If you haven’t checked it out yet, head to Balsamiq and click Try it now.
It doesn’t take much playing around to see the potential of Mockups.
Getting Stuff Done
Whilst the style of Mockups might strike you as “a bit rough” (to say the least), there is a very good reason for that: productivity.
The hand drawn feel ensures that you don’t waste time “polishing” – you should be focusing on functionality, not design, when sketching out mocks for projects. See: Support#skin
So, while I understand the reasoning behind the current style, I do feel that skinning is important for at least one use-case:
Diagramming
I would like to be able to use Mockups to quickly sketch up little flow charts, UML diagrams, simple graphs etc. I tried to do this for one of my blog posts:
I can live with the hand drawn boxes, buttons, circles, and even the Comic Sans typeface, but those fat arrows!
Speaking of which…
Here are some things I would love to see implemented in a future release of Mockups:
1. Stroke Thickness Property
A slider to adjust Stroke Thickness for widgets – like the Opacity slider. If not for all widgets, then at least for the Arrow!
2. Smart Categories
Recently Used – 10 most recently added widgets (sorted by most recently added descending)
Commonly Used – 10 most commonly added widgets (sorted by times added descending)
3. Themes
Ability to select the Theme for a mockup.
4. Functional Charts
Throw some properties into those Chart widgets yo!
5. Floating Property Panel Follow [x]
New property on the Floating Property Panel next to the help button: [x] Follow
If enabled, the floating property panel slides towards focused widgets.
A Handy Resource
Mockups To Go is a “user-contributed collection of ready-to-use UI components and design patterns built using Balsamiq Mockups.”
Handy indeed! Check it out: http://mockupstogo.net/
Bonus Fun for Eclipse (and thus Flash Builder) Users
Pretty cool, check it out: Instant Mockup For Eclipse SWT Applications
So, What Do I think?
Balsamiq Mockups is a great tool at a reasonable price, and I believe it will only become more useful over time. But what really impresses me about Balsamiq is how open they are with regards to their products and the growth of their company. As a fellow Flex developer, I have found the content on their blog positively inspiring, and I wish them all the best!
UPDATE: check this out: Balsamiq WebOrb Integration