This last week saw two big JavaScript projects debut with releases and live code. John Resig has released Processing.js and Richard Herrera has introduced the Flow library.
Processing.js
Unless you’ve been living off the grid you’ve probably seen some mention of John Resig’s ‘big and pretty’ project, Processing.js. He’s gone and done it again, this time with a port of the Processing visualization language to the web via JavaScript and the canvas element. If that means nothing to you visit the site and check out some of the pretty demos.
Is this the beginning of the end of Flash? I’m not gonna go anywhere near that one, but Chris Blizzard has point out a few ways the open web has embraced the code in just a few days.
Flow
Richard Herrera, who I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the last year, has completed and released his JavaScript library — Flow. Sure, you say that the JavaScript library space is already crowded, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for another tool in your arsenal.
Richard has aimed to create a small, lean, code base for cross browser implementation of standard DOM features and the ability to customize the library by picking and choosing the additional features you’d like.
Flow is already in use at the new South Park Studios, and you can see examples and docs and grab the code from its project site.
Spring is here and I’m well on my way to filling my quota of pretty pictures of flowers.
For digital photographers, particularly people shooting any sort of volume of RAW files you may find you need a better workflow for ‘development’ and organization of the photographs then simply storing the files on your file system and then opening a few at a time in Adobe Photoshop. Into that gap has come a few new applications including Apple’s Aperture. More recently, Adobe has finished work on its Lightroom application and moved it from a long public period to an official 1.0 release.
With that release two professional photographers and bloggers, Micah Walter and Michael Clark, have committed their time and expertise to putting both Aperture and Lightroom through the paces on a typical week or so of shooting and editing.
Both photographers have started posting their day to day thoughts after working with he applications, and the articles are both interesting and informative. Versions and Stacking, for example. Contrast that with posts like Aperture in Somalia, may be a little light on the details that feed your curiosity about the applications they are rich in story and images.
My own application of choice since the first time I used a beta has been Adobe Lightroom, but I have been planning on looking at both Aperture and Nikons own Capture NX before pulling the trigger on the 1.0 license.
