pouët.net

Look guys, I would not be writting here about my tool if I did not think it is great for creating graphics for demo's. It Is! My Mersica logo and the GfxEditor logo was created with the tool.

The tool is great for creating demo graphics, specially text logos, but also sprites, and all kind of other things, and I hope some of you will do that. I have made a few demos and intros in my life, so I know what I'm talking about.

I'm not critizing photshop here or any other tool, I'm just trying to explain you guys what my tool have that the others don't, and I'm only doing that because you guys don't know about it, so its my arguments as response to your comments. I like having a constructive discussion. Thank you for allowing me to do that here.

Spider: I respect what you have done for the demoscene in the past, but you are dragging yourself down in the dirt with your behaviour now. Either that or you are a damn good pouet troll :)

more proof that trsi simply sucks!

Has the demoscene changed that much since 1993, that it is not ok anymore to show off and brag about the stuff you make? Not even a little bit?

Well, I guess everybody wastes some time of his life on a PhotoShop-clone. The sad part of the story is that it's always coders, and they never start with user-research, wireframes or prototypes. What a waste of talent, but I guess this is what demoscene is all about. Welcome back :-)

not if your stuff sucks donkeyballs!

I rebember always bragging about my demos and intros back in the 90's, even though some of them sucked in comparision others :) And everybody else was doing the same for their own stuff... It was nice... I miss the old days...

spot on. he should have dropped a little of that coder-pride, brushed up on a few fundamental design patterns, ran a copy of Fireworks, prototyped the crap out of it and executed at least a few usability tests on people... before even touching a line of code. its the only way you can make truly objective design decisions.


are you aware of the average age of sceners these days? we're mainly adults (despite the surface impression given here on pouet) and the only thing you're likely to get here is cold brutal truth. which can be a good thing, depending on what you want (ie: truth or an ego massage)

spider: there is no doubt a lot of nice code in your app...my personal opinion is that you just need to decide the apps main target audience and redesign the interface accordingly.

I want the truth, thank you.

So what some of you are telling me is that I have no chance of using my skills to improve my tool on a daily basis, hard working style that I have done the last 5 years? Give me a break! Ofcourse I can do that, so give me the thruth, give me constructive feedback so I can make a better tool, I need help, ofcourse I do, who don't?

Your suggestion are greately apreciated. The tool is free to use, its a tool for your enjoyment and use. There is nothing else more that I want them making the tool great for you guys. But ofcourse, this is a beta release, go read the definition of beta software... It seems you guys forgot :)

You want the truth?


You spent the last 5 years doing that. Thats the truth.

Spider: You want one simple single advice? Just look at what is successful these days: It's Apple and the minimalistic approach to design. The "less is more" or "Keep it Simple Stupid" concepts.

Your application is perhaps super great, but it looks like a Boeing 707 dashboard, it looks like the worse of the worse multi-windows applications. Things are hidden in tabs that allows you to enable stuff that happens on other windows, etc... it's just complicated, which means high-learning curve, which is exactly the opposite of what you are trying to do: allowing somebody to make a custom pair of shoes in 5 minutes.

What people are telling is the following: Technical craftmanship is only a part of what is required to established a new product and let alone a new start-up company. You spent a lot of time focussing on details that are negligible and ignored important aspects like marketing, usability and possibly even a proper business plan and sales pitch.

Did you spent some time researching your market? Did you stay up to date on what others were doing? There are plenty of blogs and networking opportunities out there. Reading Techcrunch can't hurt either, although half of the posts make me barf.

HEY people, be nice. Whats with all the hatin'? Didnt we just have a thread about this kind of JANTELAWism shit?

Maybe the actual GFX program is not the first or best of its kind. But always nice with alternatives. I guess the customizing your own shoes and stuff directly is the whole point here. Haven't seen that this good before. Other sites that offers this pretty much suck compared to this.
But as someone mentioned earlier, I doubt there is a big market for it.
There will be the odd partyguy making his own tshirts for him and his bachelor party, but its not for the masses. The Masses are stupid and want to be told what to buy.

But it is a good tool for starting retailers who want to make their own clothing line. So you should try to get their attention, and not the "Everyday Normal Guy".

Here is a challenge:

Name ANY successful web company that had a 5 year stealth period before rolling out their product. I would bet the average development time before release is between 3-12 months.

I agree, thanks for the advice.

Improving the website and the tool is what it's all about for me now during the beta period. I need users to test my tool and give me feedback, and I think sceners would be great to have onboard. These are the things I have been focusing on since 1th May, when the website was launched...

I realise I can't do it alone, I already started working with 3-4 people, all of them have different skills... one of the marketing guys is also a graphic designer, the other marketing guy is good at promoting, so his job have not started yet, but we are preparing stuff now because it takes times and the timing for the full blown marketing campaign is after the beta period.

Definition of beta software:

"Beta is the software development phase following alpha. It generally begins when the software is feature complete. The focus of beta testing is reducing impacts to users, often incorporating usability testing."

"The users of a beta version are called beta testers. They are usually customers or prospective customers, willing to test the software for free or for a reduced price."

"Beta version software is likely to be useful for internal demonstrations and previews to select customers. Some developers refer to this stage as a preview, a prototype, a technical preview or as an early access."

"Developers release either a closed beta or an open beta; open betas are to a larger community group, usually the general public. The testers report any bugs that they found and features they would like to see in the final version."

"Beta-software is software still in the process of development, made available to "beta-testers" for the purpose of identifying problems in the application."

The users that I have onboard now, they all know its beta software, it's important to know that so we all know what its about. Users can use the tool, they not required to be beta-tester, but in all my posting I kind of ask them to help me improve the tool.

Thank you for the support.

Feel free to keep pasting definitions of "beta software", but you just don't get it - beta is just a stage in software development. Development that was already talked through and designed before it was even started. Claiming that you'll "fix all the issues when it comes out of beta" just shows everyone (in addition to the dreadful design of your tool) that you haven't got a clue on how to develop software.

Thats korrect :)

On this project I worked without following the Extreme Programming guide lines that I usually follow when working for other companies on other projects...

On this project I worked more with a mentality of "A painter working on his painting". A painter don't do market research, and usuability tests and show his work to a bunch of people before it's done or almost done.

Because of this, I may end up not having the best tool possible, when it commes to many aspects, I agree...

But, I enjoyed working in my own "crazy way", my own tempo, living like a Zoombi locked in my apartment :)

I always knew that I would be taking a great risk by doing it that way, but I choosed that. And I am proud of what I have accomplished.

It is possible to do a great looking design and have it displayed in less than 5 minuttes... I show that in videos, and will show it even more on better videos that I'm working on now. People kan just repeat my steps and they'll be able to do the same.

I agree and admitted in prevoius posts here and on Zazzle Forum "Show &Tell", that currently, the editor has a high-learning curve, but I think I can do alot to improve on that. The hardest part was making the platform.

ffs. spider. you are just making it worse with each post you do.

your tool does not work for the generic pouet.net user.

it may work for others.

i agree with the others that an approach with field study might have improved the "beta" result. if you follow the postings/blogs/whatever that people have made on demotools like werkzeug - the main factor of awesomeness is that the artist using the tool had his saying in the making.

try comparing word perfect 5.5 for dos with a recent version of e.g. ms word. they basicly cover the same amount of functionality, however wp had all functionality glued to weird keyboard-combinations while ms word has context aware menus and what not (and no; im not saying the ms word is the path to follow, since it has its flaws too :)

I don't think pouet.net is an appropriate site to "test" this app anyway...

I agree with you and the other users too :)

You said:

"try comparing word perfect 5.5 for dos with a recent version of e.g. ms word. they basicly cover the same amount of functionality, however wp had all functionality glued to weird keyboard-combinations while ms word has context aware menus and what not (and no; im not saying the ms word is the path to follow, since it has its flaws too :) "

This is VERSION 1 of GfxEditor, how as you said, products tend to improve for each version, so will GfxEditor...

Will be interesting to see 2 years from now how GfxEditor v.2 will look like? I bet it will be way better... :) I have to be pretty stupid to fuck this thing up going forward... And I have too many great advisers for that to happen :)

Spider: One major improvement u can do is to make the canvas bigger, and many of the panels can be "hidden". Some panels are not nescessary during the "creation" phase.

And have u considered using Flash 10 or 11, it will improve the performance of your software using actionscript 3.

It's already possible to resize the Canvas... On the videos, for the most I have the Canvas at "View" 25% or 30% so its easier to demonstrate stuff.

For changing the Canvas size, select a different option in the "View" dropdown box.

On the Canvas Page title, you can see the current view size setting.

Its also possible to zoom in on the page, just press with mouse on the page thumbnail at the Pages gui-panel.

I started making the tool back in 2005, at the time flash 9 was in alpha or beta, so I used actionscript 2. When I'll have more ressources, e.q hire some Brazilian developers, I'll start the development of version 2, that will be done in newest flash platform.

Spider: Sure, but then i have to scroll vertically/horisontally in my browser when it gets to big. What i want is to have more space for the canvas in my browsers client window width/height, and have scrolling in the canvas window.

Ok... You can do this:

1. Go to your browser and find in the menu "Vew in Full Screen", so the page is ocupies the whole screen.

2. Use the mouse to scroll the Canavas: Just press Ctrl and move the mouse to the sides of the window. It will autoscroll :)

3. When zoomed in, press "s" key and move with mouse to scroll zoom box.

key 4. See shortcuts page for more shortcuts: http://www.gfxeditor.com/shortcuts

Or just go to editor window menu and choose "Shortcuts keys" in under the menu Help.