Jack Herrington writes "For most companies, lightning never strikes. The promised miracle product fails, and the revolutionary dreams meet evolutionary reality. But for Apple, lightning struck twice: first with the Apple computer, which can be justifiably named the first personal computer, then with the Macintosh. Introduced with the groundbreaking 1984 commercial the Mac started the GUI revolution which brought millions of new users into the once inhospitable world of computing." Read on for Herrington's review of Revolution in the Valley.

scc writes "Get it here. Trolltech's press release gives the details, including the projected release date: late first quarter 2005. Qt is the cross-platform GUI framework at the heart of KDE. At the same time, Trolltech released under the GPL Qtopia 2.1, an implementation of their GUI framework for Linux-based PDAs."

McWizard asks: "We've recently had a code split at a project I'm leading. (No name given, as this is a question, not an advertisement campaign). While both projects have done some major design decisions in opposing directions, we've been keeping a close eye on the changelog of the spinoff for small changes that could be used. So, whenever we've found an interesting piece of code (mostly GUI stuff, nothing longer than 20 lines of code), we transferred it to our project and gave credit to the spinoff team in the changelog. What does Slashdot say on that matter? Is this unethical or are such things fair game?"

Amit Upadhyay writes "KDE's award winning integrated development environment KDevelop, has integrated support for Ruby, an excellent and easy to use object oriented scrpting language. If you are looking for a good programming tool for quickly developing a professional one off application, Ruby (with KDE bindings) maybe just the thing for you. There is a quick tutorial and an online book to get you started. You may also want to read a quite informative comparison of Python with Ruby. If you are web developer or write enterprise applications with JAVA etc, take a look at Ruby on Rails(api), they have a nice blog too. KDevelop provides a GUI builder and Debugger for rapid application development(RAD) with Ruby, which is getting better. There is a nice tutorial on using KDE libraries with Ruby. And if you have lots of code in C/C++, extending Ruby to use them is easy.
"

adymo writes "Yesterday I have started a series of KDevelop IDE related articles. I called them "KDevelop TechNotes" and I plan to publish all useful information about the IDE - tips and tricks, use cases, tutorials, etc. Everyone is welcome to share KDevelop knowledge by writing their own issues of technotes. I will be pleased to publish them on the project website www.kdevelop.org.
The first issue should be a matter of no little interest to all free software developers. Read on to learn more about KDevelop Assistant - an advanced API documentation viewer." A second issue is out, too, demonstrating a quick (two-minute) GUI app built with Qt.

sympleko (Matthew Leingang) writes with his review of Running Mac OS X Panther, by James Duncan Davidson. "The Macintosh has come a long way in twenty-plus years. Much has been said of Mac OS X being the perfect union of a rock-solid operating system with a beautiful and functional user interface. Since the iMac, Apple's market share has been steadily increasing, and since OS X, Unix users have been making the switch. My last computer was a dual-boot box that I kept finding excuses to keep from booting to Windows. My PowerBook is literally the best of both worlds. I can run the older unix-based apps I need to for work, and use Microsoft programs and play fancy games when I want. It's also essentially two different computers. This book is about using that second computer, the workhorse behind the scenes." Read on for the rest.

TuringTest writes "The webzine User Instinct carries an article on Usable GUI Design showing that good user interfaces are not beyond the means of free and open software development: 'This article presents five key points of user interface design [...] that any software developer should be able to use.' In related news, The Economist writes against software complexity in an interview to MIT's John Maeda, PhD in interface design. See also OpenUsability, a project for testing user interfaces in a bazaar-like model. The specifics of UI design in Open Source projects has been previously debated on Slashdot."

Robin "Roblimo" Miller is well-known in the open-source world for advocating cheap, user-friendly Linux computing and demonstrating that it's not only possible but available, right now. (He's also a writer and editor at NewsForge, and the editor in chief of OSTG, of which Slashdot is a part, and therefore one of my bosses; take that for what it's worth.) Roblimo's new book Point and Click Linux really consists of three things: the book itself, an included copy on CD of the Debian-based SimplyMepis Linux distribution, and a DVD featuring Roblimo's multi-part narrated video guide for getting started with Linux, Mepis and KDE. "Getting started" is key; this book is for the interested beginner, not the power user. Read on for the rest of my review.

sympleko (Matthew Leingang) writes "In Neal Stephenson's manifesto In the Beginning was the Command Line , he writes about his favorite command-line utility: wc. As simple as can be, wc counts characters, words, and lines in a file. There's no GUI analogue, perhaps because anybody tempted to make one would add too many "features" that cluttered its ease of use. Think: do you know how to count the words in a Word file? BBEdit is a little easier, if you know the button to click." Read on for Leingang's review of Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther, which seeks to reconcile the conception of user friendliness in OS X's Aqua with the sometimes-denigrated command line.

The drive to be an evil genius is an easily understandable one. Riches, power, eventual fame, and plenty of minions to order around are just some of the perks of the vocation. Vivendi's Evil Genius (flash required) gives you the opportunity to exercise your lust for worldly power in a seriously stylish way. A rich musical score, tons of polish, and enough dastardly deeds to keep even Dr. Claw happy are the game's high points. An overabundance of micromanagement and a lack of proper GUI interaction marrs what have could been a classic in the strategy genre. Read on for a more in-depth examination of the first real-time strategy game whose tag line could have been "Mwahahahahahahahaha!"

jg21 writes "This article on "Penguin-Driven" JVMs takes a look the performance of Java GUI applications based on the JFC/Swing API, and contends that the JIT-powered JVMs can't match a JVM with an ahead-of-time compiler ported to the Linux/x86 platform. With AOT compilation, says the CTO who has written this piece, real-world Swing applications performed perceivably faster. One is left wondering, will we now see the 'microbenchmark war' carried into the Linux camp?"

cgjherr (Jack Herrington) writes "The Cult of Mac, a new book by Leander Kahney, is a love letter to the Macintosh community. The book seeks to simultaneously define and evangelize the Apple cultural phenomenon. With 25 million users (in the author's estimation) there is a lot of culture to go around. The tattoos. The modified machines. The pilgrimage to MacWorld. The sub-cult of iPod. It's all here." Read on for the rest of Herrington's review.

museumpeace writes "Technology review (in exchange for a revealing cookie) has a short article describing a PDA browsing improvement from Microsoft/Asia research. The basic idea is to put the palm top user back in control of page layout by letting them zoom/shrink arbitrary regions of a page with a single stroke of their stylus. A more complete disclosure of the technique will be presented at Seventeenth Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2004), in Santa Fe, New Mexico on October 24 to 27."

He starts by clearing up my error in saying he was a Unix co-creator in the original Call For Questions. From there he goes on to answer your questions both completely and lucidly. A refreshing change from the politicians and executives we've talked to so much recently, no doubt about it.

hajokirchhoff writes "The first public release of The Lit Window Library (for C++) is now available at from LitWindow itself. The goal of The Lit Window Library is to speed up C++ GUI coding by a factor of 10. It greatly reduces the amount of work needed to code user interface requirements. This is not just another "better widgets" library. The library introduces two new, different concepts to UI coding: a data abstraction layer (reflections) and rule-based programming."

stuck in a bind asks: "I am currently coding a civilization-type game (in C) but on a galactic scale. OpenGL is used to draw everything so far. However I have been unable to find a decent, nice GUI, practically all of them are coded in C++. The only other options I can think of is coding my own toolkit (too much work, and I would hate to reinvent the wheel here), using SDL to draw 2D bitmaps on top of my OpenGL window. The last option would be to switch to GTK and use the GTK GL widget. What would the educated gamer/programmers of Slashdot recommend?"

norburym writes "W. Jason Gilmore and Apress have put together an impressive volume, both in girth and content, in Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL, From Novice to Professional. At first glance, it appears that any technical manual that tries to approach such heady stuff such as PHP and MySQL for an audience ranging the span from beginner to the uber-geek is headed for failure. Happily, I can report that Gilmore and Apress have given the world one book that will replace many other PHP and MySQL volumes. This is one that the reader will consistently rely on and keep near to hand." Read on for the rest of Norbury-Glaser's review.

cying writes "Today, Laszlo Systems released their entire rich internet applications platform (standards-based, zero-install, all-singing / all-dancing) under the CPL. Check out their cool Laszlo-powered web site and see some rockin' groovy demos. Also, read the press release, news, and blogs; download the goods; and join the community."

Today we return to our Slashdot interview roots with a "Call for questions" for Rob "Commander" Pike, who has been involved in the development of many modern programming concepts, GUI advances, character sets, and operating systems. We'll email 10 - 12 of the highest-moderated questions to Rob and post his answers as soon as he gets them back to us.

kwiens writes "We had such a positive response from Slashdot with our Free-As-In-Beer Mac disassembly instructions last time around, we decided to do it again: We've made six more FixIt Guides, perfect for those intrepid road-warriors who refuse to trust anyone else to work on their 'Book. Now there's nothing stopping you from trying that LNO2 overclock on your PowerBook-- or just a hard drive upgrade. The new Guides have professional photos, a new GUI design, and screw guides (no, not this). Guides are now available for all iBook G3, PowerBook G3, and PowerBook G4 models (including the oft-requested 12, 15, and 17 Aluminum 'Books)."