Balsamiq makes mocking up fun!

Robert sent me a link last week to a new mockup tool called Balsamiq.  At first, I didn't really see the point, but after using it for only a few minutes, I was totally sold.

What is it?

Have you ever tried to use Visio to mockup UI?  It's a cumbersome process, and no matter what I do, the end result just always looks like a bunch of circles and squares and nothing like what I actually envisioned.

Balsamiq has some ready-made controls that you can easily drop onto your canvas.  They look hand drawn, which is absolutely wonderful because then when I show people my mockups, there will be no doubt that they're simply looking at a mockup and not the final version.

Why is it useful?

I was just playing around with Balsamiq for a few minutes and made a quick screen showing a new feature we want to implement.  I showed it to Robert, and we found out instantly that I was going about it the wrong way.  Imagine if I'd mocked that up in HTML, or in Photoshop?  It would have taken me a lot longer, and it would have been harder to modify after my initial mistake.  Since I used Balsamiq, i was able to just move the controls around.  So it saved me a lot of time and aggravation.

Another Example

We have to implement a way for color blind users to use our web application, so we've been asked to add "Color Schemes" to the User Settings.  The user can have an underline or a box around particular fields on the form.  The box background color or underline color is affected by changing color schemes.

At first, I thought, the simplest thing to do would be to simply provide a drop-down list of named color schemes with a preview below, so I mocked it up, and it looked like shit.  Then I remembered the way Digsby and now the new Windows Live Messenger 9 Beta showed some of the custom UI settings, so I tried to emulate it a bit.  (The horizontal rule control in Balsamiq isn't colorable yet, but the author says he's added to his upcoming feature list.)

 

Also, I just want to note that I've emailed the author twice, and he responded back within a few minutes each time.  That's impressive.

Check it out:

http://www.balsamiq.com

Learn and Practice LINQ With LINQPad

LINQPad is a free tool that lets you query your databases using LINQ syntax in an IDE similar to a poor man's SQL Management Studio. It comes packed with 200+ examples.

You can also use it as a code snippet compiler, but I think Snippet Compiler is better suited for that, as LINQPad doesn't have Intellisense at the moment.

http://www.linqpad.net/

Development-Related Uses For Screencasts

I’ve started using a program called Jing recently. It can record a video of what's currently on your screen.

Possible uses:

1. Show managers or project sponsors the current state of your in-progress application without giving them access to the version on your machine (that you might accidentally break since you're still working on it).
2. When a new feature is created, developers could create a video that shows the QA team what the new feature is supposed to do.
3. When the new feature doesn't work, the QA team can show the developers the steps necessary to reproduce the problem. (Most of the time, a simple text description isn't enough.)
4. I have a friend who wants to show his users in Asia how to use certain features of his application.
5. I have another friend who wants to record the repetitive (yet somewhat complicated) tasks he’s currently doing, so he can show someone else how to do those tasks.
6. Project sponsors could keep customers (internal and external) abreast of new changes to an application via a blog and show off those changes with an embedded screencast.

If you want to get really fancy, you could even create tutorial videos like the kind you see on www.asp.net, but I think a program like Camtasia Studio would probably be better suited to that, as Jing has a 5 minute limit on any videos created, and there is no way to edit the videos it creates.

Also, because I don't want to divulge any company secrets, I'm not sharing my videos to Screencast.com, Jing's default video destination. I set it up to save a file on my hard drive, so that I can attach it to an email or TFS work item.

Jing is free and extremely easy to use.

http://www.jingproject.com/