New: design your own kilt! Please feed back...

**Nick Fiddes** · 2nd February 09, 04:59 AM

Oh, and thanks to everyone for the bug reports. Most are clearly Internet Explorer problems, which we're working on and should find workarounds for by the time we launch. (But seriously guys... download ANY other browser, such as Firefox or Safari - you'll discover a whole new shiny better-working Internet out there, and it's free!). Otherwise we're listening closely and should be able to address most of what we've heard so far. Please keep any other feedback coming!

**Pleater** · 3rd February 09, 08:45 AM

Am I getting this wrong - I am perfectly willing to believe that I am - but isn't this a tartan designer?

There is a little more to designing a kilt than the tartan - one thing that comes to mind is where does the selvage lie on the pattern? Does it fit into the standard double width of 54 inches?

There is the set size too and I like to pleat to a stripe, can the designer program show different pleating methods?

With the patterned fabrics part of the designing is how to achieve the style and show the pattern to the best advantage. With an entirely new pattern I do get the feeling that things could go rather wrong without a scale and without seeing the pattern as it will fit onto the fabric.

Having worked with fabrics for a rather long time, getting the design of the fabric to be properly placed on the garment is what has caused more uttering of curses upon the heads of creators of fabrics than all other botherations put together, including those who want a month's worth of effort put into a week's worth of time.

Anne the Pleater

**Nick Fiddes** · 3rd February 09, 09:07 AM

Hi Anne,

No you're not getting it wrong... as you look at it at the moment...

The reason I titled the thread 'design your own kilt' was, firstly, I wanted to emphasise that unlike other online tartan design tools we will be (imminently) making available the facility to order a tartan you design as fabric for kiltmaking in one easy process.

Secondly, as I mentioned in a reply the other day, some basic advise on sett widths will be appearing very soon. That should help resolve some of your queries...

Also, as I hinted in a reply the other day, it doesn't end there. There are other parts of this system in active development that I'd prefer not to talk about until we're ready to show them. But I'm optimistic that most of your other queries should be resolved then...

We intend this to be a serious tool, and not just a toy. Watch this space.

**Coemgen** · 3rd February 09, 05:03 PM

WOW!

What will they think of next?

**The Barry** · 3rd February 09, 05:10 PM

Oh yeah, I forgot about bugs.. This thing seems to work just fine with Firefox.

**Downix** · 3rd February 09, 06:02 PM

Works fine on Linux and OpenBSD.

**puffer** · 3rd February 09, 06:57 PM

Originally Posted by Nick (Scotweb)

Oh, and thanks to everyone for the bug reports. Most are clearly Internet Explorer problems, which we're working on and should find workarounds for by the time we launch. (But seriously guys... download ANY other browser, such as Firefox or Safari - you'll discover a whole new shiny better-working Internet out there, and it's free!). Otherwise we're listening closely and should be able to address most of what we've heard so far. Please keep any other feedback coming!

Fire FOX WORKS far better than IE. IE has a "habit" of "dropping" me ( Note, AOL may also be part of the Prob.)

Puffer

**Pleater** · 4th February 09, 03:43 AM

That sounds good - though you might find that people visit the site just to play with those planned new abilities - it all sounds like something a kilt maker might find too much fun.

Anne the Pleater

**ForresterModern** · 4th February 09, 06:58 AM

Internet explorer----logged in as my member name and password no problem

Was able to use the design function without any problems execpt as follows:
1. Limited number of colors allowed on the pallette, and if you remove something from the palette it automatically removes it from the tartan design.
2. Might be nice to have an "Undo last" button in case you do something to try to tweak the pattern but it really screws things up and all you want to do is undo the last thing you did.
3. Let me edit the name of the tartan and edit the descripiton once, but when I tried to re-edit the description that function was frozen---everything else worked fine.
4. When the tartan pattern frame to the right moves up and down as you scroll up and down on the page I was not able to see the bottom options on that moving frame, probably becasue of the display settings of my screen. But after the heading about How suitable is this design for a tartan I could not see anything but the top of the line telling me how many threads were in my design, and no matter what I tried I could not get it to show me the remainder of the info below there about whether or not it was a feasible design.
5. When I went to save the design the system said their was an error saving the design and that it was not saved. Good thing I wrote down the specifics of my desing so I can replicate it again when the whole thing is working
6. I started working on a tartan design before signing in, then when I tried to save it I was prompted to sign in first, which I then did. When I went back to my design it was gone and I had to start all over (again, good thing I had written down the colors and thread counts or I would probably not have been able to relicate it)

Those are the issues I have had with it so far. Will report more as I play with it more. Nice idea though. Lets you really play with things a lot, although it takes a little getting used to realizing that what you are actually organizing is only half of the sett, and that things on the ends may be repeated thereby doubling the thread counts of certain terminal colors.

Thanks for the new toy, Nick.

**Nick Fiddes** · 4th February 09, 09:43 AM

Originally Posted by ForresterModern

Internet explorer----logged in as my member name and password no problem

Was able to use the design function without any problems execpt as follows:..........

Cheers for the detailed feedback. We're already working on fixes for several of these issues, and we should be able to address the rest in due course. We still have a substantial snagging list to get through and more features to add before we consider a live launch. But you should see various improvements already (is it working better for those of you using IE? Please tell us about any more Explorer bugs we've not fixed yet) and more appearing over the next week or two until we feel ready to go live.

FYI the limited number of colours allowed is at our weavers' request. If you use the Pro palette you can add more. But there would then be significant surcharges for weaving. The behaviour of it removing colours from the design if they are deleted from the 'shelf' is deliberate, but by the time we go live we'll try to make sure there's much clearer advice and/or warnings to this effect.