RefreshingApps.com

Pixus is another tool in the designers toolbox that is powered by Adobe AIR. It’s an onscreen measurement tool that can be put to numerous uses when designing or developing apps.

You can not only measure the screen object size with easy. With overlay mode and presets, you can also preview how your design will look in the real environment. Ideal for web and interface designers.

The AIR app can be dragged around the screen using the green Pixus bar just above the main measurement window. You have the option of a lightbox type of view where the background is darkened slightly while the window remains clear. This gives a great view of the workarea.

Through the preferences panel you get to save preset sizes for later use. I did have a problem where I could not get a preset size to reactivate. This is probably just a small bug that could be easily fixed.

One addition I would like to see is the ability to set the size of the window in the green Pixus bar, currently the size is read only.

Design eye

One cool option is the skin of the window. You can choose from a Safari theme if your on a Mac, IE theme for Windows or the standard. Nice concept when developing AIR apps that are crossbrowser.

Pixus is visually appealing fitting well with the target designer user. Standard behaviour of resizing by clicking and dragging the bottom left of the window is supported in both the main measurement window and the preferences pane. But there is only a visual icon for the preferences panel. A small point but consistency is vital when developing a quality application.

Technical eye

The Pixus AIR app is open source and the project is held on Google code. It appears the app has been developed since the AIR beta (when it was called Apollo) so include a history of the releases. Developed with Adobe Flash.