Wireframing Tools

Just wondering if anyone know of any good wireframing tools? Visio, word, PPT are just terrible for wireframing. So time consuming and hard to change.

Any suggestion is much appreciated.

Assuming you mean "prototyping" -- why not just use the Visual C# / VB ... themselves. It's pretty quick to put together mock screens w/ them.

Minh wrote:

Assuming you mean "prototyping" -- why not just use the Visual C# / VB ... themselves. It's pretty quick to put together mock screens w/ them.

It's for preparing functional specifications, so not quite prototyping, in fact it's more for functional proposals that I prepare to try to get contracts signed. I guess I can put in the extra effort of making the wireframes using Visual Studio but no body's going to pay me for it so I try to keep this stage as short as possible.

zhuo said:

Minh wrote:

Assuming you mean "prototyping" -- why not just use the Visual C# / VB ... themselves. It's pretty quick to put together mock screens w/ them.

It's for preparing functional specifications, so not quite prototyping, in fact it's more for functional proposals that I prepare to try to get contracts signed. I guess I can put in the extra effort of making the wireframes using Visual Studio but no body's going to pay me for it so I try to keep this stage as short as possible.

I would suggest demo'ing either the Pencil Project (firefox plugin) or Axure. We have often used Visio in the past but we now find it a bit heavy and too far removed from the web, not easy moving from visio wireframes to clickable prototypes

~ brad
website design

littleguru said:

zhuo said:

*snip*

I used Word to do it... you are quite fast with it... Rectangle for the win.

PowerPoint FTW.

Create a library of often used tools and use that as a template for a new presentation.

littleguru said:

zhuo said:

*snip*

I used Word to do it... you are quite fast with it... Rectangle for the win.

<trolling>And Microsoft made you a PM?</trolling>  I can see clippy popping up and tell you that it looks like your are trying to prototype an application.  And then it would go on about how you're using the wrong tool for the job and maybe you should be writing a term paper or something instead.

littleguru said:

JoshRoss said:

*snip*

Well... I didn't say I don't do it on paper first or whiteboard. But in the end it needs to be in a more formal form and I like the rectangle tool in Word a lot

Pen and paper are fine but wireframing apps make your life 100X easier, mockups are interactive, you can click through them and changing a drawing is a snapshot which can't be said about pan and paper technique  

 

Hey Why don't you try our tool?

http://justproto.com/">http://justproto.com There's a 30days trail (without credit card etc.)

it's browser based, easy to use, fast, reliable and has multiuser real-time collaboration

I hope you will like it and your feedback is always appreciated!

Peter JPteam said:

littleguru said:

*snip*

Pen and paper are fine but wireframing apps make your life 100X easier, mockups are interactive, you can click through them and changing a drawing is a snapshot which can't be said about pan and paper technique  

 

Hey Why don't you try our tool?

http://justproto.com/">http://justproto.com There's a 30days trail (without credit card etc.)

it's browser based, easy to use, fast, reliable and has multiuser real-time collaboration

I hope you will like it and your feedback is always appreciated!

video demo &/or more screenshots etc to show more of what your tool is capable of doing ..helps (anymore prototype elements?) .. 30day trial with signup form can't be a big hit tbh... I've already watched the Balsmiq video demo and now testing it out (5minute demo messages)- no signup form

"and can't wait for SketchFlow"

...nope not really

Duncanma said:

I thought this tool (Balsamiq) looked pretty nice ... if you want to go all serious with your sketching, and can't wait for SketchFlow

Duncan, I also like Balsamiq. It's simple but has enough power to quickly design a UI. Here's one I quickly created a while ago to demonstrate something on C9:

Koogle said:

Peter JPteam said:

*snip*

video demo &/or more screenshots etc to show more of what your tool is capable of doing ..helps (anymore prototype elements?) .. 30day trial with signup form can't be a big hit tbh... I've already watched the Balsmiq video demo and now testing it out (5minute demo messages)- no signup form

"and can't wait for SketchFlow"

...nope not really

yes we are working on video,

and would you try it if there was no registration required at all (just and open  demo)?

 

I saw sketchflow in early preview and looks really nice actually i like to direction MS is going with GUI on its new products (zune is gr8, Win7 is quite impressing to)

Peter JPteam said:

Koogle said:

*snip*

yes we are working on video,

and would you try it if there was no registration required at all (just and open  demo)?

 

I saw sketchflow in early preview and looks really nice actually i like to direction MS is going with GUI on its new products (zune is gr8, Win7 is quite impressing to)

yeah.. and they should have a way of drag&dropping an object back to the toolbar to delete it.

"yes we are working on video,

and would you try it if there was no registration required at all (just and open  demo)?"

kool.. and yes I would

Koogle said:

Peter JPteam said:

*snip*

yeah.. and they should have a way of drag&dropping an object back to the toolbar to delete it.

"yes we are working on video,

and would you try it if there was no registration required at all (just and open  demo)?"

kool.. and yes I would

as for drag'n'drop  into toolbar, hmm have to consider it i thought pressing DEL is convinient enough but i'll let the dev team know

You mentioned that the tools you use are hard to change. There's a tool out there called OverSite (www.taubler.com/oversite) that I've been using for years now. It's not only easy to create wireframes with it, but maintaining and modifying your wireframes is really easy.