tigert.com | my life and stuff um, what do I write here?

Maemo.org webdesign and free tools

We've been preparing a revamp of the maemo.org website conglomerate using Midgard CMS, the same system that's been considered for the upcoming Gnome.org revamp. In Maemo there's quite similar situation - we wish to replace several traditional web services (wiki, blogs, static content, project pages, software catalog etc) with one setup that hopefully works out nicely, having common admin interface and centralized user account management etc. In short, to end the madness of various pieces of php from different projects and trying to tie them together with duct tape. So far things are going great, and since I am familiar with Midgard already, it's fun to hack this. We're also doing this very much in the open, our feasibility study is in garage.maemo.org svn, for example, along with everything we've been doing so far for the templates and artwork. Which leads to the other part of this blog entry: designing websites with Inkscape.

I have noticed it's very nice tool for this kind of stuff, especially since the SVN "bleeding edge" version can do gaussian blur's on objects. Mmmm.. super-nice and easy drop shadows..

What I found even nicer, is that if you have a new layer, call it "slices" for example, and put simple, outlined rectangles there, and use the "object properties" dialog to name them like "corner-topleft" etc, if you select them, then hide the "slices" layer, and choose "export bitmap", inkscape automatically defaults to "export selection" with your chosen name, with a .png in the end. There is no automated way to "export all rectangles in "slices" layer as png's with the layer hidden" of course, but it's still pretty handy if you change the design, to just re-export them all without much typing. And with vector graphics its very easy to alter the design without having to re-do much from scratch, like you often need to do with pixel-based programs. This is quite similar to what Adobe web tools do with their "slices" concept. A bit hard to explain, but maybe it lights up a bulb in some inkscape users' heads..