Today is the day that Abstract Studio is unveiled and our story begins. Not just Abstract Studio’s story, but a new chapter in the story of Desktop Application Development. Abstract Studio started it’s life as a basic IDE for elementary OS. Over time the Abstract Studio team realized that we didn’t just want to build another IDE, We didn’t want to just keep making the mistakes those before us have made. We realized we wanted to disrupt how Desktop Applications are made. We wanted to make them faster, more powerful, and most important… human.

You may have expected an application release today, no, that’s too mainstream. Today we bring you a revolution!





Abstract Studio Engine

The Abstract Studio Engine is the heart of this revolution. It is licensed under a LGPL License and costs not a single dime. We believe a tool like this is much more powerful if it’s free. The more people

Abstract Studio Engine is a Redistributable package that includes GTK, Vala, GLib, AbstractLib, and AbstractDocs. It comes with installers for OSX, Linux, and Windows. For those Linux users, don’t worry. We don’t overwrite your current settings or packages! For OSX and Windows users - We setup everything for you with just a few button clicks.



Once that’s done - The party starts. With Abstract Studio Engine you’re able to make cross-Engine desktop applications for all major operating systems. You also can run all of our Applications, and any other Application that uses Abstract Studio. We’ve also included a smaller more robust package that you can give your users to run software built on Abstract without issue.



Think of AbstractLib as the creme filling of a donut. AbstractLib includes many things that you may or may not want to use. Things like Parse, Stripe and MailChimp integration! Cool things like REST Helpers, UI Widgets, and even entirely pre-made UI Interfaces for you to use.





Abstract Studio Baseline

Baseline is your window and guide to the Abstract World. Baseline contains everything you need to develop applications for Abstract. The first time you open Baseline it introduces itself and lets you set it up. It’s all down-hill from there. A few clicks later and you’ll be building your first Abstract App. From there your imagination can go wild, we give you all the tools you need to get the job done, Auto-Completion, Syntax Highlighting, Definition and Documentation Searching, Automatic Documentation Generation, and a beautiful easy-to-use user Interface.

Oh, we missed something you say? We are too good to do something as silly as that. So Baseline also has the ability to make plugins and expand itself. The Abstract Engine contains all the libraries and tools you need to build plugins to any and all of our applications. AbstractLib also includes the tools needed to allow your application to accept plugins!



Oh yay, a proprietary IDE you say? Hold your iPhones… Baseline has support for all major languages and has project support for all of you Web Shakers and Mobile Movers. Cordova support? Yup. Android support? You Betcha. Node-WebKit Support? … Stop. Go home.

… Yeah, we support that too.





Abstract Studio Donald

Baseline is great for code, but code is raw.. Sometimes you need something prettier. Sometimes you need to visualize how your application works. That’s why we made Donald! No.. Not Donald Trump®*.. *facepalm*.

Donald is our User Interface editor. Donald allows you to visually design your user interfaces and layout everything while you code! Donald puts the V in MVC, It generates GTK Builder compliant XML files that can be loaded by any GTK Based application. You can rapidly build and test UI’s this way. You can even load different UI Files based on resolution, platform, or just to A/B Test.





Like everything else Donald has plugins, a project wizard, and is intelligent. You want to add support to design HTML Websites in Donald? (You Node-Webkit people…) You can. Want to generate UI files for Android or xCode? Totally possible. Donald is about helping realize those UI Dreams.





Abstract Studio Precipice

Beautiful applications require artwork, Artwork requires an editor. Our editor is Precipice.. It’s friggin awesome. It’s cross-platform, has strong vector support, imports all common vector files, and exports css and raster images. It has strong integration with Baseline and Donald, One click in either program will open the files in Precipice for editing.



One of the coolest features of Precipice is that it has the ability to “draw widgets.” You read that right, you can create a special Precipice file that when imported into Donald will become a widget. For special cases this can improve UX, or just help you make cool fly stuff.





Abstract Studio Graphene

Graphene is something different. It doesn’t share a strong connection with Baseline. It’s not connected to Precipice or Donald. But it still kicks ass. Graphene was grown out of Chris’s frustration with pricey database software, or free database software that was cumbersome.



Graphene is built on Abstract Studio and is meant to demonstrate all Abstract Studio has to offer. It handles your No-SQL and Relationship databases with ease. It has plugins to support new databases, it has the code editor in Baseline to write queries, and it is faaast.

But there’s so much more…

This blog post has gone on long enough.. We wish we could show your our Continuous Integration service, Our support of Vala Web Frameworks, Our learning center and documentation systems. But those will have to wait. You see, today starts #30DaysOfAbstract where leading up to Baseline’s release we show you everything we’ve been working on and planning.



if you want more take a look at our Reddit QA, or our Google Plus!



[Reddit] https://www.reddit.com/r/AbstractStudio/comments/3goj4v/abstract_studio_qa/

[Google Plus] https://plus.google.com/+AbstractstudioConnect/posts







*Trump® is a registered trademark of Trump® internationally.