OSX Lion is… interesting. On one hand it offers lots of cool new features and gestures and stuff, and on the other hand many of the new features are half baked, or less (aka: LaunchPad). On top of the half-baked problems, there are issues with app compatibility, function and more. For instance- the Digital Color Meter app in Lion no longer provides HEX color values. HEX being the color system used by just about every web designer on the planet. Do a quick google search and you’ll find that this feature of DCM, a critical designer tool, was simply removed without warning by Apple (a design heavy company, whose products are used by many, many designers). It makes no sense.
Another tool commonly used by designers- screen measurement is also hard to come by in Lion. You may find some stuff on the Mac App store, but reviews are mixed, and all that stuff is BUY before you TRY. Never a paradigm I liked. Any many of the apps are not yet Lion compatible.
Luckily I came across a solution for both problems. This tool called “PixelStick” allows you to not only measure screen areas, but it also gives you a quick and easy HEX (yes!!!) color picker, all in one tool, and all for free (so far, I can’t tell if I’m using a trial or something, but its worth buying either way). Checkout their site for more info: PixelStick: Measure Distance, Angle and Color- anytime, anywhere on Mac. Slogan says it all.
Here is a quick screencap of the tool in action, I turned off the circular guides as I did not need them, but this shows how it can quickly measure and pick colors, all from one easy tool, very useful for designers transitioning to Lion.
Now it’s easier than ever to export and backup your Facebook photo albums with my latest app, FBPhotoExport. FBPhotoExport is incredibly easy to use and only costs $1.99 for lifetime unlimited use (sorry, it takes time to build these apps!). The app lets you view and explore your Facebook photo albums. You can download individual photos to your desktop, or pick and choose your images and download them to the folder of your choosing. The exported photos are automagically organized into folders named after the album which they belong in, making it easier than ever to backup your Facebook photo collections on your home computer.
FBPhotoExport is great for all kinds of people- If you have a new pc or mac and want to copy all your photos to your machine. If you lost your original photos and want to get the copies from Facebook. If you want to move all your photos to a different/better photo hosting service. If you just want to download the photos to share them with other people who aren’t on Facebook, the uses go on and on. Check it out and download it today!
Just wanted to stop by and let everyone who’s reading know that I have updated FacebookExport with some changes that should fix issues users in a previous post had brought up. For one reason or another some people could only export the first (preselected) item. I changed up how I passed the options between pages and it will *hopefully* fix the problem.
If you were one of the people who was experiencing problems exporting all of the data points please give it another try. If you could drop me a comment and let me know if the problem is resolved it would be much appreciated! Thanks!
Also, I’m almost done with the newest piece of the FacebookExport toolkit- the Facebook Photo Exporter. Subscribe to my RSS feed or follow me on twitter so you can download it as soon as its posted.
You can now export your Facebook inbox, outbox, events, and status history all through FBE. I was going to just set it aside my for a while after releasing it just a few days ago but after receiving feedback from several people with requests for more data points in the export, I couldn’t resist but to roll up my sleeves and improve the tool. In addition to the new data points you can also customize the export so it only includes the information you want (a la carte if you will).
The customizable export was a nice addition, and certainly makes the tool more user friendly, but it was actually something I was forced to add just because the export was becoming so large that it was taking forever to test exporting ALL the data points EVERY time. So, a small developer aid proves to be a boon for the end user too! Anyway check it out, and if you’re one of those people using the tool to export and archive your data to your harddrive, make sure to update your FBE file with the new data points (the export format has changed slightly as well). Enjoy!
