I have been using Balsamiq to create mockups for a new application. It has been working very well initially, but now it feels like the application is becoming to large for Balsamiq.
I have connected many Balsamiq screens with the link function in Balsamiq. But that forces me to create way too many screens. Every click makes me create a completely new screen. So if I want to change a button that I am using on many linked screens, then I have to change all of them.
Is there a different application for creating mockups that doesn't force me to create new mockups for every click? I don't know exactly what I'm looking for but maybe something where only parts of the mockup application change when I click on a link?
There is also no functionality in Balsamiq for maintaining my mockups in a structure. Maybe that would help as well. What I'm looking for in essence is an application that let's me mockup more complex applications with many clicks and pages.
WireframeSketcher is a wireframe tool that has projects and lets you organize mockups in directories. It's based on Eclipse IDE and so it shares the same advanced way of organizing files. WireframeSketcher also supports refactoring which makes it easy to move files around or rename them without breaking links.
Look into using "symbols" in Balsamiq, that may help you out some. What you can do is take any group and make it a symbol. Then you can use the symbols on multiple pages. If you want to change the button in multiple places, all you have to do is change the symbol once, and the changes will be carried out throughout the rest of your design. Hope that helps.
MockupScreens has "master screens", similar to master slides in PowerPoint. You do create new screens technically, but you don't do them from scratch.
Since they derive most of their content from the master, you edit only the differences: value in some field, for example.
(I am m.screens developer)
Related
I am a beginning programmer in VB.NET and I was wondering how to save my application when button1 is clicked, and then load my application when button2 is clicked. My application has several different forms and classes etc. Is there a simple way to save all of the different forms and the changes to those forms that the user may have made, and then load them again? If this is too complicated of a process for a beginner, then I can just forget it for now, but if anyone knows a relatively simple way to do this, I would be very grateful.
Thanks
You have a few different options. The easiest thing is probably going to be for you to take a look at the My.Settings class.
I am just trying to streamline my MVC3 development approach. I use Razor in the View and was wondering what the recommendation is for easily creating more fancy UI widgets such as Menus. I would hope I could leverage some good open source components and plug them in. I do subscribe to a good 3rd party component library, but wonder whether this type of feature is best implemented via JQuery UI or old style HTML/CSS?
Many thanks.
In general, Stack Overflow isn't here to recommend tools for you. However, I will say that whether to choose a javascript tool or straight html/css depends on the needs.
It's best to work with the simplest solution that solves your problem. CSS can do menus quite well, and straight CSS menus are often the best choice. However, if you need things straight css can't do, then you need to add javascript. For instance, one problem with CSS menus is that it's very easy to "roll off" the menu and have it disappear from under your pointer. Most javascript menus add a delay that allows you to roll off for a second and get back before the menu disappears. This improves usability.
Even lots of fancy effects can be done strictly in CSS, but as with many such things.. it won't be compatible across all browsers, which is again where javascript comes into play. Sometimes the only way to be compatible across the board is with js (at least without losing functionality).
I wouldn't recreate the wheel on this one, since so many web sites already do this. If you are trying to streamline your development, I'd say use your 3rd party library or find a good jQuery plugin. You could probably easily create your own in HTML/CSS/Jquery, but it will add on to your testing later. An existing 3rd party/jQuery type of component would take significantly less time and have a lot of features you want already built in.
I'd recommend using MVC SiteMap Provider in conjecuyion with a JavaScript menu of choice e.g. SuperFish http://users.tpg.com.au/j_birch/plugins/superfish/. The menu fancy JS part part is the least important.
From the MVC point of view what I think really matters is how you manage and maintain your menu. MVC SiteMap Provider makes it really easy to build an maintain menus (can even use Attributes to make Actions appear on the menu). It can also do things like Security Trimming so if a user doesn't have permission to get to the action etc it isn't displayed on the menu.
I'd check that out.
I have a GWT app that when launched it takes you to a page with just a menu. So as a shortcut type thing I would like the users to be able to go straight to the page they want. So if the default start page is x, the should be able to say x/add and it will take them to the add page. How would I get that in gwt? Do I need a bunch of different entry points?
To accomplish this, you should use the URL's "fragment", which is the part after the #. For example, if your app is at /x, you could have a different UI displayed when someone navigates to /x#add
If you don't want to write this logic yourself, you should look into the gwt-presenter project, which was written to make MVP apps easier, but also includes an EventBus (to publish events to all corners of your app), and a PlaceManager to facilitate events being fired when the fragment changes (and to change the fragment at will).
Seems like a discussion we already had so I'll just link to the related question. Please see the answers and comments there. Basically, it might be advantageous to just interact with the History class directly, instead of introducing MVP to your project, but YMMV (I'm a huge fan of MVP myself, but it's not for everyone. Besides, I like to know the stuff "under the hood" ;))
I was looking at the Firefox Add-ons Manager UI (pictured below) and really liked the expandable list used to show settings or properties for each add-on.
Firefox Add-ons Manager http://uploads.tech-buzz.net/Firefox3Beta3ComingonMonday_859/get_addons.png
I liked it enough to want to include something similar in one of my applications. The problem is, I don't know, exactly what the control is called (it doesn't seem to be "expandable list"), nor do I know if there is an implementation available for use in my own application (so I wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel.)
This isn't the first time that I've seen some cool piece of UI and wanted to incorporate it into something I'm working on, but have had no idea if I would have to design it from scratch. So I generally end up reworking my UI to use standard UI widgets to save time.
This got me thinking, is there some place that has a catalog of a bunch of UI widgets with names and what platforms/languages they are implemented for/in?
UPDATE
Turns out this control is called a Rich List Box, and it seems to only be implemented in XUL.
To answer your question, no, there isn't a universal catalog anywhere, though MSDN is as good a place as any to find definitions of most common UI elements.
The specific widget you ask about is generally called an accordian (wikipedia)
I talked to a friend of mine and he told me that it's possible to create an image in an image editor (gimp/photoshop) and then use it as a button . He said that's the way applications that have great GUIs do it.
He also said that there is a file describing which parts of the image make up the button.
Is this possible , or is he "crazy"? :)
This needs to be clarified with a language of choice, etc. In general, most languages (WinForms, Java AWT/SWT, etc) have an image or background image property that allows you to use images for buttons. There are even skinning frameworks that will let you use images for all controls in an easy-to-define manner.
If you are talking about HTML, there is a button input type that can allow an image to be used as a button for a form.
#Vhaerun
CodeProject is a good place to find lots of skinning libraries. I used this one a long time ago. Winamp is a great example of a skinned application, where users can actually create their own templates to completely change the look of the application without changing code whatsoever. Actually, most media players have some sort of skinning available.
You can do anything, especially since you have no constraints re language, environment, etc.
No he is not crazy, you can use images on almost all GUI tools instead of buttons, they are generally an image on the button, or in some cases you can put the image on the screen and have an onclick event assigned to it.
You haven't been very specific with your question so nobody is able to give you a definitive answer, but here's an attempt to do so without demeaning you:
It's quite common for graphics designers (using tools like photoshop, gimp, etc.) to participate alongside developers for both desktop and web based applications. Web based applications can easily capture information about when an image is clicked and frequently people will either design the button with the text in the image file itself, or use background pictures/borders with plain text on top. There is not standard, per se, on how this is accomplished on the web, but plenty of sites serve as an example (try using Firebug with FireFox to inspect other sites and see how they do things).
If the circumstance at hand is desktop oriented then the answer becomes much more complicated. Skinning is accomplished in many way and, depending on platforms and libraries being used, implementation specifics vary greatly. In it's most simple terms, most GUI frameworks (like GTK, QT, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation) include a basic picture control, and this control can usually process a "Click" event, which would allow it to function as a button, but if you want different states (pressed, disabled, etc.) you will have to invest more effort in such a thing; you also won't find this method suitable for replacing the rendering of all buttons in an application, but rather something you would do manually for each one, or write your own custom button control that uses your assets specifically.
In terms of a file describing different images that combine as described in the file to override the rendering of the button this would lead me to believe you are either working with an already existent application that is skinable (like Firefox or Winamp) or that he is speaking of some specific UI toolkit. I'm not aware of this functionality being generally available in most of the common system-level UI toolkits.
In the future you may wish to be more specific with your questions.
In HTML, you could do:
<input type="button" src="/path/to/image.png" />
Alternately, assigning an onclick event to an image causes that image to work similarly to a button:
<img src="/path/to/image.png" onclick="function(){doSomething();}" />
If you're talking HTML you can use <input type="image" src="myfile.png" />
Specifications here
Imagemaps I guess.
No seperate file describes the map, it is all part of the html document.
http://www.w3schools.com/TAGS/tag_map.asp