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Using Stacks for Screenshots

Using Stacks for Screenshots

The default set of stacks in Leopard do a pretty good job of keeping your desktop clean of downloads, but for me, the real challenge of keeping things tidy comes from the multitude of screenshots that I take everyday.

Creating a stack for screenshots is the logical answer, but because they are saved to the desktop by default, it’s impossible to do this without first making a minor tweak to how OS X handles them. There’s probably several ways to do this, but I found a free application called deeper which seems to work pretty well.

Once you’ve changed the location, it’s as simple as dragging that new folder into your dock and tweaking the stack preferences to “Sort by date added”.

Voila… now all your screenshots will be easily accessible in any application, and your desktop will be a whole lot cleaner.

Permalink // 16 Comments // June 10th, 2008

Creating Clipping Groups in Photoshop

Although creating “clipping groups” in photoshop is a fairly basic technique, I thought I would take a few minutes to outline the process here because I’ve found that many designers have yet to discover it.

The nice thing about clipping groups is that you can crop images (and other artwork) non-destructively to any shape you want to. If you end up changing your mind on how an image should be cropped later on in the design process, it’s a simple procedure. They are also very handy to use when you want to constrain an adjustment layer to just one section of your layout. Ok… less talk, more screenshots.

Permalink // 12 Comments // November 3rd, 2005

Dynamic CSS Navigation Highlighting with Expression Engine

Here’s a little trick I’ve been using with Expression Engine to get my category menus to auto highlight. 

<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
          
   #Nav #NavList{segment_3} {
       background-color: #eee;
       color: #3F7E86;
    }
</style>
</head>

<body>

<ul id="Nav">
{exp:weblog:categories weblog="play" style="linear"}
<li>
   <a href="/" id="NavListC{category_id}">{category_name}</a>
</li>
{/exp:weblog:categories}
</ul> 
       
</body>
</html>

Permalink // 40 Comments // October 22nd, 2005

me Hello, my name is…
Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain, a stay at home designer from Grimsby ON, Canada. To get in touch use the contact form.

Side Links

GridMaker – A very very handy tool for creating grids in photoshop.

My good friend (and former employee) Brian Potstra just launched a new site. Congrats Brian!

Martha is looking for a Sr. UI Developer. It’s a good thing.

A map of countries that don’t use the metric system.

As much as I love to hate Bell, their new site looks pretty sweet.

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