The default forms of information that GeekTool supports are Files, Images, and Shell Commands. This allows you to display the realtime information from any file on your Mac, like Log Files or maybe a ToDo list and similar files. With the Image Plugin you can display any image from your computer or from a URL out on the internet. And with the Shell command, you guessed it, you can display any information that you can Script, AUK and/or GREP from your command line.

Each of these text information sources can be modified to be any size and use any font, style or colors that you would like, Below is a screenshot of how a couple of users use of the text and images to create an amazing way to display information on your screen.

Along with the default content display options, there are many additional “geeklets” or Geektool Plugins to expand and enhance your desktop viewing pleasure.

And best of all this little tool is Open Source, so dive in, Download Geektool, and get started Geeking out your desktop.

Geektool Homepage

Download Geektool Or pick it up on the Mac App Store

Geeklets 

Stay tuned as we prepare to launch version 0.3, with access to more statistics and an easy to use short code for quick posting and stat access.

Gradients are used virtually everywhere to improve the overal look and feel of most designs and applications. But up until recently these great graphical niceties on the web always had to be represented by a small or large graphic file, which depending on the skill of the designer/developer could add significant bloat to a website.

On to the scene enters CSS3 with many new features that (when properly utilized by compliant web browsers)  make the seemingly simple websites come alive. One of my favorite new features is the CSS Gradient. Now rather than adding bloat to a site with multiple graphics to improve the sites look and feel, now that can all be taken care of with just a few lines of CSS rules.

Now this new advancement in site design as powerful as it is, can be cumbersome, especially if the gradient is technically advanced with multiple stops and color changes. The raw development of the right CSS rule could take a significant amount of time, but no longer.

Thanks to Alex Sirota (iosart), web developers around the world now have free access to an amazing tool that significantly increases your CSS3 productivity. The Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator provides a easy to use (and fairly familiar interface for Photoshop Users) that not only allows you to create new gradients, but you can also save previous favorite presets, import gradient code from CSS, and import an image with a gradient on it.

I have used this tool a ton, and highly recommend it to any developers that are going to work with CSS3 Gradients in any way.

Head On Over To:

The Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator

One of those resources (in my case at least) is a significant number of Photoshop Brushes to add accents and textures to my designs. And a bit thank you to the many individuals that have created them and provided them for download.

My biggest frustration with Photoshop Brushes was the fact that if I didn’t keep them loaded up in Photoshop, then it became virtually impossible to find the ones that I wanted to use for a specific project. Sure I could hunt through all the files that had the right name associated with them, but in the end it was a pain, opening each one in photoshop to see what one I wanted to use. That is it Was a Pain until TODAY!!!

I had the fortune of finding a nice little freeware extension to Apples built-in QuickLook capability called BrushViewQL. This little extension has made my day, allowing me to not only preview the contents of the .abr files in finder, but also blow up the preview images with QuickLook. It is a great little extension, with some great potential. So go get it and save yourself some effort!

BrushViewQL Website

Original Post that I read about BrushViewQL

But regardless this little OpenSource application has increased my productivity in a major way. If’ you are a graphic designer or web developer like myself I am sure you have found yourself going through bucket loads of stock photography hunting for just the right image for your project. Although the typical use of viewing preview thumbnails or quick look in the finder is utilitarian enough for most, when you have a large library to look through that process can be extremely tedious. This is where Xee helps me out in a major way. I tell it what directory I want to look through and then it pulls up each image in succession, with lightning speed each click of the command and (right or left arrows) sends me rocketing to the next or previous image. If there is a massive image that will take a whole .3 seconds to load I can see it loading from top to bottom, make a determination of wether it might fit my project and then click to the next image without having to wait for the entire image to load. You can even preview image animation, a feature which I have long desired in Preview.

As a bonus, its lightweight and unobtrusive interface helps you focus on what you are looking for rather than fussing with the application itself. Along the top bar are presented some simple image manipulation options, and the bottom bar has basic information about the image; file size, full resolution size, image type, zoom percentage, etc…

To sum up it’s abilities here is the list from the Xee homepage:

• Display a large number of image formats – any format QuickTime or Preview can open, plus several more, including PCX, Maya IFF and Amiga IFF-ILBM.
• Easy browse through folders of images – open any file in a folder and use the toolbar, keyboard shortcuts or mouse wheel to view the other images in the same folder.
• Browse image inside archives, using the uncompression engine from The Unarchiver. It can read almost every format The Unarchiver can, which include Zip, Rar, 7-Zip, Lzh and StuffIt. It also supports the CBZ and CBR formats, which are just renamed Zip and Rar files, respectively.
• Effortlessly copy, move, rename and delete of images while viewing.
• Losslessy rotate and crop JPEG images. This lets you edit your digital photographs without losing quality by re-compressing them like most other editors do.
• View more EXIF data for JPEG files than Preview, and also other kinds of metadata, like XMP or IPTC. It can even try to identify what program or camera created a JPEG file by analyzing its quantization tables.
• Extract bitmap images from inside PDF and SWF files. Many PDF files contain scanned pages in bitmap form, and Xee can read these and show them as bitmap image, and even save them. The same goes for bitmap images inside SWF files.
• View images in full-screen.

So check it out and see how useful it can be in your design workflow.

Xee Homepage

Download

Check it out

Css Message Boxes

Elements of Design