Cinder is an open-source programming library designed to give the C++ language advanced visualization abilities. It was released as a public tool in spring 2010 and can be viewed in many ways as a C++-based alternative to tools like the Java-based Processing library, Microsoft Silverlight or Adobe Flash. It is also comparable to the C++ based openFrameworks; the main difference is that Cinder uses more system-specific libraries for better performance while openFrameworks affords better control over its underlying libraries.