Kluivers/qc-mobile. Untitled. Origami — Tutorials. Untitled. Designing Facebook Home. Untitled. I decided today that I would learn a bit of Quartz Composer. I had never touched it before, beyond reading a couple articles and watching a conference talk. The most useful introduction for me was "UI Prototyping with Quartz Composer and Origami" by Pasan Premaratne.
It takes you from absolute zero to having built a simpler version to Path's attractive spinout menu with Facebook's Origami. I recommend you not only read Pasan's post, but also actually follow along! At worst you'll have spent twenty minutes exploring a novel way of doing things. At best you'll have acquired a new tool for your kit and become even more handsome. Near the end of his post, Pasan laments: The only downside that I see right now to using Quartz Composer is that if you're prototyping something complex, your composition can get unwieldy and convoluted fairly quickly. I agree that it can become unwieldy. Those three yellow blocks contain essentially the same code. Here's the rub. So! Macros Go do it. Lesson learned. QC Designers - New to Quartz Composer? Start here. April 24, 2013 5:37 AM PDT Getting started What is QC Designers? QC Designers is a community of UI designers, animators and developers interested in creating more delightful experiences with tools like Quartz Composer.
Our focus is on getting people up to speed with QC, but we’ll continue to adapt as new tools come into fashion. While there are other forums for QC users, we cater to Interaction Design, specifically. We recommend Kineme and iloveqc for QC communities focused around its strengths as a tool for VJs and audio visualization. What is Quartz Composer? From Wikipedia: “Quartz Composer is a node-based visual programming language provided as part of the Xcode development environment in Mac OS X for processing and rendering graphical data.” It is an Apple product used by designers & animators to create animations and prototypes.
To create a composition, a user uses the Editor to connect a number of patches with “noodles” that sends a signal from one patch to another. How to download QC. Quartz Composer Diary - UI Design Primer # 1. This series of primers are intended to give you an introduction to the world of QC. Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie in their classic The C Programming Language wrote that the biggest hurdle in starting beginning learning a programming language is to write a program to print the 'Hello World' on the screen, the rest is relatively easy. This is because it requires mastering the mechanics of writing a program : writing it somewhere, running it and seeing where the output went. On a similar sentiment, we have modelled these primers to give you an understanding of the developing in Quartz Composer, so that you would be independent to pursue your own ideas without waiting for our next posts to arrive.
In this post as well as the ones to follow, we will be focusing on revealing the quirky user interface of Quartz Composer, because we believe that once you know your tool inside out, there would be less of a barrier between you and your ideas turning into a reality. Introducing Origami for Quartz Composer — The Year of the Looking Glass. For easier interactive design prototyping Today, the Facebook design team launched Origami ( a toolkit of patches and examples for Quartz Composer that makes it easier for designers to create interactive prototypes without writing code.
I’ve talked at length about the importance of investing in the right design tools for the job, and we’ve shared the Facebook design team’s use of Quartz Composer in designing Chat Heads and Facebook Home. But one of the most common bits of feedback that we hear is while Quartz Composer looks interesting, it has a pretty significant learning curve. Most of us know how to drive a car, but it’s pretty damn hard to figure out on your own without somebody who knows it sitting down next to you and walking through how the controls work. It’s kind of the same with Quartz Composer. Luckily, we’ve had such a person at Facebook (*cough*Brandon! If you’ve got some free time to tinker around over the holidays, check out Origami. Pros: Cons: Kluivers/qc-mobile. Untitled. Origami — Examples. Untitled. Designing Facebook Home. Building Facebook Home with Quartz Composer on Vimeo. Downloads. Essentials to tame a wild beast - Pushing prototypes with Quartz Composer. The 4 Minute Guide to Quartz Composer.
Origami — Design Prototyping.