Gather Your Cool Tools
By Phil Stevens
Whenever you set out to build, modify or fix something, you need tools. Each trade has a set of tools specific to common tasks, and although you may find a hammer in each toolbox, it probably won't be the same kind. A similar situation exists in Web design, but because there are so many people in the "jack of all trades" category there's been a clamor for a unified toolbox.
Take graphic design. For several years the computer has been a fixture in graphic creation, image manipulation, and page layout for both the print industry and the Web. But for most of that time, the applications for each of those tasks tended to focus on one kind of work. Image acquisition and editing apps were often limited in their drawing capabilities, offering glorified bitmap painting at best. Vector illustration software had few, if any, provisions for sophisticated filters and effects to apply to photographic images. Neither of the aforementioned had much in the way of text formatting and page layout functionality, which have been mostly the domain of yet another class of products.
Because a Web-graphics designer needs to do all three of these classes of work (along with file optimization and eye candy), this usually means getting a few "best of breed" applications and continually switching back and forth among them, converting file formats and relearning UI conventions all the way.
Canvas 7 Professional
Deneba Systems
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