Fontcase 2.1.1
Just a quick note you let you know that Fontcase 2.1.1 is now available. It’s a small update but solves two important bugs: some people reported search was slow on their libraries and that should now be fixed. Second, it fixes an issue where tile previews did not want to load or just refuse to show up at all. It’s a free update in the Mac App Store or course.
Hope you all like it.
Sketch 1.3 & Video tutorials
Last week we released Sketch 1.3, containing a few bugfixes and an expirimental pixel preview. There’s not much to write about except that version 1.3 is a better app than 1.2 was.
However the next bit is more interesting. Many people have asked me to record more video tutorials and indeed the selection we have on our website is a bit limited.
However last week Alian Arco contacted me to tell me he had started a series of screencasts about Sketch on his YouTube channel. I have very little time myself to record any so I’m incredibly grateful to him for providing these. I know how much time these take.
At this moment are three tutorials on Sketch and one discussing various alternatives to Adobe CS. He told me he’ll add more over time. I recommend anyone who’s just getting started with Sketch to take a look at them and subscribe.
DrawIt discontinued
A few days ago we decided to remove DrawIt from our website and to stop selling it. Here I want to explain the reasons for doing so.
For a long time we’ve had two drawing apps; DrawIt and Sketch. Both are vector-based and DrawIt added support for bitmap filters on top of that. This was a fundamental difference and made DrawIt a very powerful application – in theory.
In practice it meant that the app was significantly slower than Sketch and that text rendering was even worse than Photoshop’s. These two were the main reasons for developing Sketch; I wanted a fast light-weight vector drawing app with perfect text rendering.
Over time I’ve come to realise that having two drawing apps makes no sense. The fact that Adobe has Photoshop and Illustrator does not mean its a good idea for us to have the same. All I needed to add to Sketch were bitmap filters and DrawIt would be obsolete. Sketch doesn’t have this (yet?), but we have added a pixel preview in the last beta and we’re getting closer.
Instead of selling customers and app that I know won’t be updated anymore I decided to remove DrawIt from the website immediately. While I know there’s no good alternative yet in Sketch, it felt wrong to pretend that DrawIt was still a good purchase. I want to be proud of the apps I sell and this was no longer the case with DrawIt. It would go to far to explain the fundamental architectural flaws in DrawIt, but suffice to say the idea was a good but the implementation less so.
My goal at the moment is to add the last missing bits from DrawIt to Sketch. When that is done I’ll make sure a cross-upgrade is easy by making sure Sketch can better read DrawIt files and by giving DrawIt customers a cheap way to get their hands on Sketch. I will have more news on that once Sketch is ready for this.
I wanted to wait with this blog post until I had something more concrete to offer, but too many people have asked me personally about DrawIt and so I thought I would do better to explain it on my blog. If there are more questions, please make a comment or write to our support directly.
Thank you for listening
Fontcase 2.0.3, and Lion
I’m happy to report that Apple has just approved Fontcase 2.0.3. This update reintroduces Smart Collections, a Last Import Collection and probably most important of all fixes makes Fontcase fully compatible with Lion.
Those of you already running the GM will have found lots of seemingly random crashes and those should now be a thing of the past. Apple has changed a lot under the hood for the technologies we’re using and this update addresses those issues. I was in a hurry to get those fixes out and haven’t yet had the time to make Fontcase’s fullscreen mode work on Lion, so that will have to wait for a future update.
You may also notice that the App should load its library a lot faster, but on launching, switching views and especially searching. We hope you like this update.
Fontcase 2.0 Released
I’m extremely happy to say that Fontcase 2.0 has just been released in the Mac App Store. Fontcase 2.0 has an almost completely new interface, and not a single part of it was left untouched. Be sure to check out it.
Fontcase and DrawIt in FusionAds bundle
I’m happy to announce that both Fontcase and DrawIt are available in the Fusion Ads Holiday bundle. It’s a wonderful bundle and filled with great apps and services. Even if none of the apps in there appeal to you, still check out the website; it’s most original.
SketchPad no longer for sale
A few days ago I decided to remove SketchPad from the App Store. I’ve been unhappy with the current version for a long time and as a consequence felt uncomfortable selling it. SketchPad 1.0 was developed before I had ever seen or touched an iPad for real and it shows. SketchPad 1.1 was an attempt to improve the application with proper multitouch support (something that is impossible to test in the Simulator) but it was still obvious that there was lots of room for improvement.
MacGraphoto Bundle
Yesterday the new MacGraPhoto bundle launched with Sketch included as one its members. Last year I participated in the first iteration with DrawIt and I’m honored to be participating again with Sketch. I think this year the bundle has some really neat applications in it and if you have been thinking of buying Sketch but were waiting for an offer; here’s your chance.
Sketch 1.0.5
Yesterday I released Sketch 1.0.5 which is, despite its minor version bump, quite an important update. This release adds Blending Modes and Layer Opacity to the inspector panel, both which have been requested a lot ever since I released version 1.0.
Sketch 1.0, one week later
It has now been a week ago since I Launched Sketch. The launch has been great and I’ve received lots of valuable feedback. In fact, already four little updates have been released fixing little things or adding little missing things. I want to thank everyone for helping me make the launch a success.