Howdy World!
From forum (and not only), you know there are various updates already discussed and scheduled.
Many of those are connected, so I needed a little bit of time to prepare all the needed basics.
Well, basics are now done, and so we're finally starting to release something!
The two updates mentioned here are just the beginning: they are "bases" themselves, so before proceeding too far I'd first like to hear your comments on those.
So, lets see them!
1 - MASSIVE CHANGE TO THE CLIPARTS POPUP
Probably you've already noticed "something" different in your clipart popup.
It may require you to change some of your settings in case the update altered it a lot, but surely it's a far better version.
For this release, the main point is to make a better navigation for cliparts, by keeping categories always visible and using also Groups properly.
On the left side:
Here you Categories are shown.
If you will start to use Groups and Subgroups to group them, the layout will be even better: only groups will be shown, and by clicking them only the list of clipart categories which are associated with the group itself will appear/disappear.
Considering that categories can be assigned to multiple groups, using them properly will allow to create a very compact and nice sidebar to navigate categories.
There are various new classes and ids added as well, so you can fully alter the look with CSS. Firebug is your friend.
The entire column is included into a DIV with a specific ID: this will allow also to control eventual scrollbars and size.
Also consider that both group and category names can accept HTML coding, allowing you to add whatever you want (may be images, bullets, effects, etc....)
In case you used images for categories, to preserve the look they will be shown into a tooltip when mouseovering the category name, instead of being displayed straight in the page.
Right side:
That's the same as before, showing the cliparts that are part of the last clicked category.
Even here I've added a big DIV including the entire area, again thinking at possible scrollbars.
There will be more to come, but that's it for this first release.
2 - PROPORTIONAL AND PHYSICAL SIZE FOR CLIPARTS
In the
LIBRARY ITEMS => Upload Clipart => Your Category area, when editing cliparts, you will find 2 new fields, into a block called
Forced Proportional Clipart.
From the help I wrote right in there:
Quote
Forced Proportional Clipart
If Forced Proportional is enabled, the clipart will never be resized in desgner.
Enable this property when you want to be sure the clipart will ALWAYS keep it's original aspect ratio.
Clipart will still be resizable, but only proportionally.
If you will fill also fill the Forced Width value, then the clipart will not be resizable at all.
The clipart will be sized to match the physical size defined by this value, proportionally to the entire design area size.
The value you have to enter here is the witdh of the clipart: height will be automatically calculated by keeping clipart's original aspect ratio.
The value is "unit independent": if you will enter a value of 4.80, it will be 4.80 inches or 4.80 centimenters depending if the product you're designing is inches or centimeter based.
Enter 0 (zero) to disable.
So, at single clipart level, these values will allow a control that cannot be altered at product level.
Those values will act directly at the image-generation script level, so they will nullify any extra info from designer.
If you'll try to stretch a clipart that has
Forced Proportional enabled, you'll see it will reload ignoring how you resized it, and keeping it's aspect ratio.
The reasons and possible scenarios for those options are very interesting:
About
Forced Proportional, just think at logos: many companies (like CocaCola, Shell, and other big ones) allow the use of their logos, but at the strict condition that they're NEVER distorted.
Before this, in RTD this was possible only by disabling resizing for templates: now it will be possible to define a specific image to have this property. Not to mention all the cases in which you want to be sure your art will not be ugly distorted too.
Possible scenarios for
Forced Width are even better.
If such value will be set, the clipart will be proportionally sized to match the physical size, instead of being loaded at normal default size. This means that this option can be used to place cliparts representing real objects.
The request for this was from a user making custom drumheads: he needs users to be able to place mic holes as well, but naturally he needs those holes to be the right size, visually.
I think this could be interesting because it could be used to compile the layout of a physical object through RTD, instead of designs only.
In general, it could be used to visually apply to a design any possible real object in form of a clipart.
3 - UPCOMING UPDATES
As I mentioned, those are "bases". More updates will be released soon as well.
So, as I need to feel your passion too, here's what I'm already working on:
- SPECIAL CODES TO BE PASSED VIA URL TO ALTER TEMPLATES
Simply what the name is: a set of parameters you can use to alter templates.
Extremely useful to have only one template, and create very quickly different versions of it.
Codes will allow to alter colors, fonts, backgrounds and cliparts
- NEW PRICING ADDON "CLIPART CATEGORY BASED"
This will be similar to the latest "Background color based addon" we released a couple months ago.
So far, you can only price cliparts depending if they are custom uploads or system ones.
This new addon will allow you to define a price per-clipart in case the clipart is included into a specific category.
The perfect addon for the new "physical objects" option described above!
- CLIPART BOOKMARKS
Into the new clipart popup, registered users will be able to save "bookmars", alias their favourite clips. Similar to lightboxers used in various stock photo websites.
Users will be able to create multiple folders, and will have regular add/edit/delete functions to manage those.
Also, there will be options to move bookmarks between custom folders
- ADDING COLOR REDUCTION TOOL ALSO FOR ARTWORK UPLOAD IN INSTANT PRICING TOOLS
From
http://support.realtimedesigner.com/forum/read.php?3,3553
- ABILITY TO ASSIGN SPECIFIC PRODUCTS TO STORES
From
http://support.realtimedesigner.com/forum/read.php?3,3674
- AN OPTION FOR USERS TO SAVE THEIR CART CONTENTS AS PENDING ORDERS
From
http://support.realtimedesigner.com/forum/read.php?3,3835
4 - NOT ENOUGH?
You really read till here?
Ok, then I'm also glad to annouce yesterday we switched to a new dedicated database server.
Perhaps you will not notice any difference, but that machine should really help avoiding any slowdown/bottleneck in case of high loads. The new little baby is actually a little MONSTER, a quad-core machine with 16GB ram dedicated entirely to the database only. LOVELY!
Well, that's really all for now.
Please let me know your comments and suggestions about the new clipart popup.
It will be a very important base for the upcoming bookmarks feature, so before releasing that too, I'd like to be sure all is fine with the new layout and everyone is happy with it.
Thanks for reading!
