iHack, therefore iBlog

[See the original blog post for background information]

Here’s Ten Steps for making the most of your involvement in ShoesFest, whether for one hour or twenty-four:

1. Download and install Shoes for Mac OS X, Windows, or Linux; on the Mac, you’ll also want TextMate and the Shoes Bundle.
2. Read _why’s answers to common questions
3. Use an IRC client to join the discussion on irc://irc.freenode.net#shoes (or #sneakers, for newbies) [note: corporate users may need to change the default port to e.g., 7000]
4. Try one of the Shoes Tutorials people have written
5. Read and run a few of the included samples, or programs from The Shoebox
6. Scan Nobody Knows Shoes, and review the poster of the most common APIs
7. Use `shoes -m` to bring up the manual (On OS X, you can do ⌘-?)
8. Modify/extend an existing app to try out particular APIs or techniques
9. Write your own Shoes app. It could illustrate use of a particular API, replicate a similar app on another platform, or just be something you’ve always wanted to write 
10. File bugs (or submit new apps!) by emailing shoes AT code.whytheluckystiff.net; copy why AT whytheluckystiff.net if you’d like to be permanently added to the mailing list

Extra for Experts

Rather than waiting for an updated release, you can check out the latest sources using git by clicking the “Download” link on github. This is a great way to find bugs and submit patches.  You can even build it yourself with help from the pre-built dependencies for Windows, Mac/Intel, or Mac/PPC.

Be sure to first install git on your machine if you want to use the command-line. Here’s a great place to learn more about git.