Bedrich Rios

You’ve probably heard, read, or watched clips that talk about the importance of using version control when working collaboratively (as well as personally) on a given project. More likely than not, you have Googled version control and come across one of the big names, Subversion. But, whenever you attempted to deepen your understanding of the subject, you were greeted with either confusing terminal commands or badly designed Subversion clients. That is all about to change thanks to Beanstalk (hosted Subversion) and Versions (Subversion client for the Mac).

Versions is the result of a collaboration between SOFA and PICO, which brings a friendly user interface to the world of version control. In case you haven’t heard, Versions has gone BETA so, now it’s the time to give this cool app and version control a test drive. Versions BETA is free for download until the app is released in June 30.

Beanstalk is “version control with a human face.” In other words, it gives its users a clean and visually appealing representation of their subversion repositories. Beanstalk is free but it also provides other (paid) plans for those who may need more from their repositories.

Before we get started, a few things need to be disclaimed, or rather stated. I am by no means a Subversion expert. A basic knowledge of version control is expected from the reader (you). And last but not least, I have no affiliation with the product and service listed above. But enough of that, let’s get started.

Beanstalk Registration

First things first, let’s go to Beanstalk and create a new free account. Now that you have created your Beanstalk account, log in and create a new repository. Leave all setup options on their default settings, unless you know what they mean and need to change them. Once your repository has been created, copy the repository URL and keep it as we will need it on the next step. That’s about all we need from beanstalk at this point so let’s move on.

Versions BETA

Download Versions BETA from the Versions website and install it on your Mac. Once, this is done you will see a screen that looks something like what you see on the right: Click on the New Repository Bookmark button and under location type (or paste) the repository URL you got from Beanstalk. Also, you will need to enter your Beanstalk username and password as well as a name for the new bookmark. Once the bookmark has been created, select it from the left sidebar and choose to Checkout. Versions will prompt you to select a folder or create a new one, either will do, but I would recommend using an empty folder. The Checkout action will count as the first revision to the project. Now, let’s add our own files.

Add, Delete, Update, and Commit

In general, whenever you put a file in to the folder that contains the initial Subversion Checkout you will need to Add it to the version control. So, insert a simple file into the folder containing the initial checkout, go back to Versions, refresh the folder (upper right hand button) and add the new file by selecting it and clicking the Add button. That’s that for adding, now that the file(s) has been added to the version control you can Commit the changes you have made to the repository. Committing a change to the repository is almost the same as uploading a new version of a given file. Deleting files works basically the same way as adding. Select the file you wish to delete from the revision and press Delete, then commit the changes to the repository. Whenever you commit a change to the repository, you will be prompted to enter a descriptive message, while this is optional, it is very helpful for others (as well as yourself) to read what changed in any given upload. Last but not least, whenever you need the latest copy of a project, Update your bookmark and you will have downloaded the latest revision from the repository.

Back at Beanstalk

If you now go back to your Beanstalk account you will be able to see all the activity in the repository, browse revisions, download files from revision, etc. There are many more things that you can do back in your Beanstalk account, so make sure to experiment.

Version Control, Final Words

As I stated early on in the post, I am not a Subversion expert. The steps and notes that I have written in this post are based on the methods that have proven to work for me. Please feel free to leave your thoughts on other solutions, fixes, or questions in response to this post. Have fun with Versions and Beanstalk!

Every creative professional needs a great set of tools and a web designer is no exception. And as if we didn’t have enough difficulty coming up with a design every other week (a bit of an exaggeration but you get the point), more often than not, we find ourselves hunting down needed design elements through Google.  Therefore, I have decided to share 15 of my favorite “freebies” sites with you. These are sites that contain free non-commercial as well as for-commercial use icons, fonts, and Photoshop patterns. Please make sure to read the copyright text before using these free materials.

Free Icons

1. Dry Icons
   “All icon sets at DryIcons.com are carefully designed and developed by our team of professional web and graphic designers. We designed the DryIcons website to bring your applications the best professional appearance.”
2. TurboMilk
   “These icons packs is free to use for personal non-commercial purposes. Please give credits to http://www.turbomilk.com in case of public use. We sincerely hope that these icons will make you happy and nobody get hurt.”
3. Free Icons
   “Here you will find the best free icons from the icon artists,The icons copyright belongs original authors, They are free for personal and non commercial use / free for public non-commercial use only mention the authors. If you are an icon designer and want to showcase your Icons, logos , prints , web ui or web design resources, Here is the best place!”
4. IconBuffet
   “So here’s the deal… a few years back we launched the original IconBuffet. At the time we sold stock icons to web designers and other geeky folks all over the world. After a while we figured it would be totally sweet to give away free icons every month to IconBuffet members. Only there’s a little twist… not everyone gets the same icons. So you have to swap icons with your friends to get them all. Kinda like baseball cards. Only you can use them on your website.”
5. Fast Icon
   This is a site filled with free high quality icons. In addition, a lot of their sets contain theme based icon packs.

Free Fonts

1. Fawnt
   “Fawnt is a font resource for designers, developers, and anyone that appreciates the web’s highest quality fonts.”
2. dafont
   A great place to find the perfect font for that next project. This site is most valuable when you are looking for similar font families and not necessarily a specific one.
3. UrbanFonts
   “See our amazing collection of free fonts and free dingbats. With over 8,000 freeware fonts, you’ve come to the best place to download fonts. Please review our FAQs section for font installation instructions.”
4. FontStruct
   “FontStruct is a free font-building tool brought to you by the world’s leading retailer of digital type, FontShop. FontStruct lets you quickly and easily create fonts constructed out of geometrical shapes, which are arranged in a grid pattern, like tiles or bricks. You create ‘FontStructions’ using the ‘FontStructor’ font editor.
5. FontCubes
   “Welcome to Font Cubes. Here you’ll find the best free PC fonts and free Mac Fonts from the best font artists in the world. The fonts listed in our free font collection are their author’s property. Please contact their authors for further consultation regarding the use of the listed fonts.”

Free Patterns

1. Adobe - Photoshop Patterns
   The title says it all. This site contains free patterns shared by the Adobe community.
2. DinPattern
   “All patterns available here are free to use. I design these patterns just out of fun, and make no money from them. But, if you feel you have gotten some good use out of them, and like to leave a tip, feel free to donate some pocket change to keep this site going…”
3. Squidfingers
   “Feel free to use any of these patterns on your own site. If you do decide use one, a credit link back to my site is always greatly appreciated.”
4. Kaliber10000
   “As the name implies, this section of K10k is a resource for deliciously pixellated patterns. Please be nice & give credit to the creators if you use them in your projects, and remember to adhere to the usage-guidelines for each individual pattern.”
5. Brusheezy
   “Welcome to Brusheezy.com! A place for artists to download and vote for the best custom Photoshop Brushes and photoshop patterns on the internet!”

One Last Thing

The websites above are by no means affiliated, endorsed, or promoted by me, this blog, or anything else on this site. Furthermore, the content within the quote marks are excerpt from their respective sites. Please feel free, encouraged, to leave a comment with your own favorite resources.