MockupScreens 4.95 is available for download. Main additions are:
- New skin Windows 10 Dark, see screenshot below.
- Metro (“Windows-10 like”) icon set.
You can download MockupScreens 4.95 from the main MockupScreens website.
Existing users: Download the 4.95 trial version and unlock it with your existing license key.
MockupScreens 4.94 is live. One main addition is the new skin “Windows 10″:
People have asked for more icon sets. So another important addition in 4.94 is Material Design iconset:
You can download MockupScreens 4.94 from the main MockupScreens website.
Existing users: Download the 4.94 trial version and unlock it with your existing license key.
What’s New and Improved in MockupScreens 4.94
New:
- Windows 10 skin
- Material Design iconset
Fixed:
- “Fit to text” option was broken for some situations.
- You couldn’t move a group if it was created from the main menu.
- You couldn’t run a slideshow properly if a master screen was selected.
After releasing the Mockups 101 book, it’s time to go back to MockupScreens. New MockupScreens version 4.93 is updated with new skin: “Mac OSX, El Capitan”.
To download MockupScreens 4.93, go to the main MockupScreens website and proceed to download page. Existing users: download the trial version and unlock it with your license key.
Changes in 4.93
New:
- New skin: Mac OSX “El Capitan”.
Improvements:
- You can zoom in and out using Ctrl/Cmd + mouse wheel.
- Added 107 new icons in Font Awesome icon set.
Fixes:
- Now you can add 3rd party icon set with images that do contain an alpha channel.
ModernAnalyst has just published the article based on the material from my Mockups 101 book!
I’m very very happy for this opportunity to contribute to one of my favorite websites for IT business analysts 
You can check it at ModernAnalyst, it’s at their homepage at the moment.
Online store mockup
15 months ago I’ve started writing the “mockups book”. Many people jumped in with feedback and ideas and, in a way, the book took on a life of its own.
Consequently, finishing the book was much more work than I imagined, but I’m very happy with the result!
You can:
The Book
My book “Mockups 101: A Better Way to Discuss Software Requirements” aims to help the reader to find out what your client really wants.
Many commonly encountered problems have tried and trusted remedies, and the book presents these solutions through practical examples and real-life stories.
Mockups 101: A Better Way to Discuss Software Requirements
Excerpt from Amazon description:
“Great simple straightforward approach to using mockups.”
Mockups visually represent the system before it’s been built. They are easy to do, but what makes the biggest difference is how you actually use those mockups.
This book will help you to:
- Get early feedback from clients.
- Use mockups to improve communication with customers and developers.
- Avoid (or solve) common problems encountered on the wide variety of different situations.
“A short book that distills the essence of why and when mockups should be used.”
More details on Mockups 101 book’s website or on the books’s page at Amazon.
What’s In the Book
Here is the full table of contents:
MOCKUPS 101: A BETTER WAY TO DISCUSS SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
About This Book
Help Your Customers Understand What They Are Going to Get
PART I: CREATING AND USING MOCKUPS
1. The Basic Mockup Routine
2. Make It Obvious That Mockups Are Not the Real Thing
3. Provoking the Right Feedback
4. Discussing the Mockups Effectively
5. Mocking-Up the Outputs
PART II: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
6. Mockups As a Spec
7. Real World Case Studies
8. A Cautionary Tale
9. Choosing the Right Mockup Tool
Last Words
About the Author
List of Figures
Take-Aways by Chapter
Enjoy,
Igor
When you need to discuss your mockups over hard-copy handouts (e.g. in a workshop with no access to a projector), then the default export from MockupScreens might not be ideal. On-screen texts might be too small to read properly, which is a pain.
New option in MockupScreens 4.92 brings is to print your mockups in full-page. Screens will be printed as big as possible but no bigger than the original, and even rotated to landscape when needed:
To download new MockupScreens 4.92, go to the main MockupScreens website and proceed to download page. Existing users: download the trial version and unlock it with your license key.
New in MockupScreens 4.92:
- Printing mockups in full-page.
Improved:
- Portable version contains it’s own temp folder now.
- All in-program links now point to the new website.
Fixes:
- After long session with really big project, MockupScreens could slow or even crash. This is greatly remedied now, but still not completely fixed.
- Consecutive space characters were not preserved in exports.
- If computer crashed during the autosave, index.json file could get corrupted, preventing MockupScreens from starting.
MockupScreens now works 3-5 times faster than before! We have worked hard to improve performance (which suffered after introducing free text formatting in 4.90) and fix several annoying bugs. You can download new MockupScreens 4.91 at the download page on the main website.
What is new in version 4.91 is the Autosave feature. In the case of a crash, MockupScreens automatically recovers the last file you have worked on, including all the updates prior to the crash.
You can download MockupScreens 4.91 here. Below is the complete list of changes and improvements.
PS. Existing users: download the trial and unlock it with your existing license key.
Changes in MockupScreens 4.91
New:
- Autosave (recovers project automatically after crash)
Improvements:
- 3-5 times better performance
- When moving or resizing, complete widgets are rendered only after the action
- Lasso select disregards locked widgets or widgets derived from masters
Fixes:
- Comment numbering was broken in some situations
- Selection problems fixed
- Corrected Frame widget top padding for Windows 7 & 8 skin
- Widget’s spatial index wasn’t updated correctly after moving via keyboard
Up to now, text formatting was possible only for entire text in a widget. With MockupScreens 4.90, FREE text formatting is available in Text widget:
You can download MockupScreens 4.90 from the main MockupScreens website. Existing users: download the trial and unlock it with your existing license key.
Other changes are listed below.
Enjoy!
Improvements in 4.90:
- When a widget is selected, just start typing to change its caption.
- Beside ‘font-awesome’, original icons are also available now.
- A newly created project is not marked as having changes while still empty.
- Margins on text in Table widget was too big.
- Increased number of projects on “Open Recent” list.
Fixes:
- Keyboard navigation with TAB key in Find panel didn’t work correctly.
- Double-clicking on .mck file opening a blank project.
- Troubles with refreshing menus etc.
- Masters don’t change names of screens when opening older projects.
- Table resizing after closing the Table Editor.
- Text alignment problems in labeled widgets.
MockupScreens 4.89 is live, bringing numerous bug fixes, commands to distribute widgets evenly and # suffix nows indicates selected item in widgets with lists. You can download new version from the main website.
Sorry for the bugs, we did quite a lot of internal changes in previous version 4.88. Many of those were necessary for moving closer toward mobile skins.
What Is New
Now you can distribute multiple widgets both horizontally or vertically, i.e. space them evenly, from the Align command menu:
What is also new, is the ability to indicate selected item in widgets with lists, in other words Dropdown, List, and Tree. To make an item selected, suffix it with ‘#':
To download new version 4.89, go to the main MockupScreens website.
Existing users: just download the trial version and use your existing license key to unlock it.
The full list of improvements and changes is below. Enjoy!
Complete List of Changes and Fixes in 4.89
New:
- Use # suffix to indicate item selection in Dropdown, List, and Tree widgets.
- Commands to distribute widgets evenly.
Improved:
- Ability to open multiple MockupScreens instances on Mac by double-clicking .mck project files.
- Image can be exported from an Image widget.
- Toolbar toggle buttons for controlling panels’ visibility.
- Field and Text widgets default vertical alignment is top-aligned now.
- Comments are disabled on Master screens.
- “Snap to Grid” option added to the View menu.
- Deleting a screen asks for confirmation.
- “Group” context action is disabled when only a group is selected.
- Moved maximum comment dimensions options to the “General” tab.
- Applying a master should not rename the screen.
Fixes:
- Fix how special system folder locations are retrieved (some conditions stopped MockupScreens from starting).
- Centering Dialog and Form captions (Mac OSX and Safari skins).
- Now able to select Screen using ctrl key (Cmd on Mac) when other widget(s) are already selected.
- Fixed issues with the CheckBox.
- Images from external program can be dragged and dropped onto the current screen in MockupScreens.
- Fixed issues related to widget-alignment commands.
- Fixed issues related to widgets movement and selection.
Happy New 2015, everyone!
Last year was great for MockupScreens for one simple reason: substantial work was done on MockupScreens version 5. Having said that, we need to hurry – with version 4.89 in the making, we are running out of numbers.
Apart from that, what was done in 2014 can be summarized like:
- 51 improvement, some of them quite big.
- 74 bug fixes, which is less that in 2013. This means less bugs, which is a good thing.
Most important improvements, ie. what was done that you requested the most, were:
- New online help – Replacement for offline help/pdf, which were embarrassingly dated.
- Icon set – 479 Font Awesome icons included, you can do wonders with them.
- Buttons with icons – You requested this quite a lot.
- Export to DOCX format – Native format for Microsoft Word.
- Text formatting in comments – Annotations are crucial for mockups. By formatting them properly, you can communicate more clearly.
- New widget: Progress Bar – Editable caption and progress, different look for each skin, marquee option.
- Search/Replace – It works over all your screens, in both widgets and comments. This works phenomenally.
- New widget: Dialog – Editable caption and titlebar buttons, native (different) look for all skins.
- Editor over most of the screen: Widgets toolbar, screen tree, and property panel can be hidden or revealed by pressing Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3 respectively (on Mac, it’s Cmd key instead of Ctrl, of course).
- Export to single-file HTML – Easy way to export your mockups.
- Printing in 300 DPI – Crisp screenshots in printouts and in PDF export. Much, much better than before.
Other improvements, some big and some small, in no particular order:
- Editing multiple widgets is now done via property panel (instead of separate dialog).
- Tab widget has larger initial size.
- Frame widget has larger initial size.
- Tree widget has larger initial size.
- Icon chooser remembers selected icon set and category.
- Badges replace Marks
- Color themes for Badges
- Image gallery removed (icons does that job now)
- Faster program startup
- Scrolling in editor is more smooth than before
- Option to reopen last project on startup or not
- Locking widgets in place from Geometry panel
- Optional captions for images
- For forms, “Alternate Name” is empty by default
- For Save dialog, the native Win or Mac dialog is used
- Tabs are bigger by default.
- Temporary border for easier placement of widgets.
- In labeled widgets, labels now “grow” to the left when text grows.
- Snapshots now use the same grid options as seen on the canvas.
- Export to HTML now shows confirmation message when overwriting existing folder.
- When group of widgets is dragged by mouse, their alignment regards the whole group and not individual widgets.
- Radio buttons can be switched between horizontal and vertical layout.
- Text wrapping for Radio buttons’ labels.
- Radio buttons’ labels can be positioned either on the left or on the right of the radios.
- Labels of compound ie. “Labeled” widgets can be positioned either on the left or above.
- Tab captions have wider margins now.
- Option for Slideshow to toggle Window titles on or off (accessible via Options panel).
- Option to turn off navigating screens in Slideshow via left/right mouse-click
- All options from Advanced tab for Master are now either inherited or editable
- When group is selected, new screen is placed in that group
- Much better performance when typing text in complex screens.
- Moderately better performance when selecting widgets on complex screens.
- Registered users can change license key from new “Renew license” window, instead of going to “Buy the full version” window which was confusing.
- New images are inserted with their original size and aspect ratio.
- Images have new option “Restore original size” on “Geometry” panel.
- When adding a new widget, mouse pointer positions at the widget’s right-bottom corner, which is much more practical for resizing etc.
- Window background color can be changed in Mac OSX skin.
- Window background color can be changed in Safari skin.
- Custom colors persist between sessions.
- When root group is selected, menu item Drawing/Rename group is disabled.
- Most widgets now have 100pix default width.
- Added splash screen on startup, which shows MockupScreens version and whether it’s registered or not.
- Better rendering of shadows etc when canvas is zoomed-in.
- Right-click shortcut menus were reorganized and some items renamed.
- Right-aligned text now grows to the left, when the wrapping is off.
Bug fixes were many, but less than in 2013. Which is great.
Here is the full list, for those of you considering whether to stick to your current version (please don’t – less headaches for everyone):
- In settings,”Display Icons and Badges” is now “Display Badges” and affects Badges only.
- Deselecting a widget (from multiple selection) by clicking while holding down the Ctrl/Cmd key.
- Incorrect font size during widget creation (before a widget was actually placed on canvas).
- Form’s web toolbar was incorrect in Mac OSX skin.
- Fixed keyboard shortcuts for font formatting: bold (Ctrl/Cmd+B), italic (Ctrl/Cmd+I), underline (Ctrl/Cmd+U).
- Fixed keyboard shortcuts for text alignment: left (Ctrl/Cmd+L), right (Ctrl/Cmd+R), center (Ctrl/Cmd+E).
- When annotated widget was clicked, its number indicator was displayed behind the selection indicator.
- In editor, when changing active screens by PageUp / PageDown, Screen tree was not updated accordingly.
- When a group is selected and has focus: Comments panel and Property panel are disabled.
- Dropdown caption alignment wasn’t calculated correctly (caption text was overlapping with the dropdown arrow).
- Incorrect behavior when adding widgets and changing the widget to add.
- Comments get blank after replace command (only in certain situations).
- Selected widget can be deleted by Backspace key (again).
- Unintentional wrapping in Text widget
- Issues with Transform feature
- Mouse icon displayed for line resize is not correct
- Find is not highlighting the matching string within widget/comments.
- Missing info box during widget resize.
- Irregular tab widget background color with MacOS and Safari skin
- Saving a snapshot to file didn’t give an overwrite confirmation
- Image in grouped widgets was sometimes lost when pasting, saving and otherwise serialising the group
- Single-file HTML export now uses the image format selected in HTML export settings
- Better indenting of word-wrapped lines in Comment bubbles
- Manual line breaks in comments are now preserved in HTML export
- Mac: File overwrite confirmation was sometimes shown twice
- Unlinking from Master wasn’t copying Form attributes properly.
- Scrollbars were not displayed immidiately for some widgets when changed.
- Tab key wasn’t handled properly in labeled widest’ properties.
- Mac: Gallery and custom image buttons on Image properties looked weird.
- Several widgets had “lost” their borders with 4.82 depending on skins, which is corrected now.
- “Revert to Saved” command was showing incorrect confirmation message.
- Find was distorting text on screen in certain situations.
- Searching for special characters could produce unexpected results.
- Resizing or moving widgets weren’t always correctly accounted for when using Undo or Revert to Saved commands later.
- On Mac, project wasn’t opening in browser automatically, after exporting to HTML.
- Replace wasn’t always working for compound widgets (Table, Tree, labeled widgets).
- On some circumstances, replacing text could break comment numbering.
- Adding new subgroup on Masters tree now works correctly
- Deselecting a row in a Table was terribly non-intuitive
- Undo was not working properly after transforming a widget to another
- Copying screens to clipboard was not preserving images (ie. when copying a screen from one project to another)
- Widgets can’t get positioned outside of canvas
- Line widget orientation was changing when changing geometry via “Change Multiple Widgets” dialog
- Transform tool was not carrying the text from Link to Text/Radio widgets
- Select all was not working from menu after just placing a widget
- Mac: Copy/paste text between MockupScreens and other programs didn’t work
- Splash page is displayed until MockupScreens has fully initalized itself
- Table widget sometimes haven’t updated the property field after editing
- HTML export had problems with links because of Tab widget incorrectly interpreting them
- Background color for dialogs no longer incorrectly gets into the corners.
- Occasionally dropdowns (e.g. skin chooser) stopped working temporarily.
- On Mac, “Show tips” popup was not displayed when launching.
- Captionless Dialogs had fain “ghost” lines in BW and MSIE skins
- Pasting an image from other applications now works correctly for: jpeg, gif, bmp, png, tiff, ico.
- Application doesn’t hang any more when user closes the Edit Group Name window.
- User wasn’t able to select “Master Screens” node or any group under it.
- Dropdown caption is now properly aligned in property panel.
- User couldn’t select general (unnumbered) comment.
- Property panel was empty if initialy loaded project has a widget group as a selection.
- There were instances when user wasn’t able to select a Mark widget.
- Custom background color produced visible borders for some widgets.
- “Tip of the Day” window sometimes got behind the main window when user switched between MockupScreens and other applications.