With 2009 under our feet, I’ve been figuring out how will I spend my time building Fnk. Since this is something I’ll be doing on my spare time, it has no clear roadmap, but I’ve distributed my huge list of to-do items into some specific feature/change groups, something which look more or less like this:

• Misc editing: link types, panel additions, proper connection editing and value validation
• Standalone version optimization and features (native OS UI, proper local file reading)
• Misc graphic features
• Misc sound features
• Misc video features
• Embed player
• Web capabilities (server-side saving/loading/sharing)
• Sub-patch creating and editing
• Loadable SWF/SWC player
• Proper stream support (remote loading)
• File embedding
• XML features
• Multi-user editing

It’s a lot of stuff to be done (and this doesn’t count more basic changes, like fixing bugs and adding more basic nodes). So instead of doing random different changes, I’ve decided to tackle each specific group at a time.

Right now, while this wouldn’t usually be the #1 priority, I’m fixing the standalone version features – making sure it’s properly integrate to the user’s operating system and working as expected, like using the native OS menu, opening .fnk files, reading image and sound files without a lot of internal circlejerking, and things like that. I believe this is needed to have a more mature application to work with before dealing with some of the inner features.

Other change groups will follow – there’s still a lot in Fnk that can be considered quite flaky. When the time comes, I’ll post here about it.