Inkscape 0.48 Essentials for Web Designers (Book)

Nowadays, most of us are being familiar to how things done in the Internet, those fancy static websites, blogs, and even those dynamic corporate websites. In most web pages, chances are there are charts, illustrations, background designs and logos. Ever wonder how to design your own? Even if your a skilled graphic artist looking for an alternative to commercial graphic editor software, a hobbyist looking for a tool to meet your needs designing your blog or personal webpages, or a new comer who’s eager to learn the ways, Inkscape is a great graphics tool to start with and with the book: “Inkscape 0.48 Essentials for Web Designers” things will be easier.

Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format (www.inkscape.org). And it’s been 2 years now since I used this wonderful tool and it keeps on getting better and better.

“Inkscape 0.48 Essentials for Web Designers” is a very handy guide to get you started in using Inkscape. The book covers every corners of the graphic editor, from screen familiarization up to the creation of your first vector graphic. For previous users, the book also has great guides for advance Inkscape features such as tracing embedded images, image conversion from raster to a vector, creating pattern, manipulating path and the uses of XML editor, even there’s some pointers in creating basic animations.

After a few hours of reading the book, especially the Chapter 8, I’ve been able to enhance my skills and understand more about the concept and principle in designing things for my blog. The book tackles not how to design your own graphics or logo but also how effectively do it. Also on the said chapter, I just  followed the guide on lay-outing template for blog pages and it works well with Inkscape, designing templates is necessary before you do the actual design in order to anticipate the needed graphics, button, with their actual size so your pages loads faster.

Afterward, after reading the Chapter 9 – Using the XML Editor, which delivers details of what is Inkscape XML editor and it may help you understand more what is the underlying details behind the SVG image. For advance users and for greate accuracy in dimensions and other measurements, using the Inkscape XML editor will be a great help.  The book also discusses collaboration with other image editors such as GIMP (http://www.gimp.org) which is also a good tool in graphics manipulation. Chapter 10 – Creating Basic Animations, elaborates more about this open-source image editor and how Inkscape can be used side by side to do basic animations.

All in all, the book “Inkscape 0.48 Essentials for Web Designers” will be a huge help in preparation to use Inkscape for all your graphics design requirements. Personally it is one of my main tool in creating buttons, toolbars, and other vector-graphics designs, and with the book you’ll become more productive using this great application.

There’s an available sample chapters of the book here, and for more details about the book click here.

 

Nowadays, most of us are being familiar to how things done in the Internet, those fancy static websites, blogs, and even those dynamic corporate websites. In most web pages, chances are there are charts, illustrations, background designs and logos. Ever wonder how to design your own? Even if your a skilled graphic artist looking for an alternative to commercial graphic editor software, a hobbyist looking for a tool to meet your needs designing your blog or personal webpages, or a new comer who’s eager to learn the ways, Inkscape is a great graphics tool to start with and with the book: “Inkscape 0.48 Essentials for Web Designers” things will be easier.

 

Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format (www.inkscape.org). And it’s been 2 years now since I used this wonderful tool and it keeps on getting better and better.

 

“Inkscape 0.48 Essentials for Web Designers” is a very handy guide to get you started in using Inkscape. The book covers every corners of the graphic editor, from screen familiarization up to the creation of your first vector graphic. For previous users, the book also has great guides for advance Inkscape features such as tracing embedded images, image conversion from raster to a vector, creating pattern, manipulating path and the uses of XML editor, even there’s some pointers in creating basic animations.

 

After a few hours of reading the book, especially the Chapter 8, I’ve been able to enhance my skills and understand more about the concept and principle in designing things for my blog. The book tackles not how to design your own graphics or logo but also how effectively do it. Also on the said chapter, I just followed the guide on lay-outing template for blog pages and it works well with Inkscape, designing templates is necessary before you do the actual design in order to anticipate the needed graphics, button, with their actual size so your pages loads faster.

 

Afterward, after reading the Chapter 9 – Using the XML Editor, which delivers details of what is Inkscape XML editor and it may help you understand more what is the underlying details behind the SVG image. For advance users and for greate accuracy in dimensions and other measurements, using the Inkscape XML editor will be a great help.

 

The book also discusses collaboration with other image editors such as GIMP (http://www.gimp.org) which is also a good tool in graphics manipulation. Chapter 10 – Creating Basic Animations, elaborates more about this open-source image editor and how Inkscape can be used side by side to do basic animations.

 

All in all, the book “Inkscape 0.48 Essentials for Web Designers” will be a huge help in preparation to use Inkscape for all your graphics design requirements. Personally it is one of my main tool in creating buttons, toolbars, and other vector-graphics designs, and with the book you’ll become more productive using this great application.

 

 

 

 

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Inkscape 0.48 on Ubuntu 10.04

You can now try the new version of Inkscape 0.48, which contains many new features, details are listed here.

Here’s how to install it in your  current system:

1. Download the binary package on the following links:
   for 32-bit download here
   for 64-bit download here
2. Then install it, if using the console follow this steps

   sudo dpkg -i $NAMEofFILE.deb
   sudo apt-get install -f

3. Done, to check if it’s properly installed, check the About Inkscape

Short-cut to insert Unicode Characters in Linux

I don’t know why I am so late learning this thing, but then I’d like to share it to everyone who still don’t know to insert Unicode Characters (UTF-8) directly anywhere in linux (Console, OpenOffice, Firefox ..etc).

1. Press Ctrl + Shift + U, and wait for the small “u” character to appear.

2. Then type in the corresponding hex code for that characters, here’s a widely used character here in the Philippines for example the Ñ (D1) and lower version ñ (F1).

3. Press ENTER afterwards.

4. Done.