Sandstorm Blog

Richard Caceres talks about designing open source apps

By Nena Nguyen - 16 May 2016

We had the pleasure of having designer, developer, and app author Richard Caceres speak at our Sandstorm.io meetup in San Francisco on March 24, 2016.

In his talk Richard emphasized the value of free and open source software, he shared design principles that app authors should follow (to create a more cohesive user experience across apps), and he also demoed a newly updated version of his TextEditor app.

“Every app would benefit from allowing you to customize the CSS. I think that’s really important. In TextEditor, you can do that now.”

Watch Richard's full talk to hear more about:

• What makes good free software
• Why you should develop apps for Sandstorm
• The importance of design for apps
• Examples of successful open source design
• Visual guidelines for apps
• New TextEditor features (like customizable CSS)
• And more!

You can follow the slides here:

As a follow-up to his talk, Richard has also recently announced x-gui, a library of web components for building consistent web apps.

Try out TextEditor for yourself and don’t forget to leave a review!