There are a few WordPress plugins that help me publish this site as I want it. Here are a few of the key plugins I currently use on Stopdesign. continued

It’s rare these days that something pulls me out of the woodwork to write something here on Stopdesign. A few recent posts by Jason and David at 37signals (Why we skip Photoshop and Web designers should do their own HTML/CSS, respectively) got me thinking though. This post began as a response on an email thread at work. I’m expanding it here to a wider audience. continued

Simply put, xScope is a back-pocket, time-saving utility for designers and developers created by designers who understand the nature of working on screen. I haven’t written much about the software I use. But once in a while I come across something that’s so useful, I’m compelled to spread the word a little further. And the latest update of xScope to v2.0 adds some really nice enhancements worth drawing me out of hibernation. continued

Every once in a while, an application/utility comes along that hits a sweet spot. Something for which I’ve been looking, but haven’t been able to find. I’m a list-maker. Especially to-do lists. For more than a year, I’ve been wanting a simple to-do list manager that I can call up from the Mac OS X menu bar. Something simple, light-weight, nicely designed, and above all else, reads and writes to pre-existing data in iCal. continued

The inner-workings for a clever little plugin named Photon that enables photo export from iPhoto directly to Movable Type and other publishing tools (to create photo galleries like this) are now available for anyone to explore and build upon. Jonathan Younger, who originally created the plugin, doesn’t have enough time to dedicate for updating and expanding the plugin. So he generously released Photon’s source code under the GNU Lesser General Public License so that others could continue evolving it.

So if you lament that you can’t use Photon because you’re not on a Mac, or you don’t use iPhoto, or for whatever reason, and you’re good with application/plugin development, here’s your chance to grab Photon’s source code, morph it, add to it, expand its function or supported formats, or whatever you want to contribute.

Last week, when I announced the Blogger redesign, I mentioned that I’ve been using Adobe Illustrator much more often to comp my designs, instead of Photoshop. The vector-based Illustrator provides more flexibility in shape rendering, and allows me to create and tweak designs faster than the bitmap editing of Photoshop. Once we’ve honed in on a final design, then I move over to Photoshop for a final polish and pixel-level precision for the site’s images. continued

Saft is a Safari plugin that allows true full-screen browsing, kiosk mode, and type-ahead searching familiar to the Mozilla family. I gave Saft a whirl after reading a glowing review from Jon Hicks about a month ago. I’m quickly realizing the full-screen mode of Saft is handy when giving HTML/CSS-based presentations. I’ve been using Firefox and a fullscreen bookmarklet for my presentations, but some of the browser chrome and the menu bar still show when using that method. With Saft’s full-screen mode, the only piece of the browser still visible is the scroll bar, and that’s only if it’s needed. continued

Todd Dominey beats me to the punch, and says everything (and more) about software version naming schemes I was thinking of writing. Inspired by Adobe’s drop of the numerical versions in favor of a letter-based system (“CS”) for their new Creative Suite, the move seems to be a short-sighted marketing ploy in attempt to follow a trend set by Apple, Microsoft, and Macromedia. continued