First things first, let’s get this out of the way. Head over to http://inventive.us/iClip/  Purchase iClip for $19.99. Don’t install it. Wait.

Okay, once you’ve got your Wait process started, interrupt it for a few clicks to go over to their iClip lite site. Take a look at this cool looking and HANDY dashboard widget. Read about it’s frosty cool features, about how it’s free, and even send feedback if you like, but DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT!! Instead, head over to the Widget Machine and get iClip lite SE. Why SE? Because, while the non-SE version only offers 20 slots, SE gives you 25 at only a 50% markup (for those that don’t know, a 50% markup of free is free), so why not?

Now, you’ve got iClip for 20 bux and a cool widget for free. What does all this mean? Why spend twenty moolah units? Exactly what IS, as you may now be pondering, the deal? It is thus.

I am saving you money.

In the coming months, if you use iWeb, you’re going to want iClip. The current version 3.7, ehhh, not so much, but the NEW version coming down the pike, THAT will be quite the prized possession. The thing is, the new version will be $29.99. So, if you buy now, you’ll save now on something you’re going to want later. And now, why you want it.

On my several of my pages, you’ll find free downloadable content in the form of shapes created for Keynote. This is mainly due to certain tools that are available for Keynote that aren’t available for Pages or iWeb. As a result, the files I provide are .key files. You’ll discover that copying these shapes into iWeb yields a shape that you can now edit in iWeb. Even though iWeb doesn’t have a Make Editable command, it will understand and allow you to manipulate a shape that has already been made editable in iWork (edit each point individually, adjust the amount of curve, add points, etc.). This really opens the flood gates for being creative, again, only if you own iWork (hint, hint).

As an aside, the reason why you’ll find some tools for Keynote but not for the others is because the current tools (svg2key, EazyDraw) create Keynote 1 files. These were fairly easy to understand parse and create. While the XML had some limitations, the shape creation part was straightforward and is all that’s needed to be able to copy a shape from Keynote to iWeb or Pages. With the advent of Keynote 2 and 3, the XML has become quite a bit more complex and, since Keynote 3 can still open Keynote 1 files (and Apple hasn’t completely documented the XML), that’s where we stand.

How does iClip fit into this? Well, one day, I was lamenting to an audience of one (OK, David Astling, creator of svg2key if you must know) about how I’d like to be able to make these shapes available to iWeb users without them having iWork. He had the technical know how to be able to inform me what it was that I was looking for. See, from working with EazyDraw, I found that OSX places a LOT of information on the clipboard when you do a copy, not just the PDF that you see when you paste into almost any application. Then, when you a paste, the application has the opportunity to pick which one of these many formats it wants to use (for the highest quality/most compatibility, it’s usually PDF) and uses it. This is why when you copy from other applications to iWeb, you get an uneditable PDF file, but when you copy from Pages you can change the fill and stroke of the object. iWork knows how to give the clipboard editable shape data (I like to call it iVector) and other apps don’t. The solution, then, would be for other apps to supply this information... turns out, that’s even tougher than trying to crack the new XML. A good interim solution would be a way to copy from Keynote, grab that information from the clipboard (Keynote has done the heavy lifting of getting it into a form that iWeb will accept), save it into some intermediary file that would then just hold this data in all it’s myriad formats, including iVector, and allow me to call upon it, library style, whenever I need it. I thought iClip was the answer. It wasn’t. The answer was iClip. Well, iClip lite.

The current version of iClip (3.7 that you own now for $19.99, right??) treats clipboard data in the way almost every other newer application does. It grabs the PDF format and uses it to port information back and forth between apps. Fine if that’s what you want, but if you want access to all iClip currently offers, you’ve got to use the newer iClip lite. It seems to grab everything an application puts on the clipboard including the special iVector data. So, you can copy from Pages or Keynote, paste into iClip and have this shape available to you via a simple trip to the Dashboard.

Ok, at this point, you’re still in the world of “gotta-have-iWork-to-use-the-shapes”. But, only for a moment longer. On this page, to the left of the bunny, you’ll see a white circle. It’s actually a hidden link. Click on that link and you’ll download a file called Clips.data.zip. If you have iClip lite installed AND you place this file in your username/Library/Application Support/iClip lite directory (if the widget is running, close it for a moment so you can overwrite the file), you’ll have access to the 25 shapes included in the Keynote file on that same page without having Keynote!

For now, you’re limited to just 25 if you have iClip lite SE. If you want to use your own shapes, just delete the ones that are in there and plug in your own. If you want to have more than 25, then you’ll have to manually swap files in and out (something some iWebbers are already doing with their Domain files). The really cool thing is that this now allows users to share modifiable shape information with each other and that, dear reader, is very very fun indeed!