I’ve been using Illustrator for an upcoming game I am working on and found it tedious to export the graphics to separate image files, so I took the time to learn how to write a simple Illustrator script using Javascript.

In Illustrator I use an Artboard for each unique image in the game. With so many artboards, it was a lot of work to export them to images. Illustrator 5.1 has the ability to name artboards and then export all artboards to individual files, but it annoyingly prefixes the artboard names with the filename. As well, I wanted to automatically export both the normal size and double size (for Retina display).

I came up with this script:

ExportArtboardsAsRetinaPNG.jsx

It exports all artboards as PNG at both 100% and 200% scaling. The 100% file is named: artboard_name.png. The 200% file is named: artboard_name@2x.png. Artboards that are named as the default, starting with “Artboard” are ignored, as well, any artboard starting with a ‘-’ (minus) character. This allows you to exclude artboards you don’t want exported with this script.

The best way to use the script is to place it into your Illustrator scripts folder: /Applications/Adobe Illustrator CS5.1/Presets/en_US/Scripts

Doing this will make it available under the File menu under Scripts.

Hope this helps someone!

Looks like Camera+ now has a way to integrate their really nice camera app into other apps. I am seriously considering to do just that. You will still need to own the app, but it would provide not only better picture taking but awesome photo editing as well.

I know I just released version 4.1.0, but I found a problem under iOS 5.1. When taking a picture with the camera, the camera screen doesn’t go away after saving the picture. Anyway a fixed version, 4.1.1, has been submitted to the AppStore and should be out soon.

Should be available soon! 

I just submitted a minor update to UltraList, UltraList Plus and UltraExpense (Hopefully it will be approved soon). Here’s what’s new:

+ Faster View Options: Previously there were only two ways to view the items in a list: Automatic and Extended. Two more have been added: Brief and Compact. These new options along with Extended are much faster when opening and scrolling on long lists. The Automatic mode, while can look better, is very slow for long lists. For lower performance devices (such as iPod touch 2nd gen, iPod touch 3rd gen, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS), the Automatic option is not available as the performance is not good on those devices.

+ Fixed display problems: On iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, text in some places in the app were not placed properly. This has been fixed.

For UltraList Plus and UltraExpense only:

+ Group by Currency in Expenses: The ability to group expenses by Currency has been added with three grouping options: Currency, Category/Currency, and Client/Category/Currency.

Getting close to releasing version 4.0.1 of the UltraList based apps, it fixes a bunch of little bugs.

There are 50 copies to be given away, the giveaway ends on Oct. 22nd.

I just got an email from a user about a strange bug with the search in UltraList. It may not happen for everyone, but I was able to confirm with at least one of my devices. When you tap the top toolbar to bring up a search box, then type a single letter, the keyboard goes away. Tapping the search bar again brings the keyboard back but after typing another character, it goes away again. I am working on fixing this and hopefully will have a release out in a week or so.

In the meantime, if you go to the Home screen, tap [Action] then Settings, then go to General Settings, you should see an option called “Fast Search”, turning this to OFF will eliminate the problem (and of course won’t search as you type, but maybe better than having the problem).  Please look for a minor release for all UltraList products within the next week or so (version 4.0.1) that fixes this problem.

I asked Siri what it’s favorite color is

Took a picture of my UltraList ad in the new iPhone Life magazine Annual Holiday Buyers Guide edition. Hope it gets noticed :)