The ubiquitous Photoshop icon, the eye, is not on the tool palette. [begin update] And yes it’s been missing since CS…but it didn’t really strike me until the CS3 beta at just how profound it’s missing is to me. John Nack at Adobe has the reasoning behind the new icon. I like the font being used. [end update] Oh and CS3 is definitely on my upgrade list. Perhaps I should cut the leadership at Adobe some slack. (See my “Waiting for Adobe” post). But they better make sure that Illustrator is just as useful. Perhaps with multiple page handling? And Acrobat – please make sure that in your haste to address enterprise markets you don’t forget us designers and creative folk. Good looking PDFs are important. And are probably more useful then generic server produced PDFs. InDesign – I’ve always felt the XML handling was a bit…under executed. And it would be neat to have built-in support for database publishing…I know, buy one of the several 3rd party plug-ins available. I’m just saying that that kind of functionality would be really nice to have built in. But I see good things coming out of Adobe and I am excited that they let the general public get a peak at it’s flagship product. The transparency makes me hopeful that the Macromedia acquisition wasn’t just to get rid of a competitor but to build better products in the long run.
Category: Applications
Thoughts on cool applications
A clean grunge
So, yeah, with the help of Style Master, a sweet CSS editor developed by by WestCiv, I’ve quickly created this theme that’s more aligned with the look and feel of my portfolio site. Style Master is an awesome tool, especially for those new to the world of CSS. It auto validates, tells you which browsers support what, has a handy GUI approach to CSS for those who hesitate to hand code and it has an impressive (if sometimes a tad slow to load) live preview so you can actually see what’s happening. I highly recommend it. Your CSS skills will get better. It’s a tad expensive (IMO) to purchase your first license, but the update price and the special 2 seat license (which allows a license for Mac and a license for PC – how cool is that?) are good values. This is not paid or requested marketing for WestCiv, I’m just enthusiastic of this great product that has made my web design life easier.
I know I’ve talked about adding additional graphic elements to the site but now I’m thinking maybe I won’t. I kind of like the empty space and I think further graphic elements may become more distracting than useful to the presentation. If I do add a graphic tweak, it will be nice and subtle.