Balsamiq Mockups: are you looking for feedback?

[Bear Bibeault]

Peldi, I've been using Mockups for the past 4 weeks, doing the UX for an enterprise web app. I think it's great!

I do, however, have lots of suggestions for improvement. Are you interested in hearing them here? Or is there another channel that would be more suitable?

[Balaji Loganathan]

I am interested in giving my feedback as well.

[Peldi Guilizzoni]

Hi all! Definitely YES on wanting feedback, always!

I'll be monitoring the forums for the next few days, so ask away!

[Bear Bibeault]

Feedback #1: In complex objects that have text, allow different text renditions for parts of the text.

For example, in the tree and datagrid controls, sometimes I need to show some entries in a different color, or in bold, or italicized, and so on. If there is a way to do that, I haven't found it. I've resorted to layering text elements over the control in the correct location and grouping them with the control.

[Bear Bibeault]

Feedback #2: Allow any icon to be used for the folder an file controls in the tree control.

[Bear Bibeault]

Feedback #3: for the icon element(s), it'd be great if you could also suck in a png or tiff image if one of the preset icons isn't sufficient.

[Peldi Guilizzoni]

You can use markup for text, look at the default text in a paragraph of text control, or the help: http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups/help#text

As for icons in the Tree cotnrol, we only support the ones shown in the default text. For others, for right now you have to overlay icons yourself.

[Bear Bibeault]

Feedback #4: allow general resize of icons. As opposed to just the discrete size of XS, S, M, L.

[Peldi Guilizzoni]

For #3, see http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups/help#images

[Peldi Guilizzoni]

For #4, why? I like to keep it simple. If you want any size, you can use an image.

Also, for everyone, we have hundreds of topics already here: http://community.balsamiq.com and our roadmap is this: http://balsamiq.com/blog/2010/06/02/roadmap/

[Bear Bibeault]

Peldi Guilizzoni wrote:You can use markup for text, look at the default text in a paragraph of text control

Ah that's cool for bold and italics. Is there anyway to change color? Specifically, I want to "gray out" text to indicate that it's disabled.

Thanks so much for your quick responses! This is a great tool that can only get better!

[Peldi Guilizzoni]

Use -this- for disabled and it will gray out. No support for {color} yet.

[Bear Bibeault]

Peldi Guilizzoni wrote:For #4, why? I like to keep it simple. If you want any size, you can use an image.

Yeah, but that means I need to create my own hand-drawn version of the icon images. Or perhaps the range of discrete sizes could be increased?

[Peldi Guilizzoni]

Re: icon sizes - maybe you can show me a screenshot of what you're trying to achieve...surely 4 sizes should fit most cases? Mockups tries to make the 80% case dead-simple and SUPER-fast. If you like a million options, you're probably not going to be happy with Mockups.

[Bear Bibeault]

The case I was thinking of showed a "blowup" of a portion of the UI, and I needed the icon to be REALLY big.

It's kinda a corner case now that I think of it. And I understand about the 80% rule...

[Gian Franco]

Bear Bibeault wrote:The case I was thinking of showed a "blowup" of a portion of the UI, and I needed the icon to be REALLY big.

...blowing up a portion of the UI sounds more like a presentation effect like zooming in/out, panning,...

Gian

[Bear Bibeault]

Gian Franco wrote:

Bear Bibeault wrote:The case I was thinking of showed a "blowup" of a portion of the UI, and I needed the icon to be REALLY big.

...blowing up a portion of the UI sounds more like a presentation effect like zooming in/out, panning,...

No in the least what I was alluding to.

[Gian Franco]

Hi Bear,

...without any context it is not clear from your post what you are alluding to.

Cheers,

Gian