Next steps for the Caps Lock program

Find the latest updates on the Caps Alert program here.

I've been really encouraged by the response to the Caps Lock program. All the comments and emails have been encouraging, even when they're pointing out problems. My experience so far has reaffirmed some of the things I've learnt about programming. Namely, just because it works on my desktop doesn't mean it will work on everyone elses. And simple ideas have a tendency to become more complicated.

I should also make my apologies for the lack progress over the Christmas holidays. It's a busy time for us on the magazine and it had to take a back seat.

The New Year means it's time to get going again but the biggest changes this week aren't going to be to the code of the program or the graphics, it's going to be how it's organised.

Some of the feedback I've received has suggested that some of the fundamental parts of the program need to change as it might cause problems with power saving features on notebooks.

So the big news is that firstly, we are going make the project open source. That is to say that the license will make sure that everyone can see the code and make contributions.

Secondly, the project will be hosted on one of the websites that specialise in helping projects like these. It's a choice beween Codeplex or Sourceforge. Once we've chosen and the project is online we'll let you know about it so you can get involved.

Remember projects like this don't just need programmers (though they always help). We also need people to report bugs, write instructions and share ideas on how it should work.