Processing Beta officially released

Congratulations to Ben Fry and Casey Reas - Processing BETA is now public. After a couple of years of registration-only alpha development, which has already been built upon by thousands of users, this is a big step.

If you've taken a look at Processing before, you'll want to know that it now comes with (optional) OpenGL rendering, better 3D/lights/camera, slightly worse (different?) pixel stuff, a better IDE (multiple files), proper libraries, and more. The sketchbook now goes into My Documents (or the Mac equivalent), and export to application is promised real soon now. Present mode is definitely better (no more toolbar on the mac). Be warned though, lots of the syntax has changed - see also official changes since the last public release and the incremental revisions for all the gory details.

If you haven't seen Processing yet, there's never been a better time to take a look. It's great for learning or teaching programming and computer graphics. There's a vibrant and diverse community on the discussion forum, so you're never stuck for help.

My own Processing sketchbook is here, and should give you a good idea of what's possible (Java plug-in required). There's a wider selection of work in the Processing exhibition, and I keep links to people using the software at del.icio.us/TomC/people+processing.