Toolbox 0.8.0: Node-based editor for making digital art
Posted by Dave Merten 
Sep 7, 2008 at 12:21pm
Opcoders has announced the fifth public alpha of Toolbox, a visual programming language for constructing digital art. Toolbox is useful for generating textures, composing logos, photo manipulation, typography and web graphics. Among many new features in this release, Toolbox is now a single window program, and one the biggest changes.
New Feature – New User Interface:
The transition is now completed! Where Toolbox in the past has been a multi window program, its now a single window program. The benefits of this are enormous. Better use of screen estate. No wasted time on resizing/moving windows. Usable in resolutions as low as 1024×768. Fewer UI elements on the screen. The multiple windows didn’t cover the entire screen, so other applications was be visible behind Toolbox, causing visual noise. This visual noise is now eliminated, because the single window entirely covers the background. Its no longer possible to click-through and activate a background application by accident.
New Feature – Busy Animation:
The resize pad of a building block shows an animation when its processing data. This gives a clear picture of whats going on, where is the time spend, time remaining before output can be seen and which way the data is flowing. In the past the progress was only shown in the window title.
New Feature – Comment Fields:
Getting started with Toolbox is now easier than ever. There are two tutorials that makes use of the new comment fields, so its possible to read rather than guessing. Reading comments are okay, but editing comment fields are very experimental.
New Feature – New Look:
In the past the multi window interface leaved little room for making things pretty. This has been addressed with the new interface. Building blocks cast shadows. Appearance have been carefully chosen for comment fields and busy animation. The control bar resembles the one found in Apple Instruments. The new look is attractive.
Other Changes:
- Worley noise brick has been added.
- Resize brick has been added.
- Shadow2 brick has been added.
- Export panel has been added.
- Appearance preferences has been added.
- New shortcut. F2 for switching primary/secondary areas.
- New shortcut. Spacebar for scrolling.
- New shortcut. Double click for inserting bricks.
- Added ‘Aspect’ parameter to the ‘Text’ brick.
- Added ‘Prewitt-Sobel’ parameter to the ‘Normal’ brick.
- Added ‘Color2’ parameter to the ‘Rect’ brick.
- Added ‘Multiply’ to ‘Alpha Operations’ for the ‘Mix’ brick.
- More example projects has been added.
- Renamed ‘Pad’ brick to ‘Trim’.
- Renamed ‘Overlay’ brick to ‘Rect’.
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Dave Merten
Dave was one of the founding guides at ‘The Mining Company,’ now known as About.com, in February 1998. Dave was their ‘Focus on Mac Support’ guide. In 2004 he started ‘G5 Owners Support Group,’ and in 2005, renamed it ‘Mac Owners Support Group.’ In 2006, he started the ‘MacOSG Support Corner’ column here at Macsimum News.
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