I did this app (Todo Important & Urgent) a year ago for the iPhone. Trying to wrap my head around Objective-C was quite fun. Different way of thinking, but nice to deal with in general even if it got kind of messy at the end when it came to releasing it with provisioning etc. Gah. I realised quite quickly that I would not be doing Processing kind of things in Objective-C. So trying to make a simple kind of app and give it a twist was the choice for me. I think it worked even if the time spent making it hardly makes up for the result (or the money). Still, its visual and shows todo-items in a different way. And of course, it costs lowest-tier. Why else would I even try it out when I got Processing.  And then I found iProcessing. Not Objective-C but a great feeling to see Processing code in Xcode

The transparent window or shaped window was supposedly not easy to do. I found that by tweaking in the awt of Java it worked kind of as I would like it to do. On Windows XP. NOT on MacOSX. Also the shaped window which is demonstrated here. If labbed with some more you should find that you could do pretty much all you want to do, by tweaking the shaped window or tweaking the setOpaque or setOpacity which is two different things. Depending on what you want to do and depending on platform.

Note! This code does not work on MacOSX. Due to different Java implementations I guess. AND it’s hackish. No exception handling and there is alot of stuff that can go wrong I guess.

UPDATE! December 10 209, the java implementation was updated on MacOSX 10.6, to the current version available on windows. Nice and all, but the problem persists. Hmm. AWT? Workaround on the mac?

Read more on the subject right here:
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/GUI/translucent_shaped_windows/#…

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/misc/trans_shaped_windows.html

Heres the code I got working on Windows XP:

import com.sun.awt.AWTUtilities;
import  java.awt.GraphicsDevice.*; // PC only
import java.awt.Shape;
import java.awt.geom.*;
import javax.swing.*;

public void init(){
// to make a frame not displayable, you can
// use frame.removeNotify()

frame.removeNotify();
frame.setUndecorated(true);

// addNotify, here i am not sure if you have
// to add notify again.
//  frame.addNotify();
// frame.removeNotify();
super.init();
}

void setup() {
size(200, 200);
noStroke();
frame.setAlwaysOnTop(true); // Alltid på topp
frame.setLocation(0,0);
AWTUtilities.setWindowOpaque(frame, false);
AWTUtilities.setWindowOpacity(frame, 0.9f);

Shape shape = null;
//shape = new Ellipse2D.Float(0, 0, frame.getWidth(), frame.getHeight());
//shape = new Ellipse2D.Float(0, 0, 200, 200);
//  shape = new RoundRectangle2D.Float(0, 0, 200, 200, 20, 20);
//shape = new Polygon(int[] xpoints, int[] ypoints, int npoints) ;
int[] myXes = new int[4];
myXes[0]=0;
myXes[1]=150;
myXes[2]=150;
myXes[3]=0;
int[] myYs = new int[4];
myYs[0]=0;
myYs[1]=20;
myYs[2]=180;
myYs[3]=0;
shape = new Polygon(myXes, myYs, 4) ;
AWTUtilities.setWindowShape(frame, shape);

}

void draw() {
setBackground(new Color(0,0,0,255)); // should work with normal background(255) command
//  frame.setVisible(true);

fill(255, 0, 0, 255); // the alpha is not in play at this point – but it come into play when doing per-pixel translucency
rect(23, 23, 54, 54);
}

Yes, Flash on the Beach 2009, and no its not just Flash developers. It was problably awesome. Sheesh, why can’t people tell me about these kinds of events a little bit sooner

Thought I’d post this little hack. I picked up the Terzidis book Algorithms for Visual Design (using Processing) and found a version of my own little 3D picking hack and thought that my hack might be ok. I never saw this as anything but a quick hack, but it has helped me alot, still does. I thought that it hopefully could help some people having difficulties solving the picking problem the “real” (and hard) way. It would have helped me.
Heres the code:

Originally posted December 5 2008

Today I moved from the Processing IDE to Eclipse as an environment for the 3D demo development. Hopefully this will mean a bit leaner development with better support from the IDE. There should be no apparent difference for the user.
I do this primarily because the processing IDE is nice for small sketches, but becomes cumbersome when the classes grow in numbers. But another important reason is that since I don’t see any real start for the ”real” java-demo in the Evolver-project I might as well take the demo seriously.

Very cool library for processing.
http://www.hardcorepawn.com/SuperPoint/