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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Thank you for this excellent plugin!
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Amazing plug-in! Thanks for sharing!
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Damn, thats hot. Thanks a lot, really helpful.
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Very nice. Thank you so much for your work.
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This is very interesting. Thanks a lot, Andrew.
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josh #
06:24pm, 09th February 2010Nice. Thanks!
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Stefano Picco #
04:46pm, 11th February 2010Works great, good job! :) Thank you.
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Studiox #
11:21pm, 13th February 2010Now all we need is a 64bit version of GridMaker
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John La'Gere #
08:24am, 14th February 2010This is an awesome tool, simple but perfect. I just started learning getting into css and this is very helpful. I am using it with 64-bit Photoshop CS4 (Win7) and does exactly what it’s supposed too.
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wow such a lifesaver:) this makes working so much easies.
thanks
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Just tried the plugin for a new price book I am working on. Work like a charm, thanks.
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I’ve only just started looking at grids as part of the design work flow (sad i know).
This is a great tool. Cheers mate.
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Banner Stands #
12:52pm, 21st April 2010Fantastic. Will use!
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Thanks so much for your work, it’s saving me heaps of time.
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roller banners #
01:34pm, 11th May 2010All tested and working!
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Zia Rahman #
08:58am, 14th June 2010Hi There, I have used your great extension for my work recently, but since I have installed CS5, and I tried it, couldn’t get it to work, will there be CS5 compatible version soon?
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Works great, great job! Thanks!.
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rio #
07:37am, 02nd July 2010CS5 not work
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Powerful photoshop cs4
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cat jewelry #
12:18am, 08th July 2010This is a great tool. I need to try CS4 still.
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Jan #
01:19pm, 08th July 2010Hi there, i tried this cool plugin in photoshoip cs 5 but it doesnt work.
can yoou make work it in photoshop cs 5 so all photoshop cs 5 users can use it?this would be very cool.
:-)
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David Skorepq #
01:47pm, 14th July 2010Great job on this plugin and many thanks for offering it for free. Any plans to release a version for Photoshop CS5?
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Kerosene Heaters #
03:20am, 15th July 2010Any plans to release a version for Photoshop CS5?
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Medical Beauty Equipment #
03:21am, 15th July 2010A-line Wedding Dresses? thank you!
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Electric Massager #
03:27am, 15th July 2010Thank you for updating this, Andrew. It comes in very handy.Thank you!
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Chris Ronk #
02:32am, 22nd July 2010Thank you for putting the time and effort into making this useful tool.Sadly, I cannot get this to work in CS5.
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Snake #
07:29pm, 23rd February 2009