It’s been two weeks I haven’t blogged about Ivolution. . . and there’s a good reason for that:

The first alpha of the project is out . . .  and I definitely need some alpha testers !

The software is fully free and open-source, and available for both Linux and Windows environments. I even have some samples for you to test, so why not give it a try ?!

I completely focused those two last weeks on shipping the first version of the product. So here is a short list of what I have done :

• Write an illustrated user’s documentation

Commenting the code is one thing, but it doesn’t really help the end user. I have thus created a user’s manual,  full of images to be sure that people are not lost when they start using Ivolution. I tried to describe features in the simplest possible way, and even created some example videos.

Additionally, it helped me find some new bugs (mostly typos) that I corrected.

A project definitely needs a website so that people can find it. I have tried to create the website as light as possible, and remove any unnecessary information.

The website contains the online version of the documentation, together with the executables, the FAQ and so on.

Here is the set of tools I have chosen for the website :

• Github pages, to simply host the project. As a bonus It is also versioned, and any new push is automagically shipped
• Sourceforge (do I really need to present it? ). It allows me to host all the archives and executables, for free.
• Pelican. The little brother or Octopress, but in Python. I wanted something really simple for the website (understand static); and Pelican allowed me to keep using Python.

It has a lot of really useful plugins (analytics, themes). . . I’ll definitely use it again for my next projects.

I want users to start using the software as fast as possible.

In this way, there is a 1 minute tutorial for Windows users; and a three steps only installation for Ubunteros ! I also compiled a set of samples so that you can generate your first movie in seconds.

The creation of the website has been quite long, but also really light compared to what I expected. Pelican really helped me being productive while having a set of nice themes to use. Being a complete newbie in web development, I am thankful for that !

I found on the other hand Sourceforge surprisingly complex compared to what I expected. The platform definitely has tons of capabilities, but I had to fight my way through the menus to do what I wanted to.

That’s all folks!

Now that the website is out, I need to find some testers for the product.

My next week objective for the project is to post messages on the internet about the Ivolution project. It is still really young and need more work; but I’m sure It can help some people !

And don’t forget, if you want to be part of it; feel free to join me on the project !

Below is an update of my progress on the Ivolution ! As you can see, the software has never been so close to be released

• Hunt for bugs and crashes

I spent a lot of time the last week pushing buttons like crazy, having incoherent behaviour and testing whatever could crash the software.

It allowed me to find several ugly things, like a random crash on exit !

There is not much to say about it, but that the software is now more reliable and stable. Not sexy to say, but I’m sure users will be happy !

• Add new notifications to the interface

Test the software made me realize that some of the unexpected events where not reported to the user. There was nothing warning if the input folder was empty for example.

To solve that, I simply added new notifications to the interface. This way, the user can now that the software has not actually crashed !

• Create a compressed installer for Windows

My biggest achievement of this week has been to create a full installer for Windows. 

Windows users now a once click install solution to use the Ivolution. It was more challenging than expected, as (of course) the installer behavior is different depending on the Windows version of the user. But the opposite would not be fun, would it ?  ;)

I especially struggled finding solutions for the uninstall script to be reliable, and also give access to the icons to the software.

But I am proud to say that the Ivolution now can be properly installed on a Windows machine, and the user is even given pretty shortcuts ! To create this installer I used NSIS, a tool created by the developers of Winamp (amongst other great software). And I must say I was impressed how simple it was to get a simple working example. I definitely recommend using it !

Ivolution windows installer, and desktop icon as a bonus !

My objectives for next week:

• Write a proper documentation/manual.

Now I need users !

But for that, I have to spend some time working on the documentation and present it nicely. I also need a homepage for the project. I think about registering to SourceForge.

• Warn early users, get the product tested.

Even though the interface is still not perfect, I think it is time for the product to be shipped. There is nothing better than users to kepp you motivated.

I don’t present any other objectives today. My whole mind is turned towards product release.

So let’s write this documentation !

To get the last version of the Ivolution, clone the github project.

Here is my weekly post about the status of the Ivolution.

During these last days, I have mostly been working on another project. But at the same time, I also progressed like crazy on Ivolution !
So here are the news :

• Windows portability.

I have switched my main dev environement from Linux to Windows. This to ensure that my codebase is OS independant and to try to find new bugs. Up to know, everything went fine and I must say I am surprised things are going so well.

• New user interface.

Originally, I developed my GUI in pyGTK and was running it under Linux. But the framework is not windows compatible yet, and I want my application to run on everything. Plus I was not happy with the style of the GUI, and wanted something more interacting with the user.

So I redeveloped a new interface from scratch, this time using wxPython. Here is what it looks like right now :

New version of ivolution interface

It is still really raw, and some of the menus are not implemented yet. But I find it way simpler and catchy than the old one.

• Real-time notifications on the interface.

The most time consuming part of the Ivolution is definitely the face detection part. One must expect a 1 to 4 secondes processing time for each image, depending on its size. I wanted the user to be aware of that, while showing him that progress were made when he waits.

The last feature I developed is the centre panel of the application. When the algorithm runs, a list of al the images found is displayed. As they are processed, their color change:
a green font if the image contains faces, and a red font otherwise.
I am really happy of this, because now the user knows in real-time how the agorithm performs, and does not only wait for the end of the processing.

• Multi-OS parameters.

I also added an OS detection feature, to give correct default parameters. On startup, the Ivolution will detect the OS you are running and present you correct options accordingly.

My objectives for next week:

• Implement the settings frame. It will contain optional parameters, llike the type of face or the output location.
• Implement the about frame. This one will give information about the license and version, . .. of the software.
• Work on packaging. When the two first objectives will be done, I plan on spending some time on the setup.py file. I have to add dependencies to wxpython to it.

On a longer term:

• Have a nice looking interface.
• Package the application for Windows and Linux (Ubuntu for now). I want the simplest possible installation for users.
• Update the documentation and web page
• Allow the user to create/save/load projects.

To get the last version of the Ivolution, clone the gui_v2 branch on github.