News

After a long time of heavy work, we are proud to announce the sixth release of the "HiveBoard" application on SourceForge. HiveBoard is a distributed shared whiteboard system.

In this version, the client application has been completely refactored to offer a more friendly look & feel to its users, as you can see by yourself in these screenshots.

In addition to this, release 0.6.0 brings one essential security fix:

• In version 0.5.0, it was possible to login with any existing account but without any password! This bug is fixed in 0.6.0.

Please refer to the release notes for a more exhaustive list of changes.

HiveBoard highlights:

• Server running on Jakarta Tomcat 5 or Jetty 6, and using PostgreSQL 8.2, MySQL 5.0, HSQLDB 1.8 or Derby 10.2 database engines; a "stand-alone" server also exists that embeds the HiveBoard application within Jetty 6 and Derby database engine
• Communication transport based on http (ensures usability through firewalls)
• Secure access to authorized persons only
• Storage of whiteboards in DB (to allow meetings to be interrupted and resumed later)
• Rich graphical client application, easy to setup and use, running on Java JRE 5 or later, allowing free docking of views inside the main window (according to the user wishes)
• Account administration available in the rich client application
• Several graphical tools available: free-hand pen, eraser, oval, rectangle, text. Color, line thickness, font type and size can be changed
• Full-screen capability

HiveBoard web site: http://hiveboard.sourceforge.net

The HiveBoard team

We are proud to announce the fifth release of the "HiveBoard" application on SourceForge. HiveBoard is a distributed shared whiteboard system.

The main change in this version is the minimum requirement on Java 5, which has allowed a major refactoring of the whole application for easier enhancements in the future.

In addition to this, release 0.5.0 brings a bunch of bugs fixes, plus a few enhancements and new features, mostly worth mentioning are:

• JMX support for the HiveBoard embedded server
• Boards have now a new "Token Setter" setting that offers 3 options: initiator only (default, same as behavior in 0.4.0), initiator or current writer (the current writer can give the write right to another present participant), and finally initiator, current writer or system (same as previous, except that the server will automatically sets the writer to the first or last present participant). This option allows an effective use of a white board even when the board initiator is not connected.

Moreover, the build system has been improved to ease testing (before release) across all supported databases. This improvement will ease releasing more frequently (a release cycle of 3 or 4 months is foreseen).

Please refer to the release notes for an exhaustive list of changes.

HiveBoard highlights:

• Server running on Jakarta Tomcat 5 or Jetty 6, and using PostgreSQL 8.2, MySQL 5.0, HSQLDB 1.8 or Derby 10.2 database engines; a "stand-alone" server also exists that embeds the HiveBoard application within Jetty 6 and Derby database engine
• Communication transport based on http (ensures usability through firewalls)
• Secure access to authorized persons only
• Storage of whiteboards in DB (to allow meetings to be interrupted and resumed later)
• Rich graphical client application, easy to setup and use, running on Java JRE 5 or later, allowing free docking of views inside the main window (according to the user wishes)
• Account administration available in the rich client application
• Several graphical tools available: free-hand pen, eraser, oval, rectangle, text. Color, line thickness, font type and size can be changed
• Full-screen capability

HiveBoard web site: http://hiveboard.sourceforge.net

The HiveBoard team

After a long period of work on the project, we are proud to announce the fourth release of the "HiveBoard" application on SourceForge.

In addition to several bugs fixes, the main improvements of release 0.4.0 are:

• Added support for HSQLDB and Derby database engines
• Jetty support upgraded to Jetty 6.0+
• New drawing tool to insert an image in the board area. Many kinds of image are supported, insertion can be scaled to fit in a user-specified area, transparency can be set
• New highlight tool to point to some whiteboard parts. Color and size are configurable on each client application (in preferences dialog)

But the major enhancement of this release is the new "stand alone server" distribution that eases and quickens HiveBoard server installation. Its installation does not require anything but a JVM installed on the server: no need to install any servlet container, database engine whatsoever, with this new embedded package, you can install and configure an HiveBoard server in just about 5 minutes!

For people who still prefer to deploy on their own servlet container with their own database engine, this is still possible of course.

It is worth to be mentioned that HiveBoard 0.4.0 now has an important set of automatic tests that cover 93% of its code (client and server altogether) which will increase confidence of quality of every future delivery.

HiveBoard 0.4.0 will be the last version to support Java 1.4; starting with 0.5.0, only Java 5 will be supported.

The HiveBoard project aims to build a distributed shared whiteboard system, particularly useful for meetings between remote teams (eg: in offshore development). It is 100% built in Java, based on a client/server architecture. Version 0.4.0 has the following highlights:

• Server running on Jakarta Tomcat 5 or Jetty 6, and using PostgreSQL 8.0, MySQL 4.1, HSQLDB 1.8 or Derby database engines; a "stand-alone" server also exists that embeds the HiveBoard application within Jetty 6 and Derby database engine
• Communication transport based on http (ensures usability through firewalls)
• Secure access to authorized persons only
• Storage of whiteboards in DB (to allow meetings to be interrupted and resumed later)
• Rich graphical client application, easy to setup and use, running on Java JRE 1.4 or later, allowing free docking of views inside the main window (according to the user wishes)
• Account administration available in the rich client application
• Several graphical tools available: free-hand pen, eraser, oval, rectangle, text. Color, line thickness, font type and size can be changed
• Full-screen capability

Technical highlights:

• Server is Servlet 2.3 compliant and is based upon the following techniques:
  • "Inversion of Control" (HiveMind container)
  • iBATIS SqlMaps for "low-level" database access
  • Caucho Hessian protocol for remote communications over http
  • HiveTranse for high-level transaction management and HiveMind-iBATIS integration
  • HiveLock security framework for HiveMind
  • HiveRemoting for Hessian-HiveMind integration
  • HiveEvents for server internal events notification
• Client uses the following techniques/libraries:
  • Swing for all graphical aspects
  • HiveMind
  • HiveRemoting for remote access to the server
  • HiveEvents for client internal events notification
  • HiveGUI for all GUI management (menus, docking, commands, dialogs...)

HiveBoard web site: http://hiveboard.sourceforge.net

The HiveBoard team

After a long period of heavy work on the project, we are proud to announce the third release of the "HiveBoard" application on SourceForge.

In addition to many bugs fixes, the main improvements of release 0.3.0 are:

• Full-screen capability with user-customized preferences for matting various information (chat messages, notifications) on the screen
• New "load past comments" feature to view previous comments occurred for a White Board
• New "take snapshot" feature to save the current image of a White Board to the database for later retrieval
• New "snapshots list" feature to show the list of all snapshots taken for a White Board
• New "Save" feature allowing to save the current content of a White Board to a file. The feature supports several formats (JPEG and PNG, and more if you have "Java Advanced Imaging Tools" installed)
• Support of transparent colors
• Improved performance and memory usage on both client and server
• Users passwords are now encrypted in the database
• Storage of user/password (encrypted) in preferences (e.g. Registry on Windows) for faster login
• Storage of window size and location in preferences

Another important change -although not directly visible to the end users- is the overhaul of the HiveBoard build system to the Open Source el4ant build system. This has allowed painless integration of important tools such as abbot (for automatic GUI tests), checkstyle (for checking the good style of all source code) and emma (for code coverage measurement during tests), overall contributing to a better code and a higher quality application.

The HiveBoard project aims to build a distributed shared whiteboard system, particularly useful for meetings between remote teams (eg: in offshore development). It is 100% built in Java, based on a client/server architecture. Version 0.3.0 has the following highlights:

• Server running on Jakarta Tomcat 5 or Jetty 5.1, and using PostgreSQL 8.0 or MySQL 4.1
• Communication transport based on http (ensures usability through firewalls)
• Secure access to authorized persons only
• Storage of whiteboards in DB (to allow meetings to be interrupted and resumed later)
• Rich graphical client application, easy to setup and use, running on Java JRE 1.4 or later, allowing free docking of views inside the main window (according to the user wishes)
• Account administration available in the rich client application
• Several graphical tools available: free-hand pen, eraser, oval, rectangle, text. Color, line thickness, font type and size can be changed
• Full-screen capability

Technical highlights:

• Server is Servlet 2.3 compliant and is based upon the following techniques:
  • "Inversion of Control" (HiveMind container)
  • iBATIS SqlMaps for "low-level" database access
  • Caucho Hessian protocol for remote communications over http
  • HiveTranse for high-level transaction management and HiveMind-iBATIS integration
  • HiveLock security framework for HiveMind
  • HiveRemoting for Hessian-HiveMind integration
  • HiveEvents for events notification
• Client uses the following techniques/libraries:
  • Swing for all graphical aspects
  • HiveMind
  • HiveRemoting for remote access to the server
  • HiveEvents for events notification
  • HiveGUI for all GUI management (menus, docking, commands...)

HiveBoard web site: http://hiveboard.sourceforge.net

The HiveBoard team

We are proud to announce the second release of the "HiveBoard" application on SourceForge.

In addition to many bugs fixes, the main improvements of release 0.2.0 are:

• support of Jetty 5.1 servlet container (in addition to Tomcat 5)
• support of PostgreSQL 8.0 database engine (in addition to MySQL 4.1)
• account administration features in the client application
• support of https and optimization (through gzip) of messages (thanks to HiveMind Utilities 0.4.6 upgrade)

The HiveBoard project aims to build a distributed shared whiteboard system, particularly useful for meetings between remote teams (eg: in offshore development). It is 100% built in Java, based on a client/server architecture. Version 0.2.0 has the following highlights:

• Server running on Jakarta Tomcat 5 or Jetty 5.1, and using PostgreSQL 8.0 or MySQL 4.1
• Communication transport based on http (ensures usability through firewalls)
• Secure access to authorized persons only
• Storage of whiteboards in DB (to allow meetings to be interrupted and resumed later)
• Rich graphical client application, easy to setup and use, running on Java JRE 1.4 or later, allowing free docking of views inside the main window (according to the user wishes)
• Account administration available in the rich client application
• Several graphical tools available: free-hand pen, eraser, oval, rectangle, text. Color, line thickness, font type and size can be changed.

Technical highlights:

• Server is Servlet 2.3 compliant and is based upon the following techniques:
  • "Inversion of Control" (HiveMind container)
  • iBATIS SqlMaps for "low-level" database access
  • Caucho Hessian protocol for remote communications over http
  • HiveTranse for high-level transaction management and HiveMind-iBATIS integration
  • HiveLock security framework for HiveMind
  • HiveRemoting for Hessian-HiveMind integration
  • HiveEvents for events notification
• Client uses the following techniques/libraries:
  • Swing for all graphical aspects
  • HiveMind
  • HiveRemoting for remote access to the server
  • HiveEvents for events notification
  • HiveGUI for all GUI management (menus, docking, commands...)

HiveBoard web site: http://hiveboard.sourceforge.net

The HiveBoard team

We are proud to announce a first preview release of the "HiveBoard" application on SourceForge.

The HiveBoard project aims to build a distributed shared whiteboard system, particularly useful for meetings between remote teams (eg: in offshore development). It is 100% built in Java, based on a client/server architecture. Version 0.1.0 has the following highlights:

• Server running on Jakarta Tomcat 5 and using MySQL 4.0
• Communication transport based on http (ensures usability through firewalls)
• Secure access to authorized persons only
• Storage of whiteboards in DB (to allow meetings to be interrupted and resumed later)
• Rich graphical client application, easy to setup and use, running on Java JRE 1.4 or later, allowing free docking of views inside the main window (according to the user wishes)
• Several graphical tools available: free-hand pen, eraser, oval, rectangle, text. Color, line thickness, font type and size can be changed.

Technical highlights:

• Server is Servlet 2.3 compliant and is based upon the following techniques:
  • "Inversion of Control" (HiveMind container)
  • iBATIS SqlMaps for "low-level" database access
  • Caucho Hessian protocol for remote communications over http
  • HiveTranse for high-level transaction management and HiveMind-iBATIS integration
  • HiveLock security framework for HiveMind
  • HiveRemoting for Hessian-HiveMind integration
  • HiveEvents for events notification
• Client uses the following techniques/libraries:
  • Swing for all graphical aspects
  • HiveMind
  • HiveRemoting for remote access to the server
  • HiveEvents for events notification
  • HiveGUI for all GUI management (menus, docking, commands...)

HiveBoard web site: http://hiveboard.sourceforge.net

The HiveBoard team

We are proud to officially announce the opening of the "HiveBoard" project on SourceForge.

At this occasion, the HiveBoard web site opens.

The HiveBoard project aims to build a distributed shared whiteboard system, particularly useful for meetings between remote teams (eg: in offshore development). It is 100% built in Java, based on a client/server architecture, and has the following highlights:

• Server running on any Servlet 2.3 Container (jakarta Tomcat supported)
• Rich graphical client application, easy to setup and use, running on any Java-supported OS
• Communication transport based on http or https (ensures usability through firewalls)
• Optimized communication to allow for near-realtime screen refresh even on lower bandwidth networks
• Secure access to authorized persons only
• Archive of past whiteboards sessions

Technical highlights:

• Server is Servlet 2.3 compliant and is based upon the following techniques:
  • "Inversion of Control" (HiveMind container)
  • iBATIS SqlMaps for "low-level" database access
  • Caucho Hessian protocol for remote communications over http
  • HiveTranse for high-level transaction management and HiveMind-iBATIS integration
  • HiveLock security framework for HiveMind
  • HiveRemoting for Hessian-HiveMind integration
• Client uses the following techniques/libraries:
  • Swing for all graphical aspects
  • HiveMind & HiveRemoting for remote access to the server

The HiveBoard web site currently focuses on development aspects (roadmap, architecture) but will later include end-user documentation (quick start guide, FAQ...)

It will be updated as the project progresses.

HiveBoard web site: http://hiveboard.sourceforge.net

The HiveBoard team