Say Hello to Gridulator
Today I’m officially launching a little utility I’ve been tinkering with for awhile. Meet Gridulator. As you may have guessed, it’s got something to do with grids.
Tell Gridulator your layout width and the number of columns you want, and it’ll spit back all the possible grids that have nice, round integers. Just the thing for pixel-based designfolk. There are inline previews, courtesy of the canvas element, and when you’re all set Gridulator can crank out full-size PNGs for you, ready for use in your CSS, Photoshop docs, or what have you. And there’s full keyboard control for you snazzy power users.
An Audience of One
I built Gridulator because I wasn’t finding any solutions well-suited to the way I work with grids in my design projects. Most of the existing desktop grid calculators are geared heavily towards print. (Widths like 58.766666666 aren’t exactly helpful to a Web designer.) And Photoshop still lacks robust tools for choosing, building, and editing grids in projects (as others have covered with due eloquence and care).
I can’t change Photoshop, but what I can do is make the act of creating a grid for Web projects a little less tasking—enough so to allow for quick and care-free experimentation. I wanted something that would make the act of creating a grid so easy as to make the output nearly disposable. No more cringing at the thought of rearranging umpteen gazillion guides in Photoshop. And no more fretting the math wouldn’t add up in PixelLand.
The result is an app that’s intended to do a very specific thing in a very specific way, and to do it as fast as possible. In fact, it’s so specific that I originally only built it for myself. But as things took shape I thought others might have use for it as well. (One designer I know actually punched me in the shoulder after seeing a working copy and hearing that I hadn’t built a public version. It’s okay, I forgive them.)
I hope you like it too. Now go forth and gridulate!
47 Comments
Scott
Can I tell you how much I love this? Really, really a lot. Awesome work David – thank you!
Gaurav Mishra
Very smart and handy app!
Shawn Scammahorn
Very awesome. I’ve been needing this for a long time.
Setting up grids in Photoshop I do not like. This will help me to continue being a little bit lazy, while still getting something accomplished ;)
Sarbartha
Thanks for such an awesome development.
Jon
Wow man THANK YOU for this!
After so much back and forth between golden mean calculators and the PSD grids trying to figure out how to evenly divide 960 into 9. And THEN realizing that there are only 8 10px gutters between 9 cols… ACCCCKKK!! madness
my sanity thanks you!
Jon
onno
That is love, giving back to the community.
Greg Smith
Great little tool. Nice work!
Jim
Sweet tool. Easy to use and fun to look at.
Anthony Armendariz
Congrats David! I’m excited to see it’s launched, and that I had the chance to see all the great work that led up to the final product.
Filip Van Reeth
What about 960.gs, works perfectly for me
Cristian Pascu
Hey, I just noticed a pattern. The guter width increases by the number of columns in pixels, and the column width decreases by (n – 1) pixels. Interesting!
Natalia Buckley
Wow, it’s a really good tool, thanks for sharing it!
Susan DeMark
Very nifty tool, David. You’re making a lot of people happy, obviously.
fsx
I like ;)
hannah
Great app, I will find this very useful thanks :)
Gridulator Lover
Now that is a amazing tool very handy very. thank you very much:)
Moo Kahn
What? I don’t have to waste hours doing trial and error – only to have one gutter still off by 2-3 pix ? What will I do with the rest of my day?
Luis Suarez
Great app. thanks for sharing!
regards.
Luis S.
Quentin
Heard about Boks?
You might like it!
Chimera web design
Superb app, thanks very much!
Kiper IT-konsult
Very nice timesaver!
I must say that I was a bit sceptical to begin with but after testing it a few times I think it is AWESOME!
nomadone
Really great tool, your effort will save so many people countless hours of pain and confusion. Much appreciated
Abhishek
This is too awesome. Kudos for keyboard commands! My weekend is officially doomed behind my laptop screen.
Steve Blakeborough
Fantastic tool – Well worth adding a “donate” button. Commercially your efforts are going save web designers hours. Thanks. :-)
Aditya Sutomo
Simple App but really useful, Thank you!
Alicia St Rose
You are my hero.
No, really. This is brilliant.
A million thanks, my friend!!
Marcy
Can’t wait for the next version!
BrightSouth Website Design
Awesome little app – great time saver and will come in very handy! Thanks!
Avius iPad Surveys
I officially love Gridulate! Been looking for something like this for ages…such a simple idea, great little time saver, thanks!
egiova
What a brilliant idea… thank you for this Mister.
Noel
Mate, can’t tell how much I love this tool. Exactly what I was looking for. It’s a massive time saver. Thanks for that
James
Love it bud, really quick and easy to use when throwing sites together. Cheers!
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