The next release should have been due in April, but after some delays I have decided to skip this release and focus on the next one, due in July. It is easy to assume that this is caused by lack of progress, but nothing could be further from the truth. Let me tell you a bit about the current state of WonderGUI.

Event Canceled (Work vector created by freepik - www.freepik.com)

The priorities of WonderGUI development is largely driven by client requests. When starting a new release cycle I often have a specific plan and list of features to work on, but only weeks later I find myself work on completely different areas. This can at times be frustrating, but is also a blessing.

My clients have often turned out to be my greatest asset. Not only do they provide me the economic means to continue WonderGUI development, their feedback and feature requests often leads to totally unplanned, but very vaulable improvements. They actually drive WonderGUI development in directions I wouldn’t have thought of myself, making WonderGUI, in my opinion, a more unique and exciting offering among all other UI Toolkits.

This spring has been very intense in that way. My plan was to add some missing standard widgets to make WonderGUI usable to a more wide audience, but instead I have found myself mainly work on some very exciting improvements to the GfxSystem and some innovative improvements on widget skinning. On top of that we have a few new widgets (but not the ones I had in mind), a unique way of rendering in layers and the start of a live UI-introspector/editor.

Unfortunately, only a few of these improvements are in a state that I would be comfortable to release them in. So instead of rolling back most of the development and spend a few days putting together and testing a new release, I decided to just keep moving forward as quickly as I can in order to bring it all into the next release.

All in all, this refocus will delay the release of 3.0 by about 6 months, but I believe it will be a much more compelling release, making the wait worthwhile. Personally, feel very excited about the next release! :)