👋🏽 We wrote a book! Order Wireframing for Everyone today →

Balsamiq

Toggle navigation

New Release: Breaklines, iPhone 5, List View in myBalsamiq, Confluence Blueprint and Much More!

· Posted by Peldi in Products · 4 Comments

Hello friends of Balsamiq!

We are back from our yearly week-long company retreat, energized and ready to rumble. 🙂

Let's see what's new in today's update:

Breaklines!

We have added breaklines support to the Browser control, as well as the Rectangle, Geometric Shape and Horizontal Ruler controls.

Check it out!

breaklines1

In the Horizontal Ruler control, the breaklines have a white mask either above or below the breakline. This allows you to overlay them on top of other controls and convey that there's content above and below your controls.

breaklines2

Built-in iPhone 5 support!

We finally added built-in support for the iPhone 5 form-factor, and made it the default state of the iPhone control.

iphone5

You can still switch back to the iPhone 4 version if you want, and your old wireframes will not be affected.

List view in the myBalsamiq editor!

We added a "thumbnails / list" toggle to the Project Browser in the myBalsamiq editor, take a look!

myblistview

The list view should make it easier to navigate through your wireframes, especially when editing large projects.

By the way, we are working on improving the Project Browser even more, giving you the possibility to re-order, rename and delete mockups from within the editor. Stay tuned!

A Mockups for Confluence Blueprint!

Confluence 5.1 introduced a feature called Blueprints, which make it easy to add different kinds of pages to your wiki.

With today's update, when you create a new page in Confluence you will see a new "Balsamiq Mockups Wireframe" content type:

blueprint1

Hitting Create will drop you in the Balsamiq editor directly, where you can create your wireframe right away.

blueprint3

When you're done, save your work and close the editor: you will be back in the Confluence editor, with your new wireframe ready to go at the top of your new page. Give the page a name, add a few notes and voila', your feature spec will be ready! 🙂

blueprint2

Other enhancements and bug fixes

  • All versions: fixed an issue with the {color} macro not working when you put a space after the colon character. Thank you Dabbi for reporting it!
  • All versions: fixed the text of the Property Inspector collapse/expand button tooltip.
  • All versions: The Sticky Note control is now also called TODO. Thank you Larry Karnowski for requesting it!
  • All versions: renamed the Sitemap control to Site Map
  • All versions: changed the state name for Checkbox/Radio button from "Indetermined" to "Indeterminate". Thanks eagle-eye Jenni Merrifield for reporting it!
  • All versions: fixed an issue with the default Callout control opacity in the wireframe skin. Thank you Jochen Stiepl for reporting it!
  • All versions: fixed an issue with default values not showing up properly in the Property Inspector when changing skin while something is selected.
  • All versions: fixed a display issue with the Graph Paper background when zoomed in. Thanks Jon Edlund for reporting it!
  • All versions: fixed a few Datagrid issues: If the last column is right aligned the calculation with a scrollbar messes up the x cooridnates of the last column; Data Grid does not take the scrollbar into account when calculating the seperator position; Datagrid autosize does not take the scrollbar into account and, finally, Datagrid Triangle is getting pushed in below the scrollbar. Thank you Daniel Tetteroo, Wim M. and William Pinnington for reporting these!
  • All versions: fixed an issue with account assets icons being saved to the bmml with the wrong path. Thanks Breon and Joost for reporting it!
  • All versions: fixed the "Geometric shape border cut off in PNG/PDF export" bug
  • All versions: Bracketed text links now work even with periods and no spaces between them in paragraph control, e.g. [link1].[link2]
  • All versions: fixed a freeze issue with the Tree control. Thank you Ralph R. and Andreas F. for reporting it!
  • All versions: fixed an issue with Quick Add losing focus after hitting Enter.
  • All versions: The icons of Checkbox, Checkboxgroup, Radiobutton and RadioButtonGroup now change the color according to the selected color in the property inspector. Thanks Jakob for requesting it!
  • Mockups for Desktop: Linking hints in PDF export with the option shrink to fit get the pink overlay. Thanks Charlotte and Jonathan for bringing it up
  • Mockups for Desktop: fixed an issue with some files getting cropped when exported to PDF. Thanks Adrian and William P. for reporting it!
  • Mockups for Desktop: big performance improvements in UI Library thumbnail generation. We now cache the thumbnails of the native control types, and create the thumbnails for assets a little faster. Thank you Bill M., Courtney S., cbmeeks and Alexandre and James Nutter for requesting it!
  • Mockups for Desktop: Fixed an issue with linking breaking when commas are used in file names. Thank you cmanbryant for reporting it!
  • Mockups for Desktop: we changed our Windows download with embedded Air to no longer require admin rights. After expanding the .zip, you can now run the app directly from the folder, or copy the folder wherever you wish.
  • Mockups for Desktop: even if you specified useCookies to be false in your cfg file, we now save application state such as Property Inspector state (collapsed or expanded) in memory for the duration of your Mockups for Desktop session. Thanks Deepak S. for requesting it.
  • Mockups for Desktop: Fixed another little issue with ampersand encoding (in the Files browser and in the Open Recent menu). Thank you Chris M. for reporting it!
  • Mockups for Desktop: fixed an issue with the png file name not updating after renaming a file.
  • Mockups for Desktop: fixed an issue with the mouse cursor staying in a busy state after canceling an "export all mockups to PNG" operation. Thank you Dániel B. for reporting it!
  • Mockups for Desktop: we added a timestamp to the digital signature of our Windows exe. Thank you Hugh Robinson for reporting it!
  • myBalsamiq: To make sure you really never lose any work, we now recover all unsaved mockups for the project you're editing as soon as you enter the editor.
    recovered
  • myBalsamiq: finally added support for the {mockup-name} macro in the myBalsamiq editor! Thank you Brent T. and Sean K. for reporting it!
  • myBalsamiq: fixed a weird issue with lorem ipsum text getting generated on a copy operation.
  • myBalsamiq: fixed an intermittent null-pointer exception in the editor during startup
  • myBalsamiq: fixed an issue with the Property Inspector, selection and zooming controls mistakenly showing up in full-screen while clicking through a prototype in the editor.
  • myBalsamiq: fixed an issue with downloading an archived project after renaming it. Thank you Patrice Lamarque for reporting it!
  • myBalsamiq: we reworked how we do releases and automatic scaling to be both faster and safer. For the geeks in the audience, our build machine now generates a full-fledged pre-configured AWS AMI instead of just a WAR. This way when we want to spin up a new machine, it's all set up and ready to go as soon as it starts.
  • myBalsamiq: when someone else updates the notes on a mockup you're working on and you reload the mockup in the editor, the notes now update properly.
  • myBalsamiq: fixed a 404 redirect after adding a comment when the mockup name contained special characters. Thank you Martin Doubek, Paolo Libanore and Robert Guthrie for the bug reports!
  • myBalsamiq: fixed a few issues with mockup notes encoding.
  • myBalsamiq: fixed an issue with uploading assets in IE9 and IE10.
  • myBalsamiq: improved the UX of exporting projects to PDF, as well as a time-out issue when exporting big projects. Thank you Jeremey L. for the bug report!
  • myBalsamiq: fixed an issue with a user leaving a project they're the only member of.
  • Mockups for Confluence: fixed a Confluence 4 compatibility issue. Thank you Gordon K. for reporting it!
  • Mockups for Confluence: fixed a Firefox 10 compatibility issue.
  • Mockups for Confluence: fixed an issue with losing alignment and size after editing a mockup. Thank you Wilm S. for reporting it!
  • Mockups for Google Drive: now properly says links are not available in this version (instead of "no link targets"). Thanks Jeff Vick for bringing it up.
  • Mockups for Google Drive: you can now navigate your folder structure when opening files. Thank you cashandcarry and Jim Alinas-Benson for requesting it!
  • Mockups for JIRA: Use new authorization method if running on JIRA 6+ API to avoid error messages in log
  • Mockups for XWiki: updated configuration instructions to make them work with recent XWiki versions.

How do I update?

If you're using myBalsamiq, you're already updated. Just log back in and enjoy.

For other versions, simply install from our download page on top of your current installation. You won't have to re-register.

As always, if you hit any snags with the new build let us know immediately and we'll fix it right up! 🙂

For posterity, these are the version numbers of today's release:

  • myBalsamiq: build #3983
  • Mockups for Desktop: version 2.2.12 2.2.13 (see below)
  • Mockups for Google Drive: version 2.2.13
  • Mockups for Confluence: version 2.2.9
  • Mockups for FogBugz: version 2.2.9
  • Mockups for JIRA: version 2.2.9
  • Mockups for XWiki: version 2.2.9
  • Web Demo: version 2.2.9 launch it

July 16th update: We just posted version 2.2.13 of Mockups for Desktop to fix this full-screen bug and this export bug. Thank you so much Holger, Amanda and Jason for reporting them!

Onward!

Peldi for the Balsamiq Team

Leave a Comment

Comments (4)

  1. Hi Edwin,
    Many of the iOS controls included with Mockups (e.g., keyboard, picker, pointy button) are sized for the default iPhone size, so if you are using a lot of native controls, the default size should give you a feel for how much you can fit on one screen.

    That said, we did try to get the viewport proportions correct for our updated iPhone 5 control because we know that it can be important to get a feel for the actual dimensions. Your technique of making a pixel-perfect viewport and sizing the iPhone control to match is a good approach. Once you’ve done this, you can make that control a Symbol so that you can re-use it at that size. That should save you time going forward. You can learn how to do that here: http://support.balsamiq.com/customer/portal/articles/110439#creating. You might also want to work at non-retina size (320×568) if you’re not working with the actual production graphics. The font sizes should match up at that size.

    Another way would be to download these more precise controls from our Mockups To Go site: https://mockupstogo.mybalsamiq.com/projects/ios/iPhone%205 and/or https://mockupstogo.mybalsamiq.com/projects/ios/iPhone+5+Layout.

    Hope this helps. Feel free to email support@balsamiq.com if you need any further assistance.
    – Leon

  2. Hi Jim, can you please email more details (and ideally screenshots) to support@balsamiq.com for debugging?

    Thanks!
    Peldi

    Peldi Guilizzoni
  3. The Confluence Version

    Using the option for the blue print feature only gives me a spinner near the next button and Balsamiq never comes up. What might be wrong with my config?

  4. Is there an easy way to get the iphone to be the actual size? I didn’t find a way to do it. Instead, what I did was 1) add the iPhone to my mockup (default size 282px x573px), then 2) I added a rectangle, making that the actual size/resolution of the viewport 5 (640px x 1136px). and, finally, 3) I resized the iPhone 5, preserving the aspect ratio, using the rectangle as a reference.

    I realize that Mockups is not intended for pixel-perfect designs, of course. But I was looking for a way to ensure that my designs would fit a “realistic” amount of stuff on the screen, and matching pixel-resolution seemed one way to do it…What do others do? Eyeball-approximate the fit of their designs?