MikeyCampling

Archive for the ‘software’ Category

Here’s something I can’t believe that I didn’t know about – XRAY.  It’s a bookmarklet that allows you to see the box model of any element on any web page.  It works for many flavours of browsers and I can see it being extremely useful when taming an unruly layout as well as for the ‘how did they do that?’ type of research.

To check it out, visit http://www.westciv.com/xray/

Simply drag the bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar, load a page, click your XRAY bookmarklet and then click on any element on the page to see its attributes

It works, it’s free, what’s stopping you?

I know that you can do something similar (and more) with firebug, but this strikes me as a quick and convenient alternative that won’t take up any of your browser window.

If, at this point, you’re wondering where my list of 49 other tools are – then sorry, but I’m getting fed up with seeing that type of article in design blogs.  I just end up skimming through without really reading them.  So I’m going to stick to very selective articles and then at least you know that I really am recommending something specific.

If you have a useful tool to suggest, then by all means add a comment.

If, like me, you’re a compulsive trialler of software, you’ll want to head over to Livebrush for a twiddle with their awe-inspiring painting program.

The basic version is free, but has limited export capabilities.  Having said that, the pro version is only $10 (just over £6.00) so it won’t break the bank.  What it will do, is have you saying, “But that effect would’ve taken me ages in photoshop/illustrator/etc.”

Paying the £6 allows you to export your creations as vectors (svg format), but you can also export png files of the whole image, or just selected layers.

Unbelievably, you can work in pixels or vectors and play around with layer blending modes and a plethora of settings.

There are still a few niggles – e.g. you can import new styles from the forum, but the app doesn’t remember them.  According to their forum, they’re going to fix that soon, and it’s worth remembering that it’s still early days.

I think it has massive potential, and if you’ve ever spent hours carefully drawing a floral swirl or a light-ribbon, you’ll know just what I mean when you find Livebrush will do it in 2 seconds.

Go play!

It’s an Adobe Air application, so it should work smoothly on all major operating systems.