Photoshop: Provide an HTML5 alternative to Configurator for CC 2014 and onwards

Nice examples, thanks! Keep the coming and any other features you'd like to see, as Adobe does look at these forums for input.

Corel Painter has had this feature for many years. You open a panel and drag whatever brushes, tools you want into the panel.

If you go back 20 years, Microsoft had this feature as standard. It got lost a little bit with the Ribbon, which I dislike still, but would dearly love to have the ability to configure my own ribbon (and tabs) within the whole Creative suite, even similar to the current Microsoft Office suite version.

I also remember configuring panels for various versions of AutoCAD. I do not have a current licence for Autocad so cannot easily check current versions.

I use a small program called Xplorer2, which allows me customise the toolbar.

I have rebuilt my Windows machine recently and have really only installed Microsoft and Adobe apps. I will try to recall other apps and post here.

Matthew, I would be interested to know what apps have this feature to drag and drop tools. It sounds very interesting, and if we can list some examples for Adobe to look at, maybe we can get some changes. I agree with you about commands being buried. I was just talking to someone about this in regard to Microsoft products, and how their UI's are getting worse with each upgrade. There was a demo at Adobe Max at the Sneak Peeks by Zorana Gee regarding an HTML overlay for PS, so it looks like Adobe is looking at this issue, and now is the time put put our two cents down as to what we would really like and give concrete examples.

Why does an App with the worst user interface in the world not have a built in native tool to allow users drag and drop tools, menu items and actions to a custom panel.

(I am not interested in flash v html debates).

A custom panel should be native to the app.

While some tools are available via a click button, 75% of the tools are hidden behind other tools, requiring knowledge of the hidden tools and extra clicks to use. Most commands are buried deep inside multi-layer menus. These can be accessed thru a combination of complex keyboard short cuts. This is a real crock when I need to keep a stylus in one hand and use my other hand to enter the complex shortcuts. Creative Suite users deserve a decent user interface. I could list a range of small, medium and large products which have had this capability for the last 20 years.

Thanks to all the people who have »+1«-ed the thread in the meantime.

Trovo vergognoso che adobe abbia lasciato tutti noi con il culo per terra
poteva fare un ibrido prima che i pannelli html prendessero piede nella progettazzione
io dopo il mese di prova lascio questa piattaforma
buona fortuna
Adobe non e' piu' nelle mie priorita'.

Again: Thanks for the feedback.

15 »pluses« in one week is probably not terribly impressive for Photoshop in general.
But judging from the feedback over at
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/12988...
it seems someone at Adobe is already looking into the issue and hopefully it will be deemed worth the effort.

Existing alternatives are also mentioned in that thread, so maybe it can be helpful to people who had not noticed it before.

Hey everyone, with a little help from Tom Ruark I was able to convert my popular DODGE AND BURN extension into an HTML5 panel that now works in both CC and CC 2014. It is a simple four button thingy that runs a script (which I converted from my saved actions) for each button. Feel free to look at the source code and copy whatever you need to get your own extensions running. Not sure how much it helps, but certainly worth a shot. :)

You can download my extension from Adobe Exchange here: http://creative.adobe.com/addons/prod...
Click on "Where to find it" and choose "Download / Install your Add-on another way" to get a manual download for the ZXP file. Once downloaded, rename the ZXP to ZIP and you can unpack the sources and assets. The manifest file in the csxs folder will show you how your manifest needs to look to support CC 2014. The index.html in the main folder is the actual panel, i.e. its layout and look; while the scripts you want to use need to go into host/Photoshop.jsx.

Once you have everything for your panel in place, you need to package and sign it again. For that you will need the "CC Extensions Signing Toolkit" which you can get from Adobe Labs here: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/exten... (At the bottom of the page.)
This is a command line tool and the command you need to run to pack and sign your extension is as follows:

ccextensionswin64.exe -sign PathToTheFolderYouWantToPack com.yourname.yourextensionname.zxp certificate.p12 YourCertificatePassword -tsa https://timestamp.geotrust.com/tsa

For "ccextensionswin64.exe" of course use whatever version of the file you are using - my example is the 64-Bit Windows version.

If you don't have a p12 certificate yet, you can create your own with the Adobe Exchange Packager which you can get here: http://www.adobeexchange.com/resources Make sure to set the path to your JAVA installation correctly before trying to create a certificate or it will fail.

If you have actions saved that you would like to put on a button of your extension panel, you will need to convert them into JSX (that is ExtendScript, the Photoshop-Version of JavaScript). You can use xTools for that. It's a bunch of very nice Scripts for Photoshop that you can run using "File > Scripts > Browse..." command. The one you need is called "ActionFileToJavascript" - it will let you open a saved .atn actions file and convert whatever your action is doing into JSX code. 🙂 You can get xTools here: http://ps-scripts.sourceforge.net/xto...

So, that's about it. I know this is WAAAY more complicated than the ease of use we had with Configurator, but maybe for some of you who are desperately searching for a way to get their stuff to work again, it might just be the info you need to get you going. Hopefully there some day there will be a Configurator 5, who knows... By the way, if any of you are actually using my Dodge and Burn extension, I would be very happy to get a rating/review from you over at Adobe Exchange. :)

With best wishes from Cologne, Germany
André

A simple way to build a panel that would run actions would be incredibly helpful!