MockupData

Version 4.20 is Live and Many Other Things
August 29, 2009

Sorry for the lack of updates, I’ve been *very* busy. But main thing is version 4.20 is live, with most of the feedback I got since April implemented.

  • FORM improvements: Form’s “minimize” and “maximize” buttons are now optional for Windows and Web skin (Black and White skin doesn’t show them at all). Menus can have submenus that can be displayed as open. Defining the submenus is the same as for the Tree element (indenting with dots) but only one sub-level is available. HTML toolbar for Form element is now optional and available in any skin (not only Web skin). You can change the form’s background color.
  • INTERFACE improvements: Most menu items has icons now to distinguish them faster. There is big “New Screen” button above the list of screens in the right. Grid can be turned on or off from the top toolbar. Grid is now shown OVER the form, which makes far more sense. Elements are mouse-dragged from the left toolbar (which is more standard then point and click as was up to now). Zoom in/out commands on “Drawing” menu or F8/F9. Right and bottom panels can be resized now to fit people with different displays and resolution. Showing progress while importing old .story files.
  • TREE improvements: Root node is optional now, if the text is left empty root node is not displayed.
  • TABLE (and Table Editor) improvements:  Header row is now optional. Columns can be button, checkbox or dropdown types. If it’s a button, all empty cells are duplicated from the last non-empty cell. If it’s a checkbox, any text within a cell makes it “checked”. One or more table rows can be displayed as “selected” eg. highlighted. Table editor toolbar commands have icons now. Table headers allow multi-line text captions – split lines with “|” character like this “First line|Second line”. Table editor has undo/redo capability now.
  • GEOMETRY: While resizing the element, exact width/height is shown. It also can be directly set under “Geometry” tab (put there not to irritate people who don’t need this). Align and Size commands on the top toolbar: just select multiple elements and align them relative to each other (left, right, center, top, middle, bottom) or make them same height/width.
  • USER GUIDE improvements: It’s better than before but I’m still not happy with it. At least it made me wrote the “Introduction” which gives a bit of explanation on how to use MockupScreens, before diving into details.
  • EXPORT improvements: Complete project or particular scenario can be exported as number of image files (one image for each screen). Much clearer images in PDF export, see below under “Print improvements”.
  • TEXT improvements: Text elements can be populated with dummy (Lorem Ipsum) text of desired length automatically now. Undo command undoes words you typed in text fields, and not individual characters which was annoying. Text element does word-wrapping now and it’s default (can be turned off).
  • CHECKBOX improvements: Checkbox can have label on either left or right side now.
  • COMMENT improvements: Comments are automatically numbered top to bottom.
  • BUTTON improvements: Buttons allow multi-line text captions now. Disabled button looks more realistic in “Windows” skin.
  • LINE improvements: Line is resized or manipulated by it’s ends and not by the handles on “bounding box” around it. And you can change line’s color.
  • PRINT improvements: Much better images, problem was that previously wide screens’ images were resized to fit the page. Now they are rendered smaller *before* converting them to image so they are much more clear and text is readable no matter what is the original size of the screen. Form’s own comment is shown *above* the screen when printing or exporting to PDF, other comments are shown below the screen.
  • FILE Locking: Simple file locking mechanism: application will warn you when you open the file somebody is already working on.
  • DROPDOWN improvements: User can specify dropdown’s list items and dropdown can be shown as “opened”.
  • TAB improvements: different jump-to-screen for *each* tab.

Well, there you go. Enjoy.

EDIT: I just noticed ” and Many Other Things” in the title. That was my original intention, but above list of new features is too comprehensive to continue with other topics. I will post those other things in few days, in short there is quite a few parallel tracks being worked on now, all with the same goal to improve MockupScreens.