There are many web development tools available on the market. Some of them ships with basic features and some contains very advanced features. What if you are unable to use any commercial tool available and still you want to design a pretty complex design, slice it, and convert it to html/css.
How do I know this? I know this since once I ran in to this situation by myself.
What I did first was to download Inkscape, which is a free vector graphic program. Creating a design in Inkscape is same as other vector graphic applications. But unfortunately there is no straight forward way of slicing the design and exporting. This is what I did as a workaround.
I simply add a new layer to the project and named it as “slicing”. I made sure to keep the “slicing” layer above from the rest of the layers and locked all the other layers below it.
I drew a rectangle surrounding the area I wanted to export. If the rectangle has stroke or fill it was critical to disable them since I wanted to export only the background. I have done this to each and every slice I wanted to export.
Since the slicing layers have no stroke or fill, it seems very difficult to select them if I accidentally deselected them. But “xml tree” is a handy solution to this. The “xml tree” can be located from the top tool bar of the Inkscape UI.
The exported slices are in png format. You can't export to jpeg or gif files directly from Inkscape. But you can use some other programs like Gimp to convert png files to jpeg or gif files.
How do I know this? I know this since once I ran in to this situation by myself.
What I did first was to download Inkscape, which is a free vector graphic program. Creating a design in Inkscape is same as other vector graphic applications. But unfortunately there is no straight forward way of slicing the design and exporting. This is what I did as a workaround.
I simply add a new layer to the project and named it as “slicing”. I made sure to keep the “slicing” layer above from the rest of the layers and locked all the other layers below it.
I drew a rectangle surrounding the area I wanted to export. If the rectangle has stroke or fill it was critical to disable them since I wanted to export only the background. I have done this to each and every slice I wanted to export.
Since the slicing layers have no stroke or fill, it seems very difficult to select them if I accidentally deselected them. But “xml tree” is a handy solution to this. The “xml tree” can be located from the top tool bar of the Inkscape UI.
The exported slices are in png format. You can't export to jpeg or gif files directly from Inkscape. But you can use some other programs like Gimp to convert png files to jpeg or gif files.
Comments