I have been very quiet for the last few weeks. So, I decided to break radio silence and let you in on what I’m actually working on. I’m currently working on creating my own Captivate Widget API that will be called CpGears. As you read this, I’m sure that one question will come to mind: “Why are you doing this? Tristan already created his very good WidgetFactory API” Well, that’s true; Tristan did an amazing job with his API but I want to do mine for specific reasons:
- Personal challenge and accomplishment
- Tristan wants his API to be accessible to developers of every caliber while I want mine targetted to more advanced users.
- Having more than one option is always a good thing. Just take a look at all the similar AS3 libraries out there.
I’m almost done with the Static widget and I will soon start working on the other two types: Interactive and Question. Some of the things that I’m adding with my API are:
- A logger interface so you can log and trace messages from your widgets.
- A different way for handling the widget flow/lifecycle.
- A more object oriented approach to accessing the widget data. I don’t like the CpMovieHandle, CpSlideHandle, CpSlideProperties and other native widget classes. So, I offer a more structured interface for accessing that data.
The API will be developed under a MIT Open Source License and be hosted on Google Code. In order to make sure that I don’t directly compete with Tristan and his API, I will make mine only Cp5 compatible so people that want to develop widgets for both the Cp4 and Cp5 plateforms will still have to rely on Widget Factory. By the way, Tristan is aware of this and we have discussed that a few months ago.
So, come back and visit us in 2 or 3 weeks. I’m actually advancing at a turtle pace since I don’t have that much free time on my hands.
Subscribe to the feed
October 4th, 2010 at 05:56
Need a Beta tester????
October 4th, 2010 at 06:21
@Fran,
Sure! But like I said, it can be a few days/weeks before I get something “usable”. I will make sure you are notified when I move it to Google Code.
October 4th, 2010 at 09:19
Cool Wyves,
Looking forward to seeing it!
October 4th, 2010 at 14:33
Looking forward to this in a big way! I’d be happy to test as well and re-write some of my widgets on your platform. Awesome!
October 5th, 2010 at 05:55
Thanks guys!
Will let you know as soon as I can. Maybe it will be earier than I thought … I feel some positive pressure
October 13th, 2010 at 16:06
Just saw this post Whyves and it is very interesting indeed. I’ll be more than happy to help you test the API when you are ready ;o)
/Michael
October 14th, 2010 at 22:34
Glad about this Whyves! Burn those candles. =)
October 21st, 2010 at 20:04
Im greatly anticipating this release.. I noticed talk of logging system and trace messages section have you tried De Monster Debugger its an air app that ive found very usfull in my developments. It even traces when inside an LMS
October 21st, 2010 at 20:22
of course you have you created it lol
October 22nd, 2010 at 05:51
Hi jjl,
Thanks but I did not created the De Monster Debugger. I merely created a widget that uses it
Yves
November 11th, 2010 at 06:19
[...] still spending some time to develop CpGears and as such I decided to develop a small widget that will allow me to test its StaticWidget [...]
November 25th, 2010 at 05:59
[...] widgets such at his amazing Web Page Widget. Well, Jim has kindly offered to give some time to CpGears as a developer. He’s currently working on making many Captivate properties directly [...]
November 25th, 2010 at 06:18
[...] collaboration on the same topic. I am currently working on providing a Question Widget template in CpGears. I found out that the best way to test these templates are by creating a widget that will use it. [...]
November 28th, 2010 at 23:33
[...] few days ago, I blogged about starting the creation of the Question Widget base classes in CpGears. In order to properly test these classes, I took the habit of creating a widget of the same type. [...]