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

Balsamiq

Toggle navigation

Release: Retina Support, New Mockups for Google Drive UX, Big myBalsamiq Improvements, and MUCH More!

Hello friends of Balsamiq!

We hope you all had a great summer. Most of us took some time off to unplug, recharge and get ready for a great, highly productive fall and winter.

Even during the summer break, we have added some new features and fixed lots of little things here and there. Check out what's new in today's release, it's a pretty sweet one!

Retina support in Mockups for Desktop for OSX!

The Mac version of Mockups for Desktop now supports retina displays. Click on the image below to see the comparison:

retina_compare

Blurry text, be gone! 🙂

Thank you Clay Johns and others and mason-google for requesting it!

Fully revamped, very Googlific UX for Mockups for Google Drive!

Mockups for Google Drive is one of our fastest growing products, so we're finally giving it the attention it deserves.

In this release we fixed the most annoying issues it had: we improved the installation experience, sharing mockups with images in them now actually works, and the file picker no longer gets confused when you have multiple Google Accounts.

We also focussed on making it feel a lot more "Google Docs-like". We now always show your email address in the top-right corner, so that you can always tell which account you're working with. We now automatically save all changes as you make them (you no longer have to click Save explicitly).

m4gd

We save a new revision whenever you close the browser tab, and allow you to revert to the last revision from within the mockup editor directly. We even allow you to rename a mockup from within the editor!

m4gd_revert

In other words, it's pretty sweet. We're even working on allowing real-time co-editing, something we'll want to eventually roll out across all of our products. We have a proof of concept in place, so stay tuned for exciting developments in this area.

But first, we'll work on supporting links, that's definitely the biggest missing feature in Mockups for Google Drive right now.

If you haven't tried Mockups for Google Drive yet, this might be a good time to jump in. Just make sure you have Google Drive itself all set up (visit drive.google.com), then install the application from here.

Big myBalsamiq editor UX improvements

Other than the many fixes listed below, we made a few long overdue UX improvements to myBalsamiq.

First of all, we finally fixed what we internally call "the relinker". This means that if you rename a mockup that has links to it in other mockups, all those other mockups will get updated automatically. No more broken links to fix manually!

We also made a lot of improvements in the project browser within the myBalsamiq editor. You can now rename, re-order and delete mockups, all within the myBalsamiq editor. You can even delete images from the UI library directly - just right click on the image you want to delete in the UI Library or the image selection dialog and click on "Delete Image".

renamedelete

Oh, and if two people are editing a project at the same time, each is notified of renames, re-orders or deletions immediately. It's very smooth indeed. 🙂

movedbyother

We also now give better feedback while mockups are loading, and we greatly improved the experience when we realize that you've been logged off while editing a project.

loggedout

We also improved the experience when losing connection, removing some false positives and improving the message. We also auto-save everything all the time, so we no longer have to warn you about leaving a myBalsamiq editor tab with unsaved changes.

offline

Thank you Robert Wallerblad, Heidi H., Jeremy B., Carlton W., Gordon T. and Jason D. for reporting about the relinker and Ole Seidel, Mario S. and Mark C. for reporting about the offline dialog issues.

Other fixes and enhancements

  • All versions: we now enable links to URLs in all versions of Mockups, including those that don't yet support links between mockups.
  • All versions: made the Application Bar behave better at smaller sizes (things don't overlap any more, it doesn't flicker, and it lays itself out a little faster).
  • All versions: fixed an issue with the BMML <map> element when using Symbols and groups. Thank you so much Dave for the very detailed bug report!
  • All versions: fixed a layout issue in the Datagrid control. Thank you Jim Jarrett for reporting it!
  • All versions: fixed an issue with the positioning of the crop bar. Thank you Gil Bronstein for reporting it!
  • All versions: fixed an issue with unicode characters not being displayed properly in the image inspector. Thank you Dmitry and Avi Nahir for reporting it.
  • All versions: fixed a few issues with escaping square brackets. Thank you Jenni Merrifield, teevee and Andreas F. for reporting it!
  • All versions: we now support \\ to escape the \ character. Thank you Chris Nicholls for requesting this!
  • All versions: fixed an issue with the image inspector not showing account assets if only one of them is used in a mockup.
  • All versions: Using tabs for indenting in Tree control works again. Thank you Ed for reporting it!
  • All versions: the Tab Bar control with no border and a selection would show a small black line under the selected tab when zoomed. It's fixed now. Thank you Andreas F. for reporting it!
  • All versions: improved our handling of keyboard shortcuts so that they interfere less with international keyboards. Thank you Deivids D. for reporting the issue!
  • All versions: fixed an issue with auto-sized, right-aligned tooltips automatically growing in size (i.e. going crazy).
  • All versions: fixed an issue with the Combo Box control's icon not turning gray when the Combo Box is disabled. Thanks Terry B. for reporting it!
  • All versions: Fixed a few issues with scrolling either with the 2 finger Mac trackpad or by clicking on the scrollbars in Windows when in presentation mode and with link hints enabled. Thank you John Weber and others and Julianna Cs. for reporting it!
  • All versions that support linking: we now handle links better when a mockup name contains a comma. Thank you Brett A. for reporting it!
  • All versions that support Symbols: Breaking a symbol apart did not mark the mockup as dirty.
  • Mockups for Desktop: HUGE performance improvements when working with files saved on remote drives on Windows. This was a huge effort, but it was worth it, as it takes care of these old reports by Bernd Steinmüller and Phil Caisley and Ulrich Kærgaard and Paul Foryt and Jochen Stiepel and Andi and others and Jason Henderson and Chris Parry and ccollingridge and many more reports via email.
  • Mockups for Desktop: worked around a Microsoft IE bug that made our download look like it wasn't signed properly. Thanks to the many people who reported this!
  • Mockups for Desktop: we now give you a better warning when you specify the name of an existing and open mockup in the "Save As..." dialog. Thank you Katie for reporting it!
  • Mockups for Desktop: change the behavior when opening files in Mockups for Desktop, when a custom order hasn't been set yet. We now place them alphabetically instead of at the end. This should really help for those of you who named your mockups alphabetically and upgrade to a recent version.
  • Mockups for Desktop: fixed an issue with the File Browser tabs (when the File Browser is at the bottom) being too small to fit the name of the mockup sometimes.
  • Mockups for Desktop: made the app more resilient to malformed paths in the BalsamiqMockups.cfg config file.
  • Mockups for Desktop: we now show a little notification whenever you re-order your mockups to let you know that the new order has been saved for the future.
  • Mockups for Desktop: improved the UX of the file browser. It now has some nice little drag handle to show you that you can drag tabs to re-order them, and the (x) close icon is only shown on hover when the file browser is on the side.
  • Mockups for Desktop: Fixed an issue when renaming a file when other files in the same folder had unicode characters in their names.
  • Mockups for Desktop: fixed an occasional issue when exporting to PDF with no margins. Thank you Taimar T. for reporting it!
  • Mockups for Desktop: You can now fully hide the File Browser, from the View menu or using CTRL+J to toggle it via keyboard.
  • Mockups for Desktop: added support for CTRL+ALT+C for "copy as image" on Windows. Thanks esavalli and Anna Sturdivant for requesting it!
  • Mockups for Desktop: you can delete images from within the editor: right click on the image you want to delete in the UI Library and click on "Delete Image".
  • myBalsamiq: the edit button was being shown to anonymous users on projects with Website access level (fix live since July 24th).
  • myBalsamiq: clicking on edit as an anonymous user in a project with Wiki access level no longer asked for a name and email address (fix live since July 24th).
  • myBalsamiq: PDF Export would sometimes generate corrupt pdf files (especially in large projects).
  • myBalsamiq: many under the hood stability and serviceability improvements.
  • myBalsamiq: we now make it more clear who the current site owner is in the admin and staff pages.
  • myBalsamiq: fixed an issue with displaying links in mockup history. Thank you Tuomas V. for reporting it!
  • myBalsamiq: fixed an issue with certain types of JPGs not uploading.
  • myBalsamiq: we now trap the CTRL+S keyboard shortcut to let you save your work quickly. Thank you Ben Norris (ha!) for requesting this!
  • myBalsamiq: fixed an issue with symbols not updating if the symbol library name had a space in it. Thank you Diane Sundstrom for reporting it!
  • myBalsamiq: we no longer trap CTRL+T in the editor, letting the browser open a new tab as expected.
  • myBalsamiq: we now show full names instead of just the first name in the Project Members dialog. We also tweaked the warning on that dialog for clarity. Thank you Lynden Oliver for requesting it!
  • Mockups for Confluence: compare versions in wiki page history works again. Thank you William Pinnington and Roger for reporting it!
  • Mockups for Confluence: fixed a compatibility issue with Confluence 4.3.7. Thank you Nawaz Quadri and Gordon K. for reporting it!

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 #3994
  • Mockups for Desktop: version 2.2.14
  • Mockups for Google Drive: version 2.2.14
  • Mockups for Confluence: version 2.2.11
  • Mockups for FogBugz: version 2.2.10
  • Mockups for JIRA: version 2.2.10
  • Mockups for XWiki: version 2.2.10
  • Web Demo: version 2.2.9 launch it

What else is going on?

Let's see, what have we done since our last release...

Last but not least, the Balsamiq Moockups cow wanted to say hi.

Onward!

Peldi for the Balsamiq Team

Leave a Comment