Last Modernist

Updated: Open With Chocolat and Open With Sublime Text 2 Alfred Extensions

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 09:09:00 +0100

Just updated Open With Chocolat and Open with Sublime Text 2 extensions for Alfred. Both now also work as file/folder actions in addition to opening the currently open Finder directory as a project.

Download Open With Chocolat Alfred Extension

Download Open With Sublime Text 2

Create A Compass Project In Current Directory With Alfred

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:18:00 +0100

Here’s another extension for Alfred that creates a Compass project in your currently open Finder directory and optionally have Compass watch it immediately.

Once you have installed the extension type “cch” into Alfred and hit Enter to create a new Compass project.

To create a project and have Compass watch it in one go use “cch w” (or “cch watch” if you prefer).

Download Create Compass here

Unzip and doubleclick “Compass Create Here.alfredextension” to install. Style away!

Note: You need to have the Alfred Powerpack in order to use extensions. To use the Compass Create Here extension, you obviously need to have Compass installed (Although I’m tinkering with the thought of adding the option to install Compass with Create Compass Here if it isn’t on your system yet. Maybe in a next version).

Open Folder As Project In Your Fave Editor With Alfred

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:55:00 +0100

Just built two tiny extensions for Alfredapp to open the directory you currently have open in the Finder as a project in your favorite text editor.

Once Open With Chocolat is installed, type “owc” into Alfred and hit enter to open the current Finder directory as a project in Chocolat. With Open With Sublime Text 2 use “ows” into Alfred and hit enter to open the current Finder directory as a project in Sublime Text 2.

You can easily change the keyboard shortcuts in the Alfred preference window.

Download Open With Chocolat here

Download Open with Sublime Text 2 here

To install simply unzip and double-click the respective .alfredextension file(s).

Note: You need to have the Alfred Powerpack in order to use extensions.

Update: Both now working as file/folder actions, too.

Light Table by Chris Granger is a great concept for that...

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 12:35:01 +0200

Light Table by Chris Granger is a great concept for that “different” IDE, especially for people just beginning to learn how to code or coders who want to learn a new language.

Light Table is on Kickstarter.

More about the concept of Light Table here.

Finished yet another antiquarian catalogue cover…

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:37:45 +0200

Finished yet another antiquarian catalogue cover…

Just published my first tiny Extension for RoboFont: SidebearingsEQ. Equalize sidebearings of all...

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:43:00 +0100

Just published my first tiny Extension for RoboFont: SidebearingsEQ.

Equalize sidebearings of all or a selection of glyphs in a font.

SidebearingsEQ on github

And another antiquarian catalogue cover… ergh no 14, yes.

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:19:00 +0100

And another antiquarian catalogue cover… ergh no 14, yes.

Fuck your methodology, paradigms, your belief in math, recipes and literature references. Look at...

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 14:28:54 +0100

Fuck your methodology, paradigms, your belief in math, recipes and literature references. Look at what you got and take it from there.

I mean, there must be something inside you qualifying you for the job you’re doing, no?

Without you I’d probaby still be hating computers as much...

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 10:00:07 +0200

Without you I’d probaby still be hating computers as much as I did in ‘93. Thanks Steve.

Now there’s really no excuse any more for not using...

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:02:00 +0200

Now there’s really no excuse any more for not using Compass/Sass for those who find installing/running it a bit too techy:

Scout - Compass and Sass without all the hassle

Run self-enclosed Compass without touching the command line.

Chimero: Designers vs Coding

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:55:38 +0200

And if you don’t believe me (see my post below, http://lastmodernist.tumblr.com/post/8971322167/editor-on-fire ), you proably believe Mr Chimero.

viafrank:

“Do I need to know how to code?” is a question that comes up with sure-fire consistency in design circles. I’ve seen it asked by so many, from uncertain design students in classrooms worried about their chances of landing a job, to seasoned professionals at conferences seeing their pool of print projects slowly evaporate. The question is being asked with even greater frequency as of late, because Adobe has launched their product Muse, which promises designers the ability to “create unique websites without writing code.” So, if a designer wants to work on the web, should they take the time to learn this dastardly “code” or instead rely on software like Muse?

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Updated my site a couple of days ago. Not much more or new in...

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 23:13:00 +0200

Updated my site a couple of days ago. Not much more or new in terms of content, but at least halfway brought up to 2011 standards, incl. a bit of CSS3. And that slight bit of responsiveness you just can’t do without these days. Will do a few little adjustments soon, some things can still be optimized. As always…

Next in line is a proper tumblr template. Promised.

Finished another antiquarian catalog cover. Mocked this again,...

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 22:02:00 +0200

Finished another antiquarian catalog cover. Mocked this again, will take a while until it’s actually being printed.

Editor (on fire)

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 01:22:01 +0200

After lying dormant for a while, the discussion about the ‘perfect’ web design application seems to be alive and running again, surely at least in parts down to Adobe releasing Muse, an AIR-based visual web editor.

Quite a few very prolific and very qualified people have elaborated on that topic over the last couple of years, take the in-depth considerations of Jason Santa Maria to name but one. We never saw that ‘perfect’ rock-bottom-jack-of-all-trades-pleasing-everyone-producing-proper-standard-compliant-no-overhead-markup-and-css-while-being-intuitive-and-easy-to-use editor evolve over the years yet – and I doubt we will in the foreseeable future.

The last ten or so years have brought us a quite a few visual editors, from Golive and Dreamweaver (and Fireworks to a certain extent) to – since yesterday – Muse, to name only a few of the ones with ‘for professional use’ written on the packaging. They also brought us overly complex and overheaded markup, whackiness on all fronts, proprietary crutches, some more, some less, but the output of any of these never got a sniff of what a capable frontend developer armed with nothing but a text editor came up with (no, this is not another one of those ‘I’ll have Notepad only, thanks.’ show-off statements, read on!).*

I myself have dreamed – for a long time – of a ‘perfect’ rock-bottom-jack-of-all – ok, I’ll skip the rest – web editor, web based, that, instead of mimicking the technology we design for, internally is based on the elements and attributes/properties they actually have in their real-world habitat, the browser. Probably such a thing would still make sense today. For a lot of needs, this demand is totally valid.

But I somehow have gotten over that today. Today I usually do some basic design work in photoshop and illustrator to begin with, and then as soon as I have a rough idea turn over to an (text-) editor and start building the thing or a portion of it, adjusting, deleting, expanding, minimizing, improving on the way. The amazing thing about that is you have to think about what you’re doing, how it all goes together, what markup elements would best describe it while still leaving you enough flexibility to make changes later on. One understands what the thing really is and what you want it to be – and what the difference between the two is, and how best to bring all that in sync. And it forces you to keep things simple and clear and to carefully consider how far you are willing to go to achieve your goals, because if you mess things up, you’ll have to clean them up later on yourself, so that for a lesson in self-discipline. Doing all that on the fly, in my experience, will also bring better results quicker than first building it perfectly in Photoshop, then build a prototype that is nothing than just that and will be thrown away, and then realizing how hard that one thing you were so fond of in your original design is to implement in the grim reality of a rendering engine.

The fundamental problem with visual editors as I see it today is that they need to rely on some kind of abstraction layer, the more ‘easy to use’, the whackier and more overheaded the result. (remember those tables and position-absolute divs DW used to generate from rectangles freely drawn on some canvas with some metrics derived from out of nowhere? OK, a pretty extreme example – but illustrates my point oh-so extremely well).

The probability of a visual editor that produces good markup and CSS is dwindling by the day with CSS3 evolving, experimental implementation and adaption of new properties speeding up and the lifespan of browser versions shortening rapidly. Any abstract layer will have a hard time catching up with what the latest status is and will always be behind.

As I see – and learn, learn, learn – every working day, good markup and clean, stable and efficient CSS require some understanding of their structure and relationship as well as some intelligence and –yes, I’ll type it! – creativity (albeit also on the structural level rather than in terms of aesthetics alone). Something that software still can’t boast of having in excess. The really good things today still are built from scratch, by human beings knowing their tools – and not expecting any magic to help them. And (this is were the good news begin) we have a good set of tools at our hands today that take the most tedious part out of it, with things like Markdown, Sass, Haml and the mighty Compass framework, just to name a few (that I just wish I had more time to look into myself and that I have just recently begun to understand what they can do each!).

To cut my long rantings short, I don’t think we need any more visual tools that require that overhead-producing abstraction layer. We need to gain a better understanding of what we do, on any level, and that includes technology. We can now stop romantizing the craftsmanship of old when drooling over vintage hand built bicycle frames or furniture in our spare time. We just need to have the guts to become the craftsmen of today. In what our own trade and craft and everyday work is. Proper work is imposssible without an understanding of the underlying technology. Oh, and if you have an app bound to revolutionize web design up your sleeve , I’d still be interested to have a peek.

*One must admit though that these editors, flawed as they were/are, have helped a great deal in democratizing the web, enabling more or less anybody to end up having a couple of files somewhere to upload somewhere. For the price, see above. That phase is – I hope – over now, may they rest in peace.

Hover states for the icons as I had planned them. Turned out...

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 13:16:00 +0200

Hover states for the icons as I had planned them. Turned out that CSS3 transitions on the background-image property only work with (CSS-) gradients, not actual image files. Ah well, need to find something else…

Click here for a list of transitionable CSS3 properties.

Explorations for a notepad icon with regards to size,...

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 23:12:35 +0200

Explorations for a notepad icon with regards to size, proportions and level of abstraction.

I love constructed type. Literally constructed type. Renner knew...

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 22:09:37 +0200

I love constructed type. Literally constructed type. Renner knew it didn’t work, thousands of professional and amateur sign painters didn’t.

Just after I took the shot I realized there were two of those and I had photographed the one in worse condition. Couldn’t be bothered to take a shot of the ‘better’ one though, as this one’s just perfect as it is with the stains, rust, and tape residue.

It’s not their somewhat naive and antique charm that makes it for me – it’s the spirit.

(Note the radically constructed letterforms vs the centered setting!)

Not that I’d really need those… couple of Google+ mini...

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:18:11 +0200

Not that I’d really need those… couple of Google+ mini icons I just did, in a completely fictional context.

In case you (just like me) need your fix of...

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 21:33:00 +0200

In case you (just like me) need your fix of ‘proper-type-the-way-it-was-meant-to-be’ every now and then, here’s something for you: Great sturdy Grotesque on an east german packaging (in fact it says ‘substitutional packaging’). Sloped endings of capital E’s horizontal bars, an s that just s’s and a t-z ligature that is just one thing: georgeous. Yes, it’s (pre-digital) Super Grotesk.

The concept of stating it’s substitutional nature on the packaging rather than it’s contents today seems awkward though…

Here’s the corresponding Google+ icon… not sure whether...

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 21:43:27 +0200

Here’s the corresponding Google+ icon… not sure whether I’ll include this, heard of the first cases of people having drowned in their G+ stream already ;-)