Thinking About Tools
April 25, 2012
A quick Twitter search for “GuideGuide” generally shows two types of feedback: “Holy crap, this is great,” and “I can’t believe this isn’t part of Photoshop already.” A lot of people like to hate on Adobe for being slow to add print/UI design tools to Photoshop, but I feel like this attitude wrongfully places the blame. Photoshop’s true purpose is in it’s name. It is photo manipulation software. It was never intended to be good with type styles, pixel perfect vector manipulation, or grid systems.
When people complain about Photoshop not being a robust tool for design, they’re essentially saying “I’m very frustrated that this tool I’m using beyond it’s scope doesn’t live up to my manufactured expectation.” You wouldn’t use a screwdriver as a hammer and complain that it doesn’t do a good job of hammering nails. So why do it with software?
Rather than complain about our applications not performing functions they were never intended to perform, why not start asking why no one is building tools that are designed specifically to solve the problems we complain about? I’m not talking about Photoshop plugins like GuideGuide. Things like that are just hacked together solutions to ease our pain. We need to start demanding, or better yet, creating bespoke tools and natural workflows that are created specifically for us.
I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “Your sword should be an extension of your arm.” I’d venture to say our tools should be an extension of our creativity. We shouldn’t have to tolerate, hack, or be limited by our software. Our tools should be catalysts to the realization of our ideas.
Where the hell is GuideGuide 2?
November 9, 2011
UPDATE: GuideGuide 2 is right here.
TL;DR: It should be done by Christmas
With the end of the year coming up, GuideGuide is slowly creeping up on being one year old. When I first posted it in the beginning of January, it was simply a labor of love that I created as an answer to the question “Why can’t Photoshop do grids?” I then had the amazing fortune of being hired by GitHub the next week. After they posted about hiring me, someone out there caught wind of GuideGuide and shared with apparently just the right people. It caught like wildfire. It’s both amazing and humbling to see how far it has gone.
The Quick Backstory
For the most part I haven’t touched the original GuideGuide post. I certainly haven’t touched the original GuideGuide. The original version was built using a trial of Adobe Flash Builder. In the span of the development of GuideGuide, I switched computers three times, each time having to rebuild my development environment. After the launch of GuideGuide, I switched to yet another computer. This time, however, something went amiss and corrupted my project files. Or so I thought at the time.
The New Face Of GuideGuide
As it turns out, the “corruption” I experienced, was merely the deletion of a few unnecessary (to me) files that Flash Builder needs to recognize the project as an actual project. Lucky for me, and the over all quality of GuideGuide, I was already a couple months into developing a new version from the ground up.
After seeing the future usefulness of GuideGuide I tracked down a real copy of Flash Builder and got to work redoing everything I hated and everything that didn’t work in the panel. GuideGuide 2 is a completely new animal, but is still every bit as awesome as the first.
Why Has It Taken So Long?
People are important to me. When given the choice between spending time with the people I care about or spending hours over a keyboard, I choose the people. GuideGuide is a hobby — something for my free time — and I try to make sure it stays that way.
So Show Us Something Already, Dammit
Ok fine, since you’ve twisted my arm. I haven’t shown screenshots up until now because the design has changed quite a bit as the development has come along. Features have been added or turned out to not be possible. Some times I just decide I hate an interaction. However, for the most part, I think GuideGuide will look the same at launch as it does now, so here’s the new face of GuideGuide.
What Can It Do?
GuideGuide still does everything it always has. GuideGuide 2 is all about adding pieces to the workflow that I wasn’t able to anticipate it needing until it got some real world usage. So here’s the new feature list:
• Completely new design
• Guide Presets
• Negative and 0 margins — Outline your selection or create a margin outside it)
• Clear Guides
• Exact pixel measurements — No more half pixel guides.
• Quick clear inputs
• Quick equal margins — Fill in one and click its icon. They’ll all get that value.
• Define column/row measurements
• Remaining pixel distribution settings
What Is A Remaining Pixel Distribution Setting?
Let’s say you have a document that is 4 pixels wide and you want 3 columns. Which column gets the extra pixel? Now let’s say you want to make a 3 column grid in a 5 pixel document. Which column only gets one pixel?
This setting determines which measurement among the columns is least common, or most likely to stand out, and puts it where you specify in the remaining pixel distribution settings
So When Does It Come Out?
Soon. I’d like to have it out by Christmas.
Baseline Grid with GuideGuide
August 19, 2011
GuideGuide 2 (which isn’t released yet) has the ability to create a baseline grid, but with a little creativity and math you can use the current version of GuideGuide to create one as well.
The row height calculation for GuideGuide looks something like this:
To create a desired baseline grid, think of the equation like this:
To figure out how many baselines will fit in your existing document or selection, consider this equation:
As an example, let’s assume I want a 30 row, 16px baseline grid. I’ll make my document height 480px (30*16) and then have GuideGuide create 30 rows.
GuideGuide 2 is mostly complete, but I still need to figure out a way to make it easy for non-coders to install. Until I can sort that out, I hope this technique will hold you over!
GitHub Issues App versions
August 10, 2011
GitHub recently launched their GitHub Issues iOS app featuring an icon I created. While the final icon is probably the coolest thing ever, I thought the original version would be worth showing as well. It was eventually rejected after testing it showed that it looked a little too much like the folders and not enough like an inset piece of technology like intended.
Parallax your url
June 14, 2011
Sure, anyone can make a url bar game and get a billion followers.
But I can parallax your url.
cameronmcefee.com/parallax-url/
Plax
June 2, 2011
After doing the parallaxing illustrations for GitHub’s 404 and 500 pages, I decided it might be fun to put together some kind of jQuery plugin to make it easier to do parallax stuff in the future. I finally had a chance to get around to it while parallaxifying the illustration on the about page. There’s plenty of more I want to do with it, but this should be a good enough piece to get you Plaxing.
Be sure to check out the demo and the documentation. You can also fork/contribute to Plax on GitHub
Download Plax
New to version 1.3
• Added the ability to specify an element as plax’s mouse target
New to version 1.2
• Fix bug where FF6′s usage of laptop accelerometers broke Plax.
New to version 1.1
• Support for Ender
• Frame rate limiter for better performance
• Accelerometer support for devices with gyroscopes
Octonaut
March 31, 2011
GitHub talked to NASA. The Octocat needed to go into space. Naturally. Click for wallpaper.
