Stone Design Forums

Expanding Library Resources is a great way to help people understand the power of Create. If you look at my web-site I use a red text separation bar, it's always to hand in LR, I just drag it in. I am also dismayed at the number of people who never set up their headed business paper or invoice statement and add it to LR. By adding these things it does help people learn.

Ok, I whipped this up. A little too clever, but I just wanted to do something with a tony bit of gee-whiz tossed in so it would be visually interesting as much as explanatory. I was thinking maybe the diagram could be use a rollover with the create icon at first, then the icons or screen grabs on the rollover with links to each feature page link or examples pages/tutorials.

I'll whip up a Stone Studio type thing, same idea, probably less cute.

Glad to see the intereste in print! I use Create mainly for Layout, illustration and print! Haven't really used it for web...yet. While this is great to go out to people.. i still think a list needs to be compile by its current users to get an idea of where it stands, so as we promote it, we're clear. Especially, when it comes to what others may need. I have friends who scoff and ask "Why?" even after they've seen it. Simply because of workflow issues. I've talked to a printer or two, even suggesting i buy a copy for them. Their answer, again, with work flow issues (and learning curve). I'm from the east coast, and i don't know if that means anything, but i know everything here is about time. Money often takes a backseat to time. Although, Time, tools, money, and power wrapped in one app...(considering Printers desktop and outsourced alike) usually means a purchase.


I don't know if i'm making sense.. running around like crazy this morning.


So, i really just wanted to get an idea where create stood against these "competitors" before i start promoting it. Promotion of a thing others see as "dead ended".. usually means one gets dead ended out here.

The Mac is a toy mentallity prevails here, and worse non adobe apps are toys rages! Some people really stick thier noses up at Corel here.... (even though it's big with sign makers etc. ) Not saying that things aren't scrutinized everywhere else... but, often when i hear answers like "why don't you just do this...?" I start to think things are different in other places.... Does anyone understand what i'm trying to say? I really want Cocoa apps to take off.. especially, the Stone Studio.

RACERX I thought i was the only one! LOL almost landed a job at the Apple store for making presentations about Create! LOL (and the Omnistuff... and Celestia, and Parsec....) iDraw and Omnigraffle's panels got a good grin when they saw the work flow issues... everything right there! Create.. wow.. the dragwell, and resource panel could have sparked a revolution... but, too many panels.. everyone hated that.. almost made them turn away.... no one round here likes clutter...(when MacWorld was in NY Expose got standing ovations.) Create has definitely stepped up in the last few releases... and has proved that it's willing to step into the ring.....

Word of Caution, for those who think that it's ready for a prize fight though... the punches will come hard. Although, Create often gets a second look... because of its relation to the OS (because, it's cocoa) and things like the drag well and resource panel. (btw, that's what people liked about Omnigraffle too.. it's resources...I'd also keep an eye out for the Omnigroup, Graffles looking like it wants to spread it's wings...) Create's drawing is great and the way you can assign info to everything and make them web resources as well... It's versatiliy and power garner third looks....


It's been said of TIFFany, but, create has a little more to go to shed it's "old" rhapsody look.... Very little to go. TIFFany looks old now. Create is growing. Looking very promising... I'm speaking this way because of the comments i get..and questions.


InDesign got hard punches when it stepped up to Quark. It still does.. I do think that the lack of attentions gives Mr. Stone an advantage over Adobe in that respect. Create's already got Appleworks beat. Well, except that it has that paint program and does spreadsheets.. but, they don't count in this discussion.. LOL okay.. off i go.!

The idea of using OmniGraffle for page layout is a tad perverse. It could be expanded to sucha role, but I think it's in Omni's best interests to create a focus use here. Likewise, I think Create has and needs a similar focus, and I believe we're just talking about how to express that, and get the word out. I've heard Andrew explain this focus before. Maybe something in these pages and examples we're talking about should express this as well, not just leave it implied that is.

I don't mind the idea of having these tool/info panels "attach" to one another, so long as they can unattach, and do these things in a simple way. Omni's method is fine if a bit overwrought to me if people think panel clutter is an issue. I sort of abhor windowshade, but disclosure triangles to collapse and reveal content might be a good idea if enough people need the space.

I just think there's a law of diminishing returns by locking a bunch of this stuff together. An app wth a lot of features like Create is going to have to balance information vs. content and flexibility vs. clutter. I think, as others have said, this becomes more of an issue on smaller screens since you don't or can't just leave up the panels where you like and go about your business. The irony is that on a smaller monitor, panels look more cluttered because they cover content and have to be shuffled with the document window, however locking panels together on a small screen can make them difficult to reach.

I don't know if there's much of the OpenStep UI left in Create, really. The only thing that's like OpenStep is the Inspector (renamed as Info), and frankly I think that's the best thing going for Create. Otherwise, people might not be comfortable with some Cocoa behaviors versus some old Mac OS ones, some details between Cocoa and Carbon apps that haven't been made consistent up yet. I know MacWorld some years ago gave the Stone Studio a raw deal because the reviewer had issues with things like text behavior, but that's just a reflection of Cocoa and the way things are going. Back then, OS X was new and this person obviously was expecting a Classic-like app. I don't know why MacWorld hasn't gotten back to reviewing Create 12 yet. We should take up the cause with the review web sites and magazines as much as anyone!

As far as how Create compares to other apps, most other layout apps are either the cookie-cutter variety (Print Shop, Protraits and Prints, etc.) or they're for press workflows. To me, Create gives me more flexibility and power than the color-by-numbers approach and doesn't give me the hassle of pre-press layout apps that expect pre-flight and all sorts of bells and whistles between layout and printing. I'm either printing at home or I'm saving PDFs and TIFFs and walking them in to a shop, zipped up and ready to go.

As far as illustration, Create is a more obvious kind of tool. In other apps, the set of tools is complex because of feature bloat, effects are often handled in to or three different places, and there are these abstracted tools that can confound the user when they first start using them. For example, some apps have it that you can draw shapes, but no default properties or effects are assigned to them. Good for pros, but how many people first uxsed Illustrator and wondered why the shapes would diappear when they delected them. It's because they didn't even have aline effect assigned to them!

There are features and ways of working with lines and shapes in other apps that Create doesn't provide, most of which I don't ever bother with (though I have a few tools I'd like to see someday). In all, Create is just what people say about it. It has about 80% of the features of other more expensive illustration/drawing apps, and those are the features you use about 95% of the time. If I were to give any critique of Create as an illustration app, it might be that it follows the conventions of most other illustration apps. Though it thankfully lacks the obscure features that can weigh down on the user, it could forge a few of its own features to differentiate itself. (Of course, I say that with specific things in mind, so I have something of an agenda. )

I've only tinkered with web layout so far. The one really important thing I like about Create in this respect is that it's basically a layout app that can publish to html. Other web tools are either their own beasts or, like GoLive, are basically an entire extra process in the assembly line. That's one thing I was trying to get across in the cutesy image above, that web publishing is truly done in the same place as the layout, not just some exporting feature or another pipe to go down. So the Safari/web page image is on the Create logo, not just being pointed to from the logo. The three things I think that throw people a bit with web layout inside Create are

1. the need to track or map links in your web site,

2. that tables are often needed to get everything to line up right,

3. that fonts in on a web page, unless you make the text an image, will depend on the end user's configuration, and

4. that web resources can be reused like a kit of parts

People do seem to have the hardest time with web page creation when using the app. However, people are totally lost in other solutions unless it's some cookie-cutter kind of app, like Apple's Homepage. Again, Create is best IMO not to burden itself with the really high-end web management stuff (maybe a link mapping/site map creation before output is a good idea), and not to be so rigid a tool as the formulaic apps.

To me, the only web page app that Create might look to for some comparison is Macromedia's Contribute, and then in a limited role. I say that not because it's better or even along the same vein as Create, but because it advertises one aspect of itself that a lot of people want from a web age creation tool: it's supposed to help you add incremental info like news, blurbs, etc. easily. While creating a web page in Create is nice, a lot of people abandon their web pages because it's apain to update them. In a similar vein, why do we need dedicated blogging apps? They're just cookie-cutter web page makers, but they make it easy to add incrementally to the web page. Most look alike and a lot of people adbandon this because, let's face it, they don't even keep the creator's interest. Couldn't Create be positioned as a more visually flexible web page creation tool where you can easily do incremental text changes and additions too? Seems like the holy grail for a lot of people. I'm not sure there's any great solution out there that bests Create, and create I think can fit the bill nicely here.

Ok, I'll stop babbling now.

[cleaned up and altered some of that.]

I think Stone Studio could hold an extremely strong position in 2 years time. Putting aside the top end print and web design who have set their ideas and will not move. What we have left is small business, home users, students, children, housewives, in fact everybody else. A huge user base. Children hate word processors they hamper their creativeness, but give them a copy of Create they are in their element. There is a slogan there "Don't hamper your child's creativeness buy them a copy of Create today". Lots of people now design their own invitations and cards and publish their own web sites. Small businesses often take it on themselves to design their own advertising, headed paper and web. Most of these people can not stretch their finances to the mega bucks top end but they need something far better than a cookie cutter app. So is Stone Studio relevant, IMO yes because it is out in front in this most important and rapidly growing market sector.

It is this type of thing that scares me.

Carbon is so backwards that I have a hard time using any Carbon apps anymore. People still don't see what an incredible operating system we have because of Carbon apps. They use apps ported from Mac OS 8/9 or from Windows which completely ignore the incredible things we get from Cocoa and then they wonder what is so great about Mac OS X.

When you get applications like these they make Mac OS X seem no better than the original platform which they came from. The power of Mac OS X is that applications can get a lot from the operating system and from each other. Carbon developers may be getting these tools handed to them now, but they still develop in the old school ways of reinventing the wheel.

I know I've posted these links before, but Carbon apps completely miss out on the text and color services provided by Mac OS X, and pretty much all other services provided by other Cocoa applications.

If you use Carbon, or Mac OS 9, or Windows, or Linux and you'll find that every app is an island to itself. Every application has to have it's own spell checker... why? Cocoa apps all share the same spell checker which means when I update it, all my apps are updated to.

In Mac OS X no app should have to stand alone.

I've been questioning all over the Mac forums why is there so much hype over Firefox? It is a mediocre Mac app at best, and doesn't let me use any of the things that I use daily in OmniWeb (and can be used in Safari too). Why would I want to give up the integration with apps like MacJournal, Nisus Thesaurus, OmniDictionary, Mail, RBrowser, TextEdit or WebGrabber?

I just find it hard to see anyone alluding to Carbon as being better than Cocoa (or Stone apps for that matter).

As for the GUI, I use Create in OPENSTEP and Rhapsody as much as I do in Mac OS X. The major change in the application layout in Create 10.0 was a nice one, but all the elements were still there. I don't think of Create 5.x, Create 10.0 or Create 12.x as different applications, I think of them as Create.

Oh..

The name has a lot to do with a products success as well. Not just because it sounds cool, but because it instantly positions the product in the right place in the mind of the customer.

If I were advising someone putting up a couple hundred grand for a marketing/pr/advertising push on this product, I would strongly suggest changing the name.

What? Do I speak heresy?

Nah...

I would package the the studio of apps under the flagship, Create, not Stone Studio.

If your surfing the web or walking through apple store looking at stuff on the shelves, which name instantly communicates the Value Proposition faster - Stone Studio or Create!

So, I would rename Create Studio.

I know this doesn't build the developers name and may get me thrown off the board, but, if my money were on the line, or Andrew were a client of mine, I'd be using everything short of a gun to persuade him to go with the incredibly intuitive and powerful name Create Studio.

Now take the above work by Blond on communicating this visually. It picks up power fast. Because if Create Studio were in the center. You instantly think.. "create web pages... create print... create design..."

And yes, this would probably call for a logo change. (I know, I know, this is anathema to the Stone faithful - and Adrew's eyes are bugging in anger at the suggestion right now - but I've got a responsibility to say it)

I can take the heat. I've had many an Entrepreneur aim his flamethrower in my direction. So, get mad, flame me, then seriously consider the direction change.

Andrew deserves to cash in big on the incredible product he's created and the years of toil he's contributed. Don't let it slip from the grasp.

Hmm... catchy, yes, but how about Create Suite? We could have Create CS, PStill CS, SliceAndDice CS, PhotoToWeb CS and GIFfun CS.

Though Andrew has complete license to use Create, when you start getting close to a name like Adobe's Creative Suite, I think we are heading in the wrong direction. While I would bet money that Andrew could win in such a fight (if one popped up) I would rather he avoided something as possibly time consuming as fighting with Adobe... over a name that is.

Other than people trying to sell Andrew cutters on the forum, you have to admit that having stone.com and everything else is pretty cool.

Yeah, I'm the same way, and I come from a Mac background, not an OpenStep/NeXTstep one. The only carbon apps I use are the Finder, iTunes and PS Elements when I have to.



I thin kthat due to Windows' predominance in the marketplace, and how those apps are developed, even despite Office for Windows' clipboard and use of OLE, people assume you are supposed to work in an app for everything until you're done. No sharing of info or tools. They dance around, importing and exporting, copying and pasting, or just never leaving the app they're in and resigning their imaginations to that container.

Many people I know who have either switched to Mac or work with both Mac and Windows don't even consider using drag-n-drop when it is the easiest, most straightforward tool available to them. They assume that an app owns a file, period. While I think Apple approaches their software in a more modular and communicative way, with iLife and the "pro" apps, it hasn't really settled in with many users because Office for Mac and the Adobe apps are effectively containers and insulate themselves from the rest of the system. It's indoctrination, Adobe & Co. got there first, and they control what their users are exposed to.

This is why I think a little propoganda is in order, some visual expression of these ideas with regard to Stone Studio. Taking on all of Mac mindshare in this regard is sort of tilting at windmills, but at least letting people knnow that the Stone Studio apps are interdependent and modular like this is an important selling point.

Robert: Stone's Create Studio? Creation Studio? It's a very touchy issue, and one which I don't feel totally comfortable getting in the middle of because I'm neither an expert in branding/marketing nor am I the owner/client in that case! Let me just make this disclaimer: my opinions are simply that, nad have no real authority or value as any expert position on the matter. I would say that a little mixing up of the name to be more expressive is something to try, but I don't think we want to get too far away from the basic trademark we have now.

The "Create" thing reminds me of these architecture books that have come out as a series over the past few years, the "Any" series: Anywhere, Anyhow, Anyone, Anytime, etc. The books were anthologies of architecture works and essays based on a theme from the second half of the title word. I wonder if there's some sort of more specific naming scheme that could help tie things together bit too. There's already a familial relationship with app names like TimeEqualsMoney and PhotoToWeb, I wonder if it can be closer. I suppose this raises the question of whether there are any apps along the lines of GIFfun and P2W that can supplement Create that we don;t have already?

As for a logo change, well, I'm a bit partial to the motif of the "cut" stone myself, but I think there's flexibility in there without losing something of the Stone identity either. Did you have any particular ideas there you were thinking of when you wrote that? We can at least toss around some ideas, a food fight for though if you will.

I don't mean to put any pressure on Andrew, just want to explore some ideas in a no-risk environment.

You have a point about Adobe throwing laywers at the issue...

I'd still push it and see.

Yes, the Stone theme is cool - but does it immediately communicate the product benefits like "Create" does?

Anyway, the legal issue is sound. I just don't want to lay down without having it verified.

A dollar spent marketing the Create name would go further, faster, easier than one explaining what the Stone Studio is and does. Create is a great name. (not that stone isn't- I may name my kid that - "Stone Stover" yea, my wife will go for it.)

I'm partial to "Studio" just because of the implication of a creative enviornment with that word alone. I think that was the original idea of having Stone Studio. "Suite" to me sounds like productitivty software (though TimeEqualsMoney would be appropriate ) and doesn't sound as focused as "Studio". For that matter, "Shop" could be used, but unfortunately it sounds like a Photoshop wannabe. Foundry? Quarry? Ok, I'll stop.

I was going to say CreateGIF, CreatePDF, CreateSlice, CreateSlides, CreateFonts etc. for the ancillary apps, but they sound either misleading or inadequate to describe their features.

"Studio" is definitely part of the equation. Great connotations.

Here is something for you all to play with and comment on.
If I have to explain I've failed.

Mark.

Good job, that was a lot of work.