Linux for Designers

At the beginning of that week i wrote a post about the upcoming Xmind 3.1, now it is available for download at the Xmind-Website. Xmind 3.1. shipped with:
* Presentation Mode
* Better theme behavior and default themes
* Brainstorm mode
* Improved search capabilities
* Improved Sorting
* Gant-Chart and Tasks
A bad detail is that half of the new features are only available in the commercial Pro version.

At the beginning of the year i wrote a post about the brilliant mindmapping software Xmind. A lot of the new features of the upcoming XMind 3.1 are illustrated at the developer blog.

The 4th and hopefully last prerelease of Inkscape 0.47 is out. This prerelease is focused on stable live path effects.
So test it and send the developers your feedback. The bad news is that there is no prerelease4 package for Ubuntu yet:
https://launchpad.net/~inkscape-nightly/+ppa-packages
https://launchpad.net/~inkscape.testers/+archive/ppa

After knowing that all my Firefox extensions i installed are runing now on Firefox 3.5 too and reading the post on Tombuntu about Ubuntuzilla i'm much happier with the Firefox browser. Today i found another really nice goody at the t3n tips: A nearly complete guide tuning Firefox 3.5! Sorry it is completly written in german.

The 2nd prerelease of Inkscape is available, please test and report any issues you run into.
Check out the roadmap and my older posts about the devlopment of Inkscape 0.47 (here, here and here) to explore the new features.
If you are using Ubuntu Linux you will find the older prerelease 0 at the Inkscape PPA.

I did it, i switched from Ubuntu Hardy and my old Dell Vostro 17 to my new Dell Studio 17 and Ubuntu Jaunty. After i ordered my new laptop i was afraid getting problems with the ATI graphics card. And i was afraid too getting all my own scripts, tricks and apps runing. Here is what is working so far...

Read more...

Last year at the Ubucon'08 i'm getting involved designing a new flyer for Ubuntu Germany. After Julius Bloch poked us again and again, end of last year Thomas Keup and me was thinking about the message. Based on the workshop of the Ubucon'08 and our brainstorming Thomas created a really cool text for it. And so it was now on me creating a really cool design that fits to this superb text.

...and i did well »

All work is based on Inkscape, Gimp, Seperate+, Dejavu Sans & Ubuntu font, Moonshiner and CMYK Tiff 2 PDF for Gimp.

Thanks to all the people give us feedback and hunting for typo bugs.

UPDATE:
Here is the web optimized PDF of it.

For a long time i used VYM - View your Mind for visualize ideas. But i was looking for a nice cross plattform solution for sharing my maps etc. FreeMind was a little bit ugly and the developments seems to be very slow. On my research at Wikipedia about Mind Mapping software i discovered the amazing Xmind.
Xmind is based on the Eclipse plattform and a really great tool. It is available for any operating system (including Ubuntu too) and for developers as a Eclipse plugin too (so they have the floating diagramms directly besides there code).
The created maps and the software looking really nice and professional. Xmind is very easy to use too and filled up with powerfull features (like importing maps from FreeMind). Now it's my favorite for brain stuff.

Gimp 2.6.2 is out now and includes several bugfixes. You can grab a Deb package at Getdeb.net.
The Liquid Rescale plugin for Gimp is available as version 0.5.1 and the Liquid Rescale Library is availbale as version 0.2.1, both versions are bugfix releases.
Eric Lamarque has created a Photoshop Pattern Loader for Gimp but still no Ubuntu package available
The X11 Mouse Cursor plug-in reaches version 1.1.3, a Deb package for Ubuntu is available too.

For those they where here in Göttingen at the Ubucon and for those that stying at home, here is the presentation of my talk "Creative Business with Ubuntu".