Guides

Make sure elements in your design line up, no matter which application you're using.

Alignment: all good design requires it, but some applications don't give you the tools do it effectively. The Guides tool allows you to align elements on your screen independently from the applications you are using.

The first thing you'll want to do after opening the tool is to create a new guide. The following methods can be used:

• Use the Guides Wizard

  The easiest way to create a new guide is to use the Guides Wizard. Just press ⌘G to display the wizard's dialog.

  In this dialog, you have a choice to create the guide visually or numerically. The visual method lets you click anywhere on the screen to create a horizontal or vertical guide. The numeric method lets you enter exact coordinates for one or more guides.

  When you are using the visual method, the screen will dim slightly to let you know that the tool is waiting for a mouse click. After you click on the dimmed screen, a new guide will be created.

• Use Keyboard Shortcuts

  You can create a horizontal or vertical guide using the menu and shortcut keys.

  When you press ⇧⌘H, a new horizontal guide will be created in the middle of the screen. You can use ⇧⌘V to create a vertical guide with the same technique.

  There is also a preference (in the Guides panel) that changes this behavior slightly: the guide can be created at the current mouse position. This makes it easy to create a new guide by pointing at an object while pressing the keyboard shortcut.

When you adjust a guide, you'll see a number appear—this is the guide's position in pixels measured from the top-left corner of the screen. Linked guides (which are shown by a highlighted chain icon) will move together as a group. To link the guides, select one of the guides by clicking on its move icon. Then click on the chain icon of all the guides you want link to the selected guide. To unlink, click on the chain icon again.

After you've created all of your guides, you can save them in a file for later use. There are menu options, under Guides in the menu bar, that allow you to save and open guides. When you open a file with guides, you have an option to add them to the existing ones on screen. By default, the current guides will be removed before the new guides are loaded.

If you want to simply view the horizontal and vertical guides themselves without control handles or measurement pills cluttering your view, you can turn on Simplify Interface In Background under General Preferences. This way, when xScope moves to the background, only the guide lines themselves will be displayed.

Use the Clear All Guides if you want to clear the guides manually. If you accidentally remove a guide, use ⌘Z (Undo) to get it back.

Return to the index or proceed to the next tool: Frames