidgets book manuscript has finally been submitted after a series of extensions (remember it was originally due March 1st). We also have received a first draft...
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Monday 21 February
- "Cross-platform GUI Programming with wxWidgets" coming to a store near you (22:15) - The manuscript for the wxWidgets book is due March 1st, and we (OK, Julian mostly) are calmly scrambling to get everything in order. New material is still being added in small doses, and we're getting some great feedback from the other wxWidgets developers who volunteered their time to read through it. Some other new information for you: The book is being published in the Bruce Perens' Open Source Series, which has its own web site: http://www.phptr.com/perens The official title is...
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Saturday 12 February
- Inverted sliders will make me famous yet, darn it! (22:59) - On January 24th, I posted about the slider widget and the concept of inversion; rather than the slider having the maximum value at the bottom, having the maximum value be at the top. The short recap is that someone submitted a patch for wxWidgets to add inversion, the patch pretty much sucked, and because I needed inversion for BitWise on OS X, I went ahead and worked on the inversion. On Thursday, I finally added inversion for the Windows version,...
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Monday 24 January
- More joyous platform differences (18:56) - As I've mentioned a few times recently, the file transfer manager in the next version has a slider that allows you to control the bandwidth used by file transfers. It's a vertical slider that sits on the right side of the manager, with "fast" at the top and "slow" at the bottom, which is fairly intuitive. Imagine my surprise when I realized that vertical sliders on OS X orient themselves with the low value at the opposite end of the...
Monday 27 December
- Update on the wxWidgets book (22:43) - On October 8th, I announced my participation in the first-ever wxWidgets book, being chiefly authored by Julian Smart, creator of wxWidgets. I haven't really said much about it since then, so I thought I'd briefly write about it again. It could have something to do with my using this week between the holidays to wrap up my chapters with finish touches and a last round of significant revisions. :) I have all of my four chapters written (sockets, data structures,...
Sunday 7 November
- Fixing BitWise by fixing wxWidgets (22:53) - About 7 weeks ago, I posted that I had been "wxPromoted" and had the capability to track and close wxWidgets bugs and patches. It wasn't too much longer before that led to additional rights, and for the past month or so I've been a "wxWidgets developer" with the ability to commit changes that I make to wxWidgets back to the library itself. This certainly is not only a great honor but a great responsibility. I thought I would share how...
Friday 8 October
- Kevin Hock, author (23:02) - I have some very exciting news to announce: I have recently joined Julian Smart, original founder of the wxWidgets C++ GUI framework, as a co-author of the new wxWidgets book to be released next year by Prentice Hall. I will be contributing chapters on sockets, data structures, installing wxWidgets and creating cross-platform projects. It is an honor to contribute to this book alongside Julian and other core wxWidgets developers. This truly is an amazing opportunity for me as a developer...
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Monday 13 September
- I've been wxPromoted! (23:05) - Some of you know that BitWise uses the wxWidgets library to work some its cross-platform magic on Windows, Linux and OS X. We first started using wxWidgets for BitWise when BitWise was rewritten (that major effort began May 2003 and ended March 2004). One of the advantages of using an open-source collaborative library like wxWidgets is that when you find a small bug that affects you, you can take the initiative to fix it yourself, and then submit a patch...
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