I am a freelancer who wants to start using Sketchapp to make more trendy websites (slanted and curved line backgrounds, UI assets that have shadows, assets that go over 2 divs (see examples). Can and do freelancers (do both their own design and code) use Sketchapp to create the entire site for everything (including text) as their normal best practice and to speed up workflow and then just export everything to text editor and then tweak? Below are 2 examples that I aspire to be able to create.
Example 1 from Pinterest
Example 2 from Pinterest
The answer is Yes and No. The first example is highly using textures and graphics which is hard to do in Sketch. But for that you need to use Photoshop. For the second example is more flat and not using much graphical effect. its minimal and flat. Sketch is really fasten up your working flow to create something like that.
Hope this helps.
You definitely could create both designs in sketch but it won't be the only program you have to use to finish this job. At least if you produce each used graphic yourself.
In the first design for example you have quite a lot gradients an brush technics between the sections. Here you would need to use brushes in Photoshop to achive this look. After this you could export the layers as PNGs with transparent background and import those into sketch...
Sketch is perfect to use with SVG. I would say wen you work with SVGs you can almost only use sketch.
Hope this answer helps!
to speed up workflow and then just export everything to text editor and then tweak
First you create the website design in Sketch and then you start writing the HTML/CSS code by hand. This is how the web development process goes.
You could also use helper tools like Desech Studio to import the Sketch file and then adjust the html/css faster.
Unfortunately it's not possible to create a website in the design stack like Sketch, and also work in the web stack. These 2 stacks are different in how they work.
Alternatively you could start designing the website directly in HTML/CSS and skip the design stack completely, but you will be slower and it will be harder to make changes, compared to the design stack.
Related
I'd like to be able to produce PDF files in NodeJS.
Currently, we use puppeteer. We need to produce highly designed documents and so puppeteer/chromium gives me the ability to create a complex layout in HTML with the added benefit of also having the HTML version of the file.
It's great for relatively small documents where design is key.
The problem is when I try to produce long report documents. These documents do not require elaborate design. These are pretty much just a header with some information, and then a simple table with lots of records that stretch far as the eye can see, so they tend to be large. Like, really really large.
When I try using puppeteer for that, well pretty much just crashes and burns because loading such huge layouts into the underlying browser is just too much.
Currently I do "stitching". I create the document by having puppeteer create the doc in parts, and then I connect all those "doclets" into one using PDFKit.
But then I have problems like when one "doclet" ends and a new one begins, there are blank lines. (partially empty pages for no good reason from the perspective of a customer viewing it)
What I'm looking for is a library that has basic layout functionality but that doesn't use a browser (or perhaps uses something lightweight).
Problem is that libraries like PDFkit and pdf-lib seem to be too low level.
I'm going to literally have to "draw" the documents by telling it where exactly the text should be.
If I want tables, I'm going to straight up have to draw rectangles and stuff.
Having to create all of this manually would be a nightmare.
All I want is the ability to create simple layouts (tables, titles, text wrapping, background color) without having to use a library that just launches chromium.
Please, let me know if you know of any such option.
Thanks in advance!
What I tried:
PDFkit/pdf-lib - too low level. Unless I'm getting something wrong, there doesn't seem to be a way to create word wrapped layouts with basic tables.
jsPDF doesn't seem to be able to use the HTML functionality on the server(I think to get it to work I'd have to let it use a browser...? if so, doesn't really help).
Puppeteer/other libraries that pilot a browser - well, it uses a browser so a no-go for large docs.
Praying to Odin - No luck so far.
I'm looking for an example of multi-threading implementation inside the game toolkit? I have the MultiCube example, but that is for WinForms and I use WPF, and I can't use the game toolkit tools from Direc3D11 because I need an instance of the GraphicsDevice. The MultiCube example is not displaying anything but a black screen, I tried it on several computers. My video card doesn't support command lists, don't know if that has anything to do with it. I was wondering how many models can SharpDX handle, because I have to draw hundreds of small
scaffold couplers, and after adding about a 100 on the default GraphicsDevice, the application slows down and gets locked. Any help would be appreciated.
Regards,
Haris
I was looking for the same thing but I couldn't find any examples. I tried converting the MultiCube example to use the toolkit and got it basically working, still very messy at the moment and needs optimizing, but at least it renders.
https://github.com/PlehXP/SharpDX-Samples/tree/MultiCubeToolkit/Toolkit/WindowsDesktop/MultiCube
I am looking for a way to have an animated character in my game. I would like to have a running animation loop when he is running, a jump animation when he jumps etc.
Does the awe6 framework provide anything like this? Maybe using spritesheets, or separate images for each frame.
If I have to use my own system, are there any popular libraries that can help do this, and that work well with awe6? And how would I use it with the framework?
awe6 is not something that works out of the box but rather an architecture for you to build on. It is not designed to fill your requirements without work from you and requires you to have at least a good understanding to integrate another framework/target runtime for what you want. They do have a wiki however you can start with http://code.google.com/p/awe6/wiki/QuickStart
There are many popular frameworks out there that have a lower barrier to entry, such as haxepunk.com, haxeflixel.com, https://github.com/aduros/flambe they all have their own strengths/weaknesses etc for you to decide on and can all easily complete your requests.
I want to build a program that will (as part of what it's doing) display lines organically growing and interacting horizontally across the screen. Here's a sample image, just imagine the lines sprouting from the left and growing to the right:
The lines would look like the lines used on Google Maps Transit Overlay or OnNYTurf's transit pages.
It's a personal project, so I'm open to just about any language and library combination. But I don't know where to start. What have you used in the past to create graphics that are similar to this? What would you recommend? I want it to run on Windows without any extras needed (.Net is fine), and it doesn't have to run elsewhere. I needs to run as an actual program, not javascript in the browser.
There's obviously no 'right' answer to this, but the purpose isn't to start an argument about X better than Y but rather just find a list of graphics toolkits that do simple 2D graphics that people recommend because of their ease of use or community or whatever.
Processing may be just the tool for you.
Like you said, there are many ways to tackle this problem. Me personally, being it is a windows based project, I would go with the .NET based implementation utilizing WPF. There are tutorials on how to use the 2D drawing feature out there ( http://www.wpftutorial.net/DrawOnPhysicalDevicePixels.html for one ) Again, there is no right answer here. I might also pick some new technology and let your project be a mechanism to learn something new, providing you do not have a looming deadline.
Let me explain what I mean by "two-dimensional code editor": imagine of using Inkscape or Gimp in a big canvas (say infinite). The "T - add text" tool is used to write the code. Additionally, all function definitions will be framed and links will connect the called functions.
In other words: you have a very large sheet of (virtual) paper where you can write.
It would be really useful. I don't want to write code as a long list of lines, especially now that big monitors are cheaper.
Is such a code editor out there?
What's your opinion? Would you use a 2d code editor?
I've written 3 or 4 visual editors and my second one worked like this, that was for java and c++ (never published, though I did use it for some published research work)
I still don't like much to write my code 'as a long list of lines'. My point is, after trying a system like this, I tried a windowed system (class outlines in windows, right click to open code editors), then a tree based system...
in the long run (I wrote several apps using all of those), the tree based system with non overlapping windows felt at once most scalable (to different monitor sizes) and foremost, most productive, because dragging the text boxes and links and/or windows in the first version was necessary, without adding much to the programming experience, so it felt wasteful.
If you want to try some of this stuff out, you can google antegram for java (java only) antegram for web (javascript/php/actionscript) and ee-ide (on oogtech.org). I'm not sure if I could dig up the original c++/java textbox + links editor (which could collapse graphs as well, and had an infinite canvas, so pretty close to what you describe).
I'm not working on this as much as I used to as few programmers ever seemed to like it except me, but if you like working the tree way, or feel like adding stuff for your own purposes, ee-ide would be the way to go, as it's nicely modular and easy to extend compared to the rest.
On the commercial side, you can configure visual studio to work with UML-like diagrams. I have a feel it might be a little too heavy (although it's definitely more coding than UML oriented), but I'm not sure, I haven't really tried yet.
This probably doesn't answer your question exactly, but anyway.
Have a look at the NodeBox beta . It is a visual programming environment mostly for creating generative graphics. You can program and edit the nodes with python code, connect and reuse them in multiple ways. (Windows and Mac OS)
Also worth mentioning (in terms of concept) is Field . It is for programming performances and arranges bits of code on a stage/timeline. Very interesting but also very confusing. (Mac OS only)
Third one is vvvv. It is used a lot by graphical artists to create realtime 3d visuals. Node based. (Windows only)
NodeBox and Field are open-source, so if you are looking to create something yourself you can see how it's done there.
Check this out. I came across it today and remembered this question.
Code Bubbles
Developers spend significant time
reading and navigating code fragments
spread across multiple locations. The
file-based nature of contemporary IDEs
makes it prohibitively difficult to
create and maintain a simultaneous
view of such fragments. We propose a
novel user interface metaphor for code
understanding and maintanence based on
collections of lightweight, editable
fragments called bubbles, which form
concurrently visible working sets.
The essential goal of this project is
to make it easier for developers to
see many fragments of code (or other
information) at once without having to
navigate back and forth. Each of these
fragments is shown in a bubble.
A bubble is a fully editable and
interactive view of a fragment such as
a method or collection of member
variables. Bubbles, in contrast to
windows, have minimal border
decoration, avoid clipping their
contents by using automatic code
reflow and elision, and do not overlap
but instead push each other out of the
way. Bubbles exist in a large,
pannable 2-D virtual space where a
cluster of bubbles comprises a
concurrently visible working set.
Bubbles support a lightweight grouping
mechanism, and further support
connections between them.
A quantiative user study indicates
that Code Bubbles increased
performance significantly for two
controlled code understanding tasks. A
qualitative user study with 23
professional developers indicates
substantial interest and enthusiasm
for the approach, despite the radical
departure from what developers are
used to.
http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/acb/codebubbles_site.htm
At one point, LabView had a programming mode like this. You connected program blocks together in a graphical way.
It's been so long since I've used LabView that I don't know if it is still the same.
For me, the MVVM pattern means that there's no code behind the UI controls anyway. The logic is all in a class with properties.
The properties use WPF databinding to update the UI controls. For example, on the form or window, page, whatever, MySearchButton.IsEnabled is bound to ViewModel.MySearchButtonIsEnabled property. So the app logic runs in the ViewModel class and just sets its own properties and the UI updates automatically.
Although this is specific to MS WPF the pattern actually stems from SmallTalk and is found across the development field as MVP. Without WPF one would need to write the databinding or 'presenter' logic, which is common.
This means the UI can be torn off and a new one pasted-in really quickly and with little code knowledge from the UI guy - who, in an ideal world, is a crack creative guy that drives a 70s Citroen.
So my point is that, although it sounds like a neat innovation, a 2D editor like this would be assisting a coding style that is no longer considered optimal.