Tips and Tricks

Updated for Build 38 of the delicious:designer.

Like all good design tools the delicious:designer has a set of keyboard hotkeys that access some of its more powerful features. Below is a guide to the hotkeys and what they do. Now, start getting the most out of your delicious:designer.

Selection

• Hold down the Shift key to add or subtract art objects from the current selection.

Shape Creation

• Hold Shift while drawing a new shape to create a perfect square, circle, or polygon with equal side lengths.
• With the polygon tool, while you’re still holding the mouse down, press any number key to change the number of sides. For example, to make a triangle, press the 3 key while still holding the mouse down when creating the shape. You can also rapidly press two keys, for example 1 + 7, to create a polygon of 17 sides.

Artboard movement

• Page Up — pans the artboard up.
• Page Down — pans the artboard down.
• Shift + Page Up — pans the artboard left.
• Shift + Page Down — pans the artboard right.
• Home — pans the artboard to the center and zooms the artwork to 100%.

The Bezier Editor tool

• Hold down Control (PC) or Command (Mac) and click on the path to add the new point.
• Hold down Shift when pressing on a control node to toggle its type between corner and smooth.
  • When changing it from a corner node to a smooth node hold down Shift while pressing and dragging the node. This will allow you to simultaneously edit the smooth node’s curve.
• Press Delete or Backspace to remove the selected control node.

Miscellaneous

• Press Delete or Backspace to remove the currently selected art objects.

Oftentimes, you want to reposition elements so that they appear above or below other elements. The layer arrangement buttons, located on the left-hand side of the designer, allow you to manage this feature.

• The top button - This button sends the selected object(s) above all other objects.
• The up button - This button brings the selected object(s) up one level.
• The down button - This button sends the selected object(s) down one level.
• The bottom button - This button sends the selected object(s) below all other objects.

Now that you’re familiar with the buttons, let’s place some objects on our canvas.

1. In order to demonstrate this topic, there needs to be at least two items on the canvas. So, let’s start by embedding an image. To do this, click the image icon on the toolbar.
2. Next, paste the URL to one of your images into this box.
   
3. 
   Notice that I now have a delicious:designer logo embedded on the canvas. Watch what happens when I add a second image.
4. 
   Here is where you can see the importance of being able to set the depth of objects on the canvas. The logo is arranged below the background image. It won’t do much good there!
5. 
   For the sake of art, I drew a white rectangle, with the rectangle tool , above both the logo and background image. So the object depth is now, from top to bottom:
   1. White rectangle
   2. Background image
   3. delicious:designer logo

   And we want it to be

   1. delicious:designer logo
   2. White rectangle
   3. Background image
6. 
   To move my logo above the background image and white rectangle, I select my logo with the arrow tool , and then click . This moves that object up one level on the canvas. But for this design I am going to want it on the top, so I’ll click . Clicking and will move the object down and to the bottom, respectively.
7. 
   The final product.

So, with a little practice, I’m sure you will find this simple tool useful and very powerful. Have fun!

Importing a photo into your design is very easy.

1. Make sure you have an image already uploaded to the Internet, whether on your personal web site, or in a service like Flickr or Photobucket.
2. Copy the url of that particular image.
3. Click the New Image button.
4. Your cursor will now look like this: . Click anywhere on the canvas to add your new image. Right where you clicked, a default image will appear.
5. At this point, the Contextual Tool palette will update with changeable properties for your image.
   
   On the palette you can:
   • Change the Fill transparency either by using the slider or by typing in the value directly, and
   • Update the image url that you should have copied from step 2. Press Enter to apply the changed url.

There are three main kinds of vector shapes you can create in delicious:designer.

Ovals

• With this tool selected, click and drag on the artboard to create a new oval.
• Hold shift to create a circle.

Rectangles

• Click and drag on the artboard with this tool selected to create a new rectangle.
• Hold shift to lock the shape’s proportions and create a square.

Polygons

• To create a new polygon, click and drag on the artboard with this tool selected.
• Hold shift to lock the rotation of the polygon at 0 degrees.
• While creating the polygon, type in the number of sides you want.

Note:

• When creating a new shape, the new shape assumes the color properties of the last selected object.