Hello World!
Overview
Welcome to Kite’s 1.0 release! I am so pleased to share with you a new power tool in the creative professional’s toolkit: Kite Compositor. Kite is a native Mac application for designing user interface animation and prototyping apps.
Modern user interfaces on today’s devices gain more and more meaning through the motion of their content. The way an app fluidly responds to the user is becoming just as important as how it looks. Static images are necessary but not a sufficient way to communicate how the best modern apps are designed. As UIs become increasingly dynamic, new tools need to step up to provide a way for interface designers and developers to describe and build their best ideas.
Kite serves to fill this gap between the static images and the delightful interactions that app designers can visualize, but often lack the tools and ability to communicate. It combines many powerful features along with an easy to use interface to let your ideas speak for themselves.
High-level Feature List
- Familiar WYSIWYG drag and drop editing canvas
- Sophisticated animation timeline with snapping, dragging, and immediate feedback
- Built-in JavaScript scripting environment and text editor if you want to enhance interactions with custom logic
- Deep integration with Sketch that allows you to export editable text and bezier paths for animating in Kite
- Video and GIF export to share your designs
There are, without a doubt, so many more possibilities and features for an application like this. I didn’t have time to add everything. With time, software updates, and new versions, I hope to build a fantastic tool for interface animation. But, I can’t do this without the much needed feedback from the community. Please get in touch if you have great ideas – many of you already have!
I am so grateful and impressed by the positive initial response, enthusiasm, and creativity from the early beta users. As a developer and lover of creative applications on the Mac, I can’t wait to see what others will build with Kite!