Ok! Why did I not know about Inkscape before today??! It looks amazing and it’s said that the new version is a major feature update, and although I haven’t tried it out yet, from the screenshots it’s pretty easy to see that this tool is also for the big boys, it works with SVG which makes even more happy, since I was about to begin some SVG experimenting anyways soon, and it’s soo boring to draw complex vector drawings by handcoding, believe you me!!

Here’s the intro text from the Inkscape Website:

Inkscape is an open source drawing tool with capabilities similar to
Illustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw that uses the W3C standard scalable vector graphics format (SVG). Some supported SVG features include basic shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, and grouping. In addition, Inkscape supports Creative Commons meta-data, node-editing, layers, complex path operations, text-on-path, and SVG XML editing. It also imports several formats like EPS, Postscript, JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats.

Inkscape’s main motivation is to provide the Open Source community with a fully W3C compliant XML, SVG, and CSS2 drawing tool. Additional planned work includes conversion of the codebase from C/Gtk to C++/Gtkmm, emphasizing a lightweight core with powerful features added through an extension mechanism, and the establishment of a friendly, open, community-oriented development process.

* Inkscape.org – Draw Freely

* Slashdot | Inkscape 0.42: The Ultimate Answer

Pretty neat stuff, I haven’t spent much time on portlets, but I’m quite sure this is the first open source portlet runner I have come across, I am looking forward to evaluate this product.

Open source Portlet-compliant Liferay 3.5 has been released, this new version adding hot deployable themes, portlet instancing (portlets appearing more than once on a page), built in support for Sun JSF and MyFaces, friendly URLs, and more.

Liferay is designed to deploy portlets that adhere to the Portlet API (JSR 168). Many portlets are bundled with the portal (Mail, Document Library, Calendar, Message Boards, to name a few). Liferay is appserver and database agnostic, and was originally designed to support ASP’s by having one server/db instance serve multiple independent domains. Liferay integrates with Spring, and has been around for a while and has a number of notable real customer deployments.

Jing Xue also blogged posted his first impressions.

* Liferay open source portal 3.5 released

ZDNet UK is reporting that the next major release of Mozilla Firefox has been delayed and will now be known as Firefox 1.5 rather than 1.1. The upgrade is now set for a September release.

The Firefox Roadmap was updated on Wednesday by lead engineer Ben Goodger. It changed the plans from calling for an increasingly unrealistic 1.1 release this month to a 1.5 release in September. Firefox 1.5 Beta is now set for an August launch.

Read the full story here:
* MozillaZine | Mozilla Firefox 1.1 Delayed, Renamed to 1.5

The WaSP DOM Scripting Task Force is trying to redeem the reputation of JavaScript, by encouraging developers to write ‘Unobtrusive scripts’ that complement the existing solution, and not the old school way where the JavaScripts are required to use the full features of a website. My personal opinion on this is that it’s about time JavaScript got it’s good name cleansed — It’s a great language, too often mistreated by bad coding styles, and lack of conceptual understanding of JavaScript and it’s purpose.

Excerpt: At the moment JavaScript suffers from outdated, uninformed, and inaccessible development methods which preclude it, and therefore web development in general, from attaining its full potential.

The WaSP DOM Scripting Task Force proposes to solve this problem by the adoption of unobtrusive DOM scripting, a way of thinking based on modern, standards-compliant, accessible web development best practices.

While both front end and back end developers will profit from this change of perspective, the most important benefits will accrue to our end users, whether they use the latest and greatest desktop browser, assitive programs like screen readers, or other devices.

Read the full WaSP JavaScript Manifesto here:
* WaSP DOM Scripting Task Force » JavaScript Manifesto

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