Archive of January 2010
Toggling layers in OmniGraffle
Sometimes I need to output PDFs of a wireframe produced in OmniGraffle in two versions, one with annotations and one without. Luckily I habitually put all annotations on their own layer, so all that’s needed is a simple AppleScript to tell OmniGraffle to toggle the printable and visible nature of every layer named “Annotation”. A bit of googling turned up this forum post which does most of the work, I just needed to add in the printable property. So, if this is something you do a lot in your OmniGraffle document this script could save you a lot of time.
Disclaimer: If this kills your OmniGraffle document it’s your fault not mine. It’s tested and working perfectly in OmniGraffle 5.2.1 but your milage may vary. Back up your document first.
This is also, for some reason, the first time I’ve ever even looked at AppleScript. I’m gonna play with it a bit more in future.
UPDATE: I’ve now added two more useful scripts, both prompt you for a layer name before locking or unlocking all instances of that layer depending which script you choose.
01:38 PM | 1 Comment | Tags: omnigraffle, toggle, applescript, annotation, layers, printability, visibility, lock, unlockThe Apple Tablet Prediction Game
Feel free to come back here in a couple of weeks and tell me I was wrong, but my gut instinct on this whole tablet thing is that the speculation so far mostly ignores one key ingredient, and that is that Apple will be wanting to completely change the game in some area or other. That area isn’t going to be tablet computing as the only people who bought a tablet PC in the last 8 years were sales reps. Nobody wants a tablet PC, they’re useless (I’m looking at you Crunchpad). So, I’m going to predict that Apple are going to change two games here.
The first, and widely guessed one is print media. The new device will provide beautiful seamless ways to purchase and consume magazines, books and newspapers in a digital format. This one is a fairly safe bet.
The second is TV. Media centres currently are generally the preserve of the nerd. In my entire family, I think I’m the only one who has a computer hooked up to the TV. Normal people don’t want the hassle of maintaining a computer just to watch movies or record broadcast programming. But what if they could have a touchscreen device which lets them rent the latest movies in HD through an easy, intuitive interface, and then instantly stream that movie to any TV in the house? What if this device could also let them buy content to keep, store it on the internal drive and provide a beautiful, visual way of browsing their media library? What if this device could provide TV on demand from most of the major broadcasters?
All of a sudden, we have a game changing device and Apple have taken over your living room by just making everything easy enough that your mum wants one.
03:52 PM | 0 Comments