[h3ll0 w0r!d]

Mono Accessibility 2.0 unleashed!

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:37:09 +0000

Today, I'm proud to announce the 2.0 release of the Mono Accessibility project. Spanning a year of intensive work and fixing over 500 bugs, this is truly our best release ever.

This release enables all types of users to access System.Windows.Forms and Silverlight applications from Linux using Orca and other ATK-based Assistive Technologies (ATs), as well as access Linux applications from UI Automation (UIA) based ATs.

What's changed since version 1.0?

Added:

UI Automation provider support for Moonlight
UI Automation to ATK bridge for Moonlight to allow Moonlight applications to be accessed by Linux ATs
Complete implementation of the UI Automation Client API, facilitating access to System.Windows.Forms, ATK-based applications and Silverlight controls for UI Automation Clients.

What is Mono Accessibility:

The Mono Accessibility project enables Winforms and Silverlight applications to be fully accessible on Linux, and allows Assistive Technologies (ATs) like screen readers and test automation tools that depend on UI Automation APIs to work on Linux.

Mono Accessibility is released under the MIT/X11 license.

Get it!

Mono Accessibility is available for a variety of Linux distributions, including:

openSUSE 11.2 - 1-Click Install
Ubuntu Karmic Koala - Package Archive on Launchpad
Fedora 12 - Repository on openSUSE Build Service
Other distributions - Source tarballs

A Note About at-spi2

Accessing GTK+ applications with the UIA Client API requires the most recent development version of the new dbus-based at-spi2, which is known to cause system instability.

In Fedora, at-spi2 repeatedly causes GDM to segfault. If you do not need this feature, do not install the latest at-spi2 and atk, or our packages which depend on them, which are at-spi-sharp and AtspiUiaSource.

We are working hard to identify these issues and hope to aid the GNOME Accessibility Team in stabilizing at-spi2 in the near future.

Find out more

Navigate to our homepage for all the latest information, and ways to contact us.

Reports of Snowy's death have been greatly exaggerated

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:25:47 +0000

Browsing foundation-list recently, I was honored to see Snowy (and Tomboy Online) hosting mentioned as one of the GNOME CEO goals (scroll to the bottom) for 2010! Unfortunately, the pace of Snowy's development has slowed in the last few months, due in part to both Sandy and my schedules. Despite that, we wouldn't want Stormy to get a bad reputation because of our slacking, so we're going to change that.

We're hosting an IRC meeting in the #snowy channel on irc.gimp.net on Saturday, 23 Jan 2010 at 11:00 AM EDT (16:00 GMT, other time zones) to get ourselves organized, and to recruit your help.

So, if you are a graphic designer that wants to help beautify an awesome open source project, if you're a hacker who knows or wants to learn Django, or even if you're just interested in Snowy, stop on by!

See you there!

Snowy Hackfest

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:12:00 +0000

As part of Novell's Hack Week starting today, a few of us will be hanging out on #snowy working on new features and polish, so if you'd like to join in on the fun, drop on by. Also, if you want to contribute, now is the perfect time to get help or for us to review your work!

The Adventures of Snowy

Wed, 27 May 2009 11:11:58 +0000

Snowy via Wikipedia

Ever since Alex let Tomboy see the light of day, I've been aching for some way to sync the catalog of musings and information that I've accumulated between the various computers I interact with on a daily basis. In particular, I've been complaining about this to various friends (especially Sandy) for years and, aside from boring them nearly to tears, I haven't done anything about it.

Unlike many ideas that I kick around in my head, this one wouldn't give up the ghost. When Sandy was in town recently for work, we turned whining into action and started scheming and hacking on a way for Tomboy notes to be synced and viewed on the web. We call this project Snowy.

What is Snowy?

Snowy is Tomboy's best friend on the web. Snowy is an online service that allows you to view, edit and share the notes you create in Tomboy on your desktop computer.

Snowy leverages Django, a powerful (and pony powered) python-based web framework, and is based upon several powerful Django applications, among them: django-reversion, django-evolution and django-piston. This has allowed us to get a rough structure up in an incredibly short time (you can look at the commit logs for yourself!), and leveraging proven, scalable components like we have will hopefully allow us to continue at this breakneck pace.

Tomboy synchronizes with Snowy using the new Tomboy Web Sync Service Add-in developed by Sandy. We've defined a solid REST API to allow Snowy and Tomboy to communicate, and also to allow other folks to develop their own apps based upon the same kick-ass synchronization add-in.

Much like Tomboy, Snowy attempts the same innovative design ideas by starting you off in editing mode with an unobtrusive contentEditable-based WYSIWYG editor. Hate save buttons? No problem. Snowy will auto-save your note every 4 seconds so you don't lose a word.

Everyone has a smart phone nowadays, so Snowy will feature an interface tailored to the iPhone and Android style of devices. This will likely be read-only as neither browser allows contentEditable divs.

And, in addition to allowing you to host your own instance of Snowy if you're so interested, we plan on hosting Snowy as a service called Tomboy Online.

Caveat Emptor

Unfortunately for those of you who want to use this yesterday, much of what I've mentioned is still in progress. Snowy is currently under heavy development, and is not ready for production use. Like any good K9 companion, Snowy will file your taxes improperly, reconcile with your ex-girlfriends and burn risotto if not watched carefully.

If you want to teach Snowy some new tricks, we could use the help. Django experts and designers are especially welcome, but folks who want to provide input, test, document or translate Snowy are warmly invited.

Getting it

Snowy's code is hosted on GNOME Git. Please check out our handy INSTALL guide to get started.

Getting in Touch

We're just now setting up much of the infrastructure for Snowy, so you'll need to bear with us. For right now, Sandy and I hang out in #snowy on irc.gimp.net, and I can be reached via email at brad (at) getcoded.net.

Ed: Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get reCAPTCHA up this evening so that I could open up comments to anyone. I'll try to do this for future posts though. If you have feedback, please shoot me an email or join #snowy.

Announcing Mono Accessibility 0.9

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 16:26:07 +0000

Oneth by land, twoeth by iPhone?

Wow, these past 3 months have gone by at a lightning quick pace. I've now fully adjusted to the weather, calling 40 F degree temps "warm", and my daily walk over the wonderful Charles river. All in all, I'm truly enjoying my time here, but of course, I'm missing all my good friends in California.

Just around 15 weeks in to my new position, and our team has already made some significant progress. I'm happy to announce that we're introducing the first developer release of the Mono Accessibility project to the world.

For those who don't know, the Mono Accessibility project aims to enable Windows applications to be fully accessible on Linux. This is accomplished through two efforts -- First, implement the managed UI Automation framework targeted toward Mono's System.Windows.Forms project and second, implement a bridge between our UI Automation implementation and ATK.

We're calling this first release "Zoidberg" after the quirky lobster-like doctor on Futurama, and it encompasses a significant portion of the UI Automation API. If you want to know exactly what controls are supported, or to download out our release, check out our Release Notes page.

Now, I want to add specific emphasis to the fact that this is a Developer release, and hasn't yet gone through significant QA, but we'd like interested parties to check it out and file any bugs they might find.

If you're running OpenSUSE 11, you can easily download the Mono Accessibility project via our handy 1-click:

A New Chapter

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:54:28 +0000

Two weeks ago, bid a fond farewell to my friends and collegues at Medsphere.

I've been working at "the M" over the last 3+ years, and it's hard to sum up my experiences without seeming trite, but the folks I've met there include some of the best people I've ever worked with. They are a bright, commited and dilligent bunch that have kept the dream of a fully open healthcare solution not only alive but flourishing. A special thanks to the people who have helped to make OpenVista CIS the killer app that it is today, and especially thank you to Ben, Jon, Pete, Cesar, Cody, Albert and Anthony for their tireless dedication and unflinching humor.

After a nice week of contemplation and organization, I've started work with Novell as the Technical Lead of the Mono Accessibility project. Also with this new job comes a new locale -- I will be relocating as of September 1st to Boston, MA. This will not only be a huge weather change, but a massive culture change, as I am selling my car, and planning to walk and take the T everywhere.

I'm definitely going to miss my friends at Medsphere, and especially miss Southern California, but I've been here for 6 years, and it's high time I try something different for a change.

If you're in Boston, and would like to hang out come September 1, shoot me an email. I'll bring the beer.

Recent Revelations

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 02:25:07 +0000

I've had two very curious 'revelations' recently:
(I'm using this term because I'm actually quite taken aback by this new knowledge. Not quite in the biblical sense, but whatever.)

Fireflies

I visited the always affable and accomodating Aaron B in the Garden State this last week, and while crusing along in his sporty, rented, Korean-piece-of-shit, a smallish insect wafted into my open window at a stop sign. At first, I figured it was a strange sort of a fly, or perhaps a little, shrunken Rick Moranis, but all of a sudden, it started to glow.

And here I was -- 23 years of age with a degree and a car payment -- captivated by the sight of this little insect shining it's light in search of its own personal Kristen Bell. I was completely mesmerized by how this little guy did his little thing, that I started to almost think that his insect booty was somehow infused with magic fairy dust comprised of unicorn tears and butterfly kisses. Shortly after, my higher level reasoning kicked in (it takes a little bit to warm up), and all I could say is "biology is cool" between giggling uncontrollably and snorting like the uber-nerd that I am.

Ambling up Aaron's gravel alleyway in Highland Park in our 4-banger, the narrow corridor opened up to a field of these little buggers, all pulsing their glowsticks like some kind of miniature lightswitch rave. Unfortunately, by the time I realized I should take a photo, they had already packed up their DJ booth, and they never returned during my trip.

Smoothies

For those of you out there that don't know, I'm hooked on smoothies. -- specifically, California-style smoothies where real fruit is used instead of gobs and gobs of ice cream. And I've become especially dependent on them since I started the auspiciously named Abs Diet. So to save a bit of green, I've been making smoothies myself and using them for my 6th meal after Dinner and for weekend snacks.

Using the Scientific Method, I've perfected my smoothie recipe so that it includes loads of Whey Protein, dairy, fruit and berry goodness.

Blueberry Dream

1 - 1 ½ cup ice
1 cup Milk (I prefer 1%)
2 tbsp Whey Powder
½ cup Yogurt
1 banana
½ cup Frozen Blueberries

Really freaking simple, but very tasty. And 3 power foods too!

Anyway, the actual revelation wasn't the smoothie, but the fact that instead of using the pitcher that came with your blender (and having to wash it, and the glass that you drink it out of, constantly), the same base, blade and seal will screw right into a mason jar!

Now, you have one (or several, they're cheap!) container that you can blend in, drink out of and store in. How awesome is that. And they're dishwasher safe.

N.B.: I know this is such a non-event, but it's cool to me, so get over it

Medsphere.Widgets still rockin!

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:31:06 +0000

OpenVista CIS

The team at Medsphere has been busy making huge strides in open source healthcare with the OpenVista CIS Beta ramping up at Century City Doctors Hospital, preparing for CIS's GA release, and beginning a few exciting projects for the future.

We also pushed out the 1.0 Beta release of CIS to the open source world with a new license -- the Affero GPL v3.0. We think this is pretty cool, as it drops the Medsphere Systems Public License (MSPL) in favor of a better GPL-compatible license that is more usable by the community, and also closes the Application Service Provider (ASP) loophole.

Medsphere.Widgets 0.2.1

But, that's not all we've been up to. Today, we're putting out a new release of the still-rocking-your-socks-off Medsphere.Widgets. The 0.2.1 release brings a few bug fixes that were discovered during our beta process.

For those who don't remember Medsphere.Widgets -- our LGPL v2.0 or greater licensed, cross-platform Gtk# widgets, here are the widgets:

CPaned

FBox

GridView

Graph

IconLayout

Run, don't walk, to download the latest release today!

Announcing OpenVista CIS v0.9

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 18:59:35 +0000

This weekend, the development team at Medsphere (Pete, Anthony, Cesar, Cody, Jon, Bailey, Thomas and Ben) have the distinct pleasure of releasing OpenVista Clinical Information System (CIS) to the public under a modified version of the MPL called the MSPL.

This release represents about 100k lines of C# code developed over the last 3 years that is fully internationalized (partial translations are available in pt_BR and es_AR), and fully cross-platform, utilizing the Mono runtime on Linux and the .NET Runtime on Windows.

I've personally spent the last 2 years working on this project and it's wonderful to finally fulfill Steve and Scott Shreeve's dream of having a fully open-source Electronic Health Record for hospitals available to the public. Many of you may be familiar with the court case involving the Shreeves, and while I don't find it necessary to throw my personal opinion into the fray, I hope that this release will help put all this behind us.

While many of my compatriots may opt to discuss the technology behind OpenVista CIS, I'll instead highlight the parts that truly interest me -- the eye candy!

Over the past year, I have worked very closely with acclaimed Swedish icon designer Andreas Nilsson, to create a consistent set of icons to represent the various functions in the GUI. We chose the Tango/gnome-icon-theme style because the Tango look and feel was designed to blend in well on Windows, KDE , Mac OS X and of course, GNOME desktops. From jimmac's Tango post:

As for the style itself, we wanted something that's not a strong and unique look. We incorporated elements of Windows XP, Mac OS X, KDE and GNOME style into the mix. The Firefox themes were a great influence. The goal was not to create an average theme, but something that wouldn't look completely out of place on the mentioned desktop systems.

Here is a taste of what he was able to come up with:

And an added bonus, all these icons are licensed under the GPL.

Over the next couple of weeks, I'll spend some time (in theory) highlighting other parts of the OpenVista CIS interface, and the difficulties we faced in developing it.

True Beauty.

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 08:08:06 +0000

Forget mirrors -- we need this installed in bathrooms across America.