The developerrs of Tor which is supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) - is launching a competition to create a graphical front end.

The idea is that people will be able to install and configure Tor easily without necessarily having to be software wizards.

Tor currently helps to create anonymous identities when using IRC, browsers, instant messaging and the like.

The first phase of the competition is for entrants to produce mockups of good interfaces. The second phase is providing working implementations. Entries are invited for both.

The EFF said the winning entries will be open source, show good graphic design, and have a simple interface. Everyone who enters gets a free t-shirt.

More details on the project….

Tor starts anonymous GUI competition

A slashdot reader writes: “KDE continues to grow. Early screenshots, mockups, and developer blogs show that the new Plasma Project (KDE 4.x branch) will bring innovative approaches to desktop computing. On the other hand, the very first screenshots of SimpleKDE, an unofficial fork of KDE, were meant to be a response to those who criticise KDE as being overbloated.”

* Slashdot | KDE’s future: Plasma & SimpleKDE

Michael Urban wrote “One of the biggest frustrations with GUI design in Java is struggling with layout managers to get complex forms to look good. However, that will all soon be a thing of the past. ”

“…Think he is using absolute positioning? He’s not. That’s a new feature called Matisse. What is so magic about it? Matisse lets you design your form as if you were using absolute positioning. You simply drag your components to where you want them and set them to the size you want by dragging. NetBeans takes care of figuring out what layout managers are needed, and of writing all of the code for you to make your form look the way you design it using ‘Drag, drop, and stretch’…”

See example Flash demo and get more info on the Matisse GUI Designer at Javalobby at the link below.

* Coming Soon: Magic in NetBeans Form Designer. | Javalobby.org

Also see:
* Project Matisse is coming! | Netbeans.org

Introducing Calendula - “The Astounding DHTML Calendar Component” to the public, created back in 1999, I thought it was about time this piece of code to be released as Open Source. If you are new to JavaScript you may find it easier to build upon this codebase, instead of building it all from scratch. Anyway it’s out in the open now, use it as you please within the terms of the CC-GNU GPL license.

* Calendula Main Page

* Calendula Demo

* Download ZIP Archive

This software is licensed under the CC-GNU GPL.