Ensure design elements 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:
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
in General Preferences. This way, when xScope moves to the background, only the guide lines themselves will be displayed.Use the
if you want to clear the guides manually. If you accidentally remove a guide, use ⌘Z (Undo) to get it back.Guides can be easily manipulated using the keyboard. They can be created using ⇧⌘H (horizontal guide) or ⇧⌘V (vertical guide), selected with the keyboard shortcuts page contains a full list.
or keys, and moved using the keys. These keyboard shortcuts, combined with a hot key, makes it possible to adjust guides without your hands leaving the keyboard. If you're working with HTML and CSS in a text file, this can be very handy. TheBy default, Guides and Frames are shown on the left display if you have more than one screen attached to your Mac. In the General preference panel, there's a
setting that allows you to pick a different display.Starting with Mavericks, the
option is only available after turning off in the Mission Control panel of System Preferences.