Wednesday August 26, 2009

pongasoft presents... kiwidoc

Back in April, I introduced the new adventure I was embarking on with pongasoft. It has been quite a ride but I am very proud to finally be able to release the service: it is called kiwidoc. You can find more information about the service itself on the About page including a description of all the main features that I was able to implement for the beta release. Here is the introduction:

In a few words, kiwidoc can be described as javadoc on steroids. The main goal is to help software developpers quickly find the information about java libraries in a single location:

  • proximity search and typeahead allow you to quickly locate what you are looking for.
  • IDE-style display shows you the relevant information in a familiar format.
  • immediate access to additional information such as library dependencies, manifest, OSGi headers, etc.
  • the private view can provide even more details if you need to dig deeper (in order to, for example extend a library or better understand its internals).

Now that the kiwi has been unleashed (there was a little clue on this blog about the name/logo :)), I will be able to talk more freely about the technologies and some of the issues I faced during the development. There is already some information on the Credits page about all the open source libraries I used. Of course due to the amount of work and the fact that I already have a full time job, I was unable to implement all the features I wanted to include in the beta launch, and I have many more coming up to improve the service. But it will also depend on the feedback I am going to receive. So please, leave feedback (on this blog or at feedback@kiwidoc.com), even if you hate the product and you think it is a stupid idea. Finally I wanted to particularly thank my partner, Markus Tuberville, for the awesome logos and icons that he created for the website (including this blog).

August 26, 2009 by Yan Pujante

Posted in pongasoft | 0 Comments »