Scribbles’ simple interface invites you to just draw.

Scribbles 1.1.1. At first glance, Scribbles’ interface seems laughably underpowered. Its main screen (its only screen, really) shows only a slider, one drawing tool, a color dot, and a couple of enigmatic squiggles. Its bare-bones aesthetic doesn’t come from dumbing down the program’s capabilities, but rather from cleverly removing unnecessary complexity. For example, five brush types substitute for ArtRage’s 12, and Scribbles’ three brush qualities are far easier to grasp than Rita’s bewildering array. In practice, Scribbles can do pretty much everything you want, usually with much less tool fiddling than in other graphics software. It’s easy to see why Scribbles claims success in the educational market: Its interface comes closest to a sense of playing with finger paints, but without the clean-up and inevitable bunch of kids with blue and green tongues.

Scribbles also has some peculiar features that add to its value. Like vector-based drawing software such as Adobe Illustrator, Scribbles lets you output lines with perfectly clean edges, regardless of print resolution. At the same time, it has painterly features similar to a bitmap-based painting program like Adobe Photoshop, such as charcoal-like shading. Most intriguing of Scribbles’ features is one it shares with Rita: an “infinite canvas” that lets you zoom in or out forever, and yet print your art at any size. Finally, you can host your Scribbles drawings on the company’s website free of charge by choosing the menu selection Publish to Scribbles Gallery.

Scribbles isn’t perfect. It has no text tool, the Undo function behaves in an unexpected (and largely undocumented) way, and the sparse documentation comprises a 14-page PDF file that fails to cover such important matters as output resolution. But these issues were irritating, not show-stopping, and the company was responsive to queries we made through its online forum.

The bottom line. The original Macintosh came bundled with MacDraw, MacWrite, and MacPaint. Current Macs still come with a capable text processor (TextEdit), but sadly you still have to look elsewhere for drawing and painting programs. The good news is that programs such as Scribbles, make fulfillment of that search less expensive than a good meal.

COMPANY: atebits

CONTACT: www.atebits.com

PRICE: $19.95

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.4 or later, G4 processor or later

Simple yet flexible interface. Infinite canvas. Vector-based drawing and paint features. Universal binary.

Quirky Undo. No text tool. Sparse documentation.