Abstract
A brief summary of the article
After a suggestion from John Nack I had a go at porting GridMaker 2 to the new Flash Panel framework in CS4
Content
Main article body
A while ago John Nack contacted me to ask if I was interested in porting my GridMaker plugin to make use of the new Flash Panel capabilities of CS4. It’s taken me some time to get around to doing it (despite it not actually taking that long) but I have it working now. I haven’t implemented all the functionality i’d have liked (like loading/saving settings) and I had wanted to customise the Flex theme to make it look native to CS4 (I hate non-native UI, as a result I am very wary of any Flash-based user interfaces) but I kept putting it off. I figured I may as well release what I’ve got or risk forgetting about it completely.
Installation
Download GridMaker.jsx and GridMaker.swf and put them in ‘Plug-ins/Panels’ in the Adobe Photoshop CS4 folder. Load Photoshop and the panel should appear under ‘Window/Extensions/GridMaker’. Once activate the panel will appear in your command panels on the right.
I’ve set the defaults to be equivalent (though not identical) to the 12 column layout found in 960.gs, the only real differences are that the gutter isn’t split in half and the outer margins are 20px rather than 10px.
It’s also missing the unit-selection functionality from the second version of GridMaker.
Comments
What people have had to say about this article
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Great Andrew, this one is really helpful :)
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Chrisdat #
08:00pm, 23rd February 2009That is really cool. It will very helpful. Thanks!
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I put both files in plug-ins/panels. The panel shows up in “extensions”, but nothing happen when I click “create document”. Do I do something wrong???
han smit -
I detected what goes wrong.
The download comes in as “gridmaker.jsx.text”Delete .text and the plug-in wil work well
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Thanks! this looks like it will come in VERY handy… one of the things i’m working on is a comparison of a few sites to tidy the alignments, and up until now i’ve been gridding by hand :D
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Steve #
09:34pm, 27th February 2009Just found this today, not sure what it’s all about but am reading more on the grid system, so i’m sure it’ll come in handy. added it to stumbleupon as well, so you should see some more traffic!!
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Levi #
03:41am, 28th February 2009This is pretty interesting. :o But does it work with Adobe Illustrator too?
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odd, i have it working on 3 of my 4 installs.. can’t see to get that darn “create document button to work on this pc.. o well :D thanks!
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Kreuz #
12:41pm, 05th March 2009Thanks ! I’m trying to pick up some new tricks and just starting to mess with some grid layout stuff. Have any suggestions on grid layout tutorials ?
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Thank you for updating this, Andrew. It comes in very handy.
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Marcelo #
02:46pm, 13th March 2009Thank!! Perfect.
Horizontal lines would be interesting . -
Tabish #
12:59pm, 24th March 2009Does this work on illustrator?
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keetano #
08:00pm, 03rd April 2009this is awesome! thanks!
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Jader Rubini #
12:33am, 04th April 2009I can’t find the folder Plug-ins/Panels. I created one in _/home/user/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CS4/Presets/_ and then put the files in it but it didn’t work.
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cool thing. works quite fine for me (mac, cs4).
additional functions such as save/load presets would be also nice in a further releases ;-) -
Awesome… It helps me a lot!
Thank you
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Awesome- any chance you’ll be making it available for Fireworks CS4 as well?
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Thanks a lot, mate!
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This is working! Awesome!
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Really handy. Thanks.
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very helpful script :)
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Thanks a lot,Andrew!
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Does this lovely thing work with earlier versions of Photoshop?
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Photoshop CS4 Features #
11:54am, 14th June 2009Very Useful information. Thanks for sharing.
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Banner Stands #
12:39pm, 17th June 2009Thanks for the photoshop tip! I love articles like this.
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katrina #
12:34am, 18th June 2009This is great, thank you!
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andreas Waldheim #
06:00pm, 27th June 2009how can I get grids into an existing document?
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Hey,
It will very helpful. Thanks!
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Nice, it really works. It will very helpful.
Thanks -
I love your Site an i love articles like this. Very great.
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gameserver #
08:21pm, 15th July 2009very good, big thanks to ya !!!
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Hausschuh-Experte #
06:41pm, 02nd August 2009I just found this Website. Very helpful script. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
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Ola #
11:41am, 06th August 2009it’s very necessary script just for photoshop! Many-many thanx for help!
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Thanx for sharing this great tool. I was expecting to do somebody one day. Thanx again.
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Thanx for sharing.It will very helpful.
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James Dalton #
09:02pm, 26th August 2009This is such a lifesaver!!!!!! I have been doing everything by hand, at least I have a tool to help me put everything in order. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
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Fran #
01:42am, 02nd September 2009Someone asked for some info on grids: thegridsystem.org
Sweet plugin – I love it!
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mitt #
10:45am, 16th September 2009Nice tool but i’m missing one – quite important thing – it lack the ability to change document size. I understand that 960 is so magical number but sometimes I need to create columns on different size of canvas.
Nevertheless – goog work. -
Peter #
08:14am, 20th September 2009Anyone tried it in macosx? It’s loading in the panels but when I click “create document” button – nothing happens..
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Dev #
02:07am, 21st September 2009“Cannot complete command because the extension could not be loaded.”
Whassmeans?
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xixa #
04:01pm, 28th September 2009This is incredibly useful, thanks!
I’d like to suggest one simple modification to make it even better, though. How about add an small dashboard showing the total width of the document while you put the values for colums and gutters? I think it would simplify the process of trying new grid configurations. -
Amazing and useful plugin!
Thanks for do it. -
Roller Banners #
09:55am, 17th November 2009This plugin works great! I agree with xixa’s comment regarding the dashboard
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a very useful plugin….
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Photoshop Newsletter #
08:10pm, 15th December 2009I have found this plugin so useful and so interesting that I am :
1. announcing it to all my readers at Photoshop-Newsletter.com
2. because all my readers are spanish, I would like to know if I can translate it ?
Thanks Andrew for such a great shortcut for my daily work !!!!
Bernard
spanish photoshop newsletter -
Excellent plugin, it saves a lot of time, especially for designing websites in Photoshop. Doing it by hand is both tiresome and prone to errors. Thanks :)
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kaske #
10:28am, 30th December 2009It would be quite nice to see the horizontal lines added, I bet it’s not a problem at all for such a developer ;)
Great stuff.
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banner stands staffs #
01:12am, 07th January 2010valentini – couldnt agree more – would be nice to have lines horizonal defenately – be even better – hopefully be an update! – hint! haha
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exhibition display stands #
10:33pm, 29th January 2010Just wanted to say a big thankyou for this – THANKYOU!
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Snake #
07:29pm, 23rd February 2009