on code.

Ever since Google Appengine came out, I’ve ben wanting to try it for some of my own projects. Since I’ve been learning Python as a part of my graduation project, and I finally have some spare time on my hand, I decided to give it a try.

Whenever I code something, it’s usually something I need. This is no different: since I’ve made the transition from MacosX to Ubuntu professionally, I’ve been looking to replace fireworks, an essential part of my workflow when it comes to getting front-end work done. The slicing part of fireworks is so well tuned, that you’ll never want to return to Photoshop once you’ve mastered it. It allows you to point to each individual slice, set the filename, optimizations and colorspace options. I always keep my slice documents around as part of the project documents, and it’s been proven handy: in cases where only cosmetic changes were made to websites I’ve done (read: images), all I needed to do is import the new desings into a separate set of layers, and export all the slices again.

There’s nothing on Ubuntu that comes close: Gimp doesn’t have slicing, Inkscape is not very handy with images, and that’s about the alternatives that we have. So the first app I made on Google Appengine is just about that: slicing. Slicing images, in a similar way that Fireworks allows me to do.

It’s not even near ready, but I’d like to present it as a pretty function proof-of-concept, to be elaborated when more time arrives, maybe. And yes, I’ve used it a couple of times already

( furthermore, source code is here )