Hi there,

Short after last week’s release of the first public release of FlairBuilder 2.0, today I give you the second beta. This brings out few touch-ups and a brand new Menu Bar component.

What you also get is… drum rolls… reusable floating panes. That’s right, you can now reuse floating panes all over a page (they are bounded to a page) when using the Show Floating Pane action. Enjoy!

In other news, pages will not have a CSS grid by default, change the frame rate and that should smooth the UI a bit/lot. Also fixed a type in the shape palette toolbar, and now the app shows the tool cursor only when over the editor canvas.

More changes/fixes will come as you guys point out bugs or give feedback. So, let me know!

Please upgrade your Flash Player

Warning: Please back up your projects before opening them in this new version. Thanks! Projects create with version 2.0 will not open correctly in previous version. So beware!

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Update: New version, 2.0 Beta 2, is available. Read the announcement here and then head to that release post, too. This badge bellow will install the newest version anyway. Enjoy!

Hello everyone!

Here it is, that day, the big one, the one I’ve been looking forward to for the past few months. I worked a lot and it’s been too long, but I’m surely proud of this release. Not because of all the new cool stuff that got into, but rather for the state I finally managed to achieve quality and consistency wise. But more about this in the official release, in a few weeks.

Please upgrade your Flash Player

Warning: Please back up your projects before opening them in this new version. Thanks!

Now, let’s see what’s new and awesome:

New User Interface Layout

FlairBuilder got itself a makeup and it’s now prettier and, more important, easier to grasp and use, especially for first time users.

Most of the controls in the Properties panel have moved to a top toolbar with more compact, visual and intuitive controls. Take a look!

NEW: Now you can select a specific font face for a control that supports it (most o’them do). This is huge! Lots of new possibilities here.

A new color picker. Larger palette, easier to use and, specially, easier to input your own color code. The old one was a drag.

Some of the options have gone or transformed. I talk about, for instance, the Grid options like row colors, scrollbars. Scrollbars are a must so I’ll added them back, for sure. As for the row colors, I’m not sure yet how should I put them back in the new context. I need your HELP here!

Better Interactions Everything

Quick, as in super fast, link to other pages set up for all controls that support mouse click. This is, again, HUGE, and will make your prototyping many times faster. It’s now as easy 2-3 close clicks to set a link or to change it. Take a look and try it yourself.

The events panel has moved into a floating popup, which can be opened from the toolbar. It will not be opened by default. Not sure if this is a good thing, but I wanted to clear up the interface a bit. Too many options upfront might make learning harder, isn’t it?

The new interactions popup also contain some of the controls related to interactions, such as the name of currently selected component, its position, whether it’s visible or enabled.

Then the usual interactions tree, for each event and case.

NEW: A new interaction in this release is ‘Move/Resize’ a component. It’s a duo, meaning that you can set up both moving and resizing of a component in one shoot. And, the sweet part, you can make an animation if you want. Just tell it for how long, in seconds, and FlairBuilder will animate both the resizing and repositioning. This is AWESOME, if you ask me!

NEW: A long requested feature has been a form of autocomplete for behavior cases. When you have a complex component like a Button Bar, Link Bar, Tree, List, Tabs etc., you can make a case out of each item in that component, and specify actions for each. Now you don’t have to remember which is what, because FlairBuilder will give you a list of option. I guess that it’s not a gear shifting feature, but for sure it pumps the gas a little bit!

Simpler Component Palette

The icons for components in the palette are now big. Really big. And I hope they are more intuitive, too. I crafted them myself, so they could hurt the eyes of you designers, so feel free to critique.

There are fewer icons, too. Don’t worry, all components are still there. It’s just that several components have been merged or transformed. Take, for instance, the carts. Now there’s a single chart component that supports all 4 variants: Bars, Columns, Lines and Pie. The same with Horizontal and Vertical Slider, merged into one component. You can choose the variant from the new Style button, as I call it. Always look for it near the Events pop-up button, to the far right side of the toolbar.

The geometric shapes, rectangle, ellipse, vertical and horizontal rule, pointy rectangle, triangle, have been removed from the palette, and now they stay at the top. Handy, isn’t it? Triangle will be gone, but now you have the Polygon Line shape. Which is like totally AWESOME. The caps and bold are like totally mine.

In other news, the Tabs and the Accordion have been completely re-written. They are 100% customizable right now: border, background color, font face, color, style, text alignment, everything. Plus the custom icons which are, of course, now supported. I so happy about this! They were so inconsistent with other components, and I felt so miserable about it for so long. Too long, but it’s finally gone. The misery. Take a look!

Oh, oh, oh! And check this out! The Accordion header height and Tabs height/width are now customizable thanks to these yellow handles. You’ll notice them in other controls, too, like for rounded corners and paragraph line height. It’s so much easier and straightforward to work with them. Check. Them. Out!

And I’m not done yet! Not at all.

Design Stage Improvements

So, starting from the top left corner, all page settings like size, master, grid, have moved into this collapsible panel near the Page title. Check it and let me know what you think! I beg you.

Rulers and Guides

Requested for a long time, it’s finally here. It’s not done yet, cause I need you feedback! There’s a known bug, where the top horizontal rule doesn’t refresh when you come back from Preview mode. You have to nudge the scrollbar a little.

The horizontal and vertical guides are incomplete. They will not be remembered upon restart. That’s because I have a design problem and I NEED YOUR HELP on this one, too. Basically I don’t know if I should make the guides per page or per project. Hm? What’s your take?

Better resize/reposition handles

Inspired by Google Docs Drawing app (like in case of other features new in this release), I’ve changed the handles. Now they are round and there’s now a yellowish border which lets you clearly see which are the margins of the control. Plus, whenever you resize or move around a component, the handle will hide so you’ll clearly see the surroundings and be more precise on your action.

Component Groups

I want to make component groups as editable as possible, so you won’t have to keep on grouping/ungrouping them for small changes. So now groups are resizable. Plus, there’s also a first attempt of letting you edit the content of the group. Just double click one and see what happens.

Tons and tons of bug fixes

I don’t even remember the full list. The bottom line is: if you every reported me a bug, it’s most probably fixed. You can check and if I forgot about it, it’ll sure get fix before the final 2.0 release.

However, there’re still some major issues like Export all snapshots… Which I’ll try to address, somehow, as soon as possible.
As for future plans, I’ll keep them for another post. I’m tired now and the weekend is coming!

Thanks everyone for your patience, will talk to you really soon.

Have a nice weekend!

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Hello everyone,

I’m so… what should I say? Ashamed and excited in the same time. I’ve neglected the blog, that’s true, but for a good cause. I’m working hard on new version of FlairBuilder, a dramatically improved from UX perspective, and with lots and lots of new features. I will most probably take a week to inventor them all and start writing blog posts about each one.

Even if I should have probably released more intermediary releases, adding features in smaller packs, I just wanted to make version 2.0 really worth of its number. It’s been more than a year since FlairBuilder’s first public release and it has to look and behave like a mature app from now on.

Back to work now! Fixing the last bugs, making the last changes. Internal testing right after, followed by a beta testing period. Probably a week or two of public beta testing. I’ll let you all know when it’s ready.

Cheers,
Cristian

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Hi there,

Just wanted to give you a quick note. I just implemented a simple “affiliate” system that you can take advantage of while trying out FlairBuilder. Here’s how it works:

When you download FlairBuilder, you’re required to enter a valid email address. After you do that, you’ll be given a link with an affiliate code that you can share on Twitter, Facebook or any other way you want, with your friends, followers etc. This is so much better than by email. Chances are, if you have a large number of followers, you’ll get a pretty significant discount. Actually up to 100%. Yay!

If someone follows the link you gave them, and then downloads the app, your discount points will be incremented by 2 points, which means 2% extra discount if you purchase. FlairBuilder website remembers you, so if use the same browser within the next 30 days to purchase FlairBuilder, your discount will automatically be applied.

However, you can also retrieve the discount coupon from here: http://www.flairbuilder.com/purchase/get-my-discount/

Questions or suggestions? Please let me know: cristian@flairbuilder.com ! I’m just getting started with this so I’m very much opened to your thoughts and suggestions.

Cheers,
Cristian

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Well, this is quite a day for me. In the past couple of months I managed to get so much more involved with the community around FlairBuilder. I made a few changes and improvements to the app and the website to make it easier for you to get started with FlairBuilder, and make the evaluation process easier.

There are dozens and dozens of times when people download FlairBuilder, evaluate it for a few minutes and create a first impression. Then, thanks to the little pop-up that shows when closing the app, they get the chance to tell me about it. Sometimes they face a bug, other times they’re asking about the presence of a certain feature, or simply tell me how excited they are about their newly found prototyping tool. I received almost 200 feedback emails since last December.

Then, last month, I introduced a download form, which requires an email address prior to the actual download. Although some may think that this pushes way people, on the contrary, it didn’t. About 75% of those that reach the download page, fill the form and download the app. And the data is accurate more than 95% of the time.

These email addresses are not mere data that I collect for nothing. I use them so I can send those people useful information during the 15-day evaluation period. This way they get reminded that I’m there to answer their questions or listen to feedback and suggestions.

More than that, the download form contains a little checkbox so those who download could subscribe to the FlairBuilder Newsletter. If in almost an year only about 70 persons subscribed to the newsletter using the form on this website, in a single month more than 350 people subscribed to the newsletter through the download form. I use both MailChimp and Campaign Monitor to keep track of the two lists, the newsletter and the trial autoresponders. I had to use their API in order to manage all this from the download page. Maybe I’ll share that script with you someday.

No, let’s cut to the cheese… The big news!

Monthly subscription model for FlairBuilder Desktop

Starting with version 1.9, there’s a new option for those that either can’t afford to pay $99USD at once, or simply don’t need to use FlairBuilder for a full year. That is, a monthly subscription model of only $24/month.

This way you get the full featured FlairBuilder app, with all features enabled, and you’re free to use it for as long as the subscription goes. And you also get all the updates for free. This should be pretty exciting, don’t you think?

For more details head to the purchase page and be sure to let me know what you think. I am personally pretty excited about it but I also may be like totally wrong or delusional. So if you have anything in mind on why this wouldn’t work, let me know.

In other news, I’m actively working on a top-notch, state of the art, super-duper HTML export from FlairBuilder. It looks so much better than the first try last summer, thanks to the latest jQuery UI version that brings few improvements crucial for this feature.

I owe you big time

This year was my first time to SxSW. You know, the mega event in Austin, Texas. So much happend there that I want to share with you. I’ve got pictures, videos, news, etc. I hope I’ll soon find the time to share it all with you.

Unknown, here I come!

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Great web design comes from great care to every detail and aspect of the entire work. Layout, composition, horizontal and vertical rhythm, color palette, depth, contrast, proportions, font faces and font sizes, everything matters. Down to the smallest bit.

Hundreds of websites out there, creation of talented designers, testify for the high quality designs that follow years of work and a deep understanding of human perception and aesthetics.

This article showcases a small collection of websites with an emphase on some of details that make up their pleasant appearance and proven success.

My study was built around these topics:

Background, depth and texture. When a page looks flat, different elements on that page are less distinguishable and there is a loos clarity in how elements are placed on an importance hierarchy. A certain depth of the background emphases the content and drives attention on the most prominent elements.

Lightning and shadows. Besides that depth of the background, a pleasant and powerful effect can be also achieved by giving a certain amount of 3D-ness to elements like buttons or bars. The 3rd dimension is usually achieved through light (usually coming from a 90degree angle) and through shadows.

Borders and section transitions. It’s very important to have a clear, yet aesthetic and non-disruptive separation between different sections of a website page. Borders delimit content and hold together information that logically belongs to one chunk of content. Still, borders, if designed badly, bring noise to the overall look of a page.

Font face, color and size. The first moment visitors get to your website, their attention will be caught by colors and other non-textual elements. However, the moment their attention stops on something, they’ll try to read. You need to make sure that in that particular moment they will read what you want them to read, get the right message and take the next intended action.

The Details Showcase

Ballpark’s front page shows upfront a dark, cold blue ‘above the fold’ section, simple but carefully crafted.

(1) The header section is separated from the main content stripe by a slight embossed border. Looking closely, you can notice that it’s of made two horizontal lines: a thin one, darker than the header blue, and a slightly ticker one, lighter than the main section blue. This non-flat transition gives an interesting effect without any noise.

(2) The big green call-to-action button bears the same slightly embossed border, with a small shadow below. Notice how the button text stands out: The main text has a shadow effect applied, while the secondary text looks like it’s engraved in the button. This effect is usually achieved with a ‘lighter’ shadow at -90degree.

(3) Ballpark’s front page also displays a large screenshot of their app. To be interesting, it is surrounded by few effects which makes it stand out from the backgorund. Notice the image reflection, the shadow, the slightly embossed border and also the glow which creates a contrast effect between the background and the image’s border.

(4) The right side of the image holds a prominent badge which, you should notice, is very consistent with the green call-to-action button, as well as with the rest of page.

The ‘bellow the fold’ section of Ballpark’s front page also shows off some very interesting things.

(1) The line that denotes the fold of the page has the same embossed effect that we found in the upper side of the page.
(2) Each of the small images in the first section bellow the fold have thin, delicate hair-line borders and a very interesting shadow effect. They all look like they are standing on slightly rounded ground. Cute!
(3) The third detailed showed here is a nice testimonial box, with a nice beveled border (it makes you wonder where the light comes from, though).

Basecamp is a project management tool from 37 Signals, a company that build their products around the principle of simplicity and minimum of features. Their websites are no exceptions. Mostly HTML based, with little fancy imagery, their websites squeeze the most out of font faces, color and size, and of a grid based layout.

(1) Although there’s a lot to talk about their product pages, I would like to mention only the headlines hierarchy in the above screenshot. Notice how the main headline is in a sans-serif font face and the other two are serif. Also, the gray level goes down with the prominence of the headline.
I would also mention the background stripes pattern which creates a nice contrast and gives flair to the page.

CampaignMonitor features an elegant and professional looking home page. I’m sure lots and lots of work went into every detail of the page, with carefully weighted decisions. They must be masters in A/B testing and that sort of stuff.

(1) The first thing I’d like to mention is the cool, fresh under-water background effect. It truly makes everything else stand out and brings a very light mood to the otherwise corporate cold blue.
(2) The big headline has few touches that make it more prominent and attractive. For instance, notice the delicate silvery gradient that each char is filled with. Then a slight shadow around each letter to further emphase them. At last, the large font size with a generous leading space.
(3) Third, the screenshot is enlighten from multiple sources (notice the multiple shadows) and is reflected on the glassy background.

CheckoutApp is a beautiful, elegant, and Apple-ish website. It sends an upfront clear message: Whatever we sell, is made for Mac and Mac only.

(1) Among the plethora of aspects that make this website so beautiful in its simplicity and clearness (when launched, it stirred up lots of discussions, I was told), I’ll notice only the top menu bar. First the soft and delicate gradient and the bottom cut off the amplifies the 3D effect.

(2) Secondly, the menu links font formatting. Notice the white ’shadow’ for each letter, something somewhat specific to the Mac OS X platform. What’s interesting is that the effect was achieved only with CSS and not with images.

Daily Mile is a website/service that helps you track your daily runnings.

(1) The same top menu bar with a soft gradient and a 3D cut-off to relief it and make a nice transition to the next section.
(2) I like the side tabs, with their nice beveled separators, and the swift gradient when hovering a tab.
(3) The side call-to-action button stands out. Really stands out. So much that is not a detail any more but still, I thought it’s worth mentioning. Especially how it’s visible at all time, no matter which tab you selected.

Donor Tools is another beautiful website in which we find the same details mentioned earlier.

(1) Again, here we find the high contrast between the blue (lighter in this case) background and the headline, contrast amplified by the small drop-shadow effect.

A small personal website of Tijs Vrolix it’s a simple yet very nicely crafted website. I’d like to emphase the treatment of borders here in particular.

(1) There are several section on this front page and all are delimited with thick white borders. However, notice the consistency of all borders across the page. All are equally sized, which brings a nice consistent look to the design. And again we have a deep contrast between the dark background and the content.
(2), (3) Where the borders are thicker, they are two or three times thicker, which keeps a constant rhythm in the composition.

The one thing that strikes you most on TaoEffect Espionage 2 product page is the beautiful and refreshing contrast between the dark black page background and the fresh, shiny, springy blue sky of the window in the middle. Beautiful, simply beautiful.

(1) As I said, the eye taking contrast created by the bright green at the top, the blue sky in the middle and the dark background. Add to it the pure white border of the window.
(2) A clear, yet discrete message that the product targets Mac platform.
(3) A prominent Download button. Although not significantly larget, it’s contrasting color attract attention among the other elements on page.

Conclusion

As with any other software development discipline or, in fact, with any other profession, a really well done job requires a lot of effort and a tremendous attention to details. You know what they say about details, don’t you?! Here we insisted on the visual aspect of a website. But there are still lots of other things that make a really good website/application. Maybe we’ll get to those in a future article, too. So stay around for more.

Cheers and thanks for reading this!

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Hello everyone,

This day, again, is one of those days. As agile as a start-up has to be, and release as often as possible, there are times when you just have to spend a little more time on something in order to get it out. This is one of those times. It’s been a while since the last release but, I’m pretty sure, you’ll be happy enough about what this release brings you.

Among the plethora of little features and improvements that are constantly being added to FlairBuilder, there are some big additions that people have been asking for quite some time. Today I’m happy to mark another one of those items as being officially added to the application. Drums roll….

iPhone Applications Prototyping

Ta-da! Yay! So, I’m happy to announce that since today, FlairBuilder comes with dedicated support for iPhone applications prototyping. And by dedicated I mean that there’s now a special type of project, iPhone prototype project, with a fixed width page and a surrounding iPhone picture. Each iPhone project page has also a top and bottom bar which can be toggled visible/non-visible. I didn’t see any use in having masters for iPhone project pages, so I didn’t include this feature here.

There is a number of new, iPhone specific, components that have been added: a Button Bar, ON/OFF toggle button, a pointy navigation button, a very flexible tree-table list, a large button, and a horizontal slider.

Custom Widgets Library

You are now able to quickly select a set of components, group and save them for later reuse. Anything you need and can think of, from login forms to specific groups of components that you find yourself implementing again and again.

Coming up soon will be the possibility to share you custom widgets with the FlairBuilder community by uploading them directly from inside the app. You’ll also be able to access the community library from the application as well.

Custom Icons

You now have the option to add your own icons to the icons set that comes with FlairBuilder. Just drop your icons into the folder located at USER_HOME/.flairbuilder/icons, and FlairBuilder will pick them up. It should be straightforward. And by the way, when opening the project in the viewer, it will just work. Your custom icons that you used in the project will also be available in the viewer. Enjoy!

Embedded page links

An highly requested features was for some time the ability to specify links to other pages inside components like DataGrid, List, Tree or Paragraph. Well, now you’re able to do just that with a simple syntax: [Page Name#Link Text].

Handy formatting toolbar

There are a lot of places where you double-click a component to edit its content and FlairBuilder supports a custom syntax to help you insert formatted content easily. However, remembering all those formatting options (include the new page link syntax) is not as easy. Add to this inserting icons, thing which, I must confess, was quite painful until now.

Yeah, until now, because now there’s a formatting toolbar to assist you in editing the content of all those components that support formatting. Plus, you know have a drop-down for inserting icons as well as inserting page links. To insert a link, just select the link text, click on the Link icon, and you’ll get a pop-up with all pages in the project to choose one.

To insert an image, just click on the Image icon and you’ll get a pop-up with the default icons library plus your custom library. Click on an icon to insert its associated syntax.

Improved Window component: Now collapsible

The Window component got a face lift. Not only that now is much more customizable, but it also got a little feature that some of may appreciate. You can now specify if the window should toggle visibility of its content. For this I introduced a new syntax element, [+] and [-] to specify expanded state.

Specify expanded nodes in the Tree component

Using the same ‘expanded’ [+] and [-] syntax used in the Window component, you can now specify which nodes to be opened by default in the Tree. Just use [-] for an expanded node. The other option is implicit.

Change visibility and enabling of components

FlairBuilder prototypes just got a little more interactive. All components now have two new states: visibility and enabling. I also added two new actions that let you change this states for a certain component or group of components. Unleash your imagination!

Card stack transition effects

This is a cool little addition that will spice up your prototypes: specify that transition between the cards of a card stack should be done with an effect. For now there’re two effects available: Fade and Slide. I think it’s enough for now.

Rectangle transparency

The Rectangle component got a little more flexible by allowing you to change it’s opacity. This will let you add even more ‘flair’ to your prototypes.

Page on load event

For the first time in the history of FlairBuilder, it’s now possible to attach an event to a container. And which container have I had to start with other than the pages themselves? Attach any action you think it makes sense to be performed when displaying a page. I hope you’ll find this helpful.

Other improvements and bug fixes

• Improved application menu, including on Mac OS X. It used to be half-native, but not it’s fully integrated with the native capabilities of the Adobe AIR platform.
• Go to page action lets you specify a generic ‘Go to last page’ option instead of specify a particular page. Handy, I’m sure you’ll find it.
• Bug fix:Action conditions where not correctly saved when specified as being exclusive (OR switch was reverted to an AND).

This release has been by far one of the biggest in the history of FlairBuilder. I guess that only last summer’s 1.7 release could compare with it. A lot of work went into this release and I’m extremely happy and excited about it. I’ll take a short break from development but I want you to start shooting with new ideas and suggestions TODAY! There’s nothing more valuable to a tool developer than the feedback received from users. So, don’t hesitate!

Should you find any problems or issues with anything of the features mentioned above, just let me know at cristian@flairbuilder.com and I’ll get fixed in no time.

Until next time, take care and have fun prototyping!

Unknown, here I come!

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Anyone that has an iPhone knows how the AppStore works: You search for an app, get to see its extensive description and a few screenshots and, if you decide to, you’ll purchase it on the spot.

There is an app for anything and, in some case, several applications for the same thing. But then, how do you get to choose the best one? Usually being very inexpensive, you can afford to buy several apps until you find the right one for you. But, in a world of shareware and 15-30-60-90-days trials, this is fairly new (to me, at least. I had a revelation this morning.). Even in the real world you get to first try the thing you want to buy. And if you don’t try it first, you’d have some sort of money back guarantee.

To be clear, I’m not complaining about the bucks I spend in vain on iPhone apps, but I’m curious to know what exactly makes AppStore’s model work. Is it the low price? Is it the AppStore app filter and review process, or the hype behind Apple-everything? Is it the seamless purchase process? Could be any of these, I guess, or a combination of them all.

Thinking about it a little more, one can wonder if the some model would work in the world of software outside the AppStore? Would you pay a small amount a money in order to try any of the software out there? Would this make software more affordable? I guess that’s one of the reasons why subscription based purchases are more and more popular. Nothing new here, that’s for sure.

With all these in mind, I still find it a bit shocking to purchase an app just to dump it two races later.

PS: BTW, are other mobile app stores based on the same business model?

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Happy New Year, everyone!

I hope you all had fun during the holidays. While I also tried to do some work in the extra free time that holidays usually bring, I did my best spending time with family and friends. And now, here we are, starting a new year, full of promises and challenges.

And what’s best to start the year with other than a release? No significant new feature, but lots of small improvements that I’m sure you’ll appreciate. Here they are:

Specify CheckBox selected state

There were several people that have requested this, and I must admit that it was absolutely silly for me not to support it from the first place. What’s even more silly is that simplicity of the solution that I came with in the end. While I was kinda reluctant to add yet one more control in the Properties panel just for Selected/Unselected property, one day it just strike me: Why not just use the already supported syntax for checkboxes? And so I did! Now, to specify a selected checkbox, just use [x] or [X] in the label of the chekbox. FlairBuilder will just know what to do with it.

TextInput and Password enhancements

These two components are related and both got a few enhancements. As for instance, the text length property that you can use to build conditions with. For instance, if you need to do different things based on the length of the field, than these property will sure be useful for you.

Then, I also fixed a few things. The inputs now really supports rounded corners. It seems that it was broken as you couldn’t have rounded corners without having a border. One of those bugs, you know…

The On Change actions were not executing because the event was not triggered internally. Now fixed.

Other improvements

Holding SHIFT also disables snapping when resizing a component. BUT, this happens only when resizing NOT using the corner handles. When resizing with the corner handles, holding SHIFT will maintain the aspect ratio of the component.

The default page size is now 960×1000. I think that 780px was not wide enough for most of the web apps today.

You can now select the Tabs and the Accordion easier using the little overlay, just like you already could do it with the CardStack component. I’m also considering making it easier to move these components around as Ctrl+Drag is not always obvious.

And finally, the Window component got a little change in look’n'feel. It used to have the header text in bold and 12px font size. I changed it to be more consistent with components like Accordion or Tabs. I am considering letting you customize, but there is a little work that I have to do in order to make it happen.

This should be all, for now. As usual, you’ll hear from me pretty often. I hope it will be more often than usual, if not with releases, at least with news or shared thoughts. Time will tell.

Unknown, here I come!

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Hi there,

FlairBuilder last release got an interesting addition. When you exit the application, if you’re using the trial version, you’ll be asked to offer a quick feedback using this online form.

It’s been a little over an week now, and I got some awesome feedback from people that, most probably, I wouldn’t have heard otherwise. I am so grateful here. I know that you all are very busy, and asking for only one minute of your time it’s already too much. The fact you’re actually offering that minute is overwhelming and extremely honoring for me. I must say that one of the greatest thing of working on your own product is the fact that you get to talk with all these great people from all around the world. From Australia and Japan, all the way to California and, of course, Hawaii.

Anyways, the fact is that more than 20 people have taken the short survey and provided me with their hugely valuable feedback that I’d like to summarize here. But before I get into details, I’d like to mention that while I had some doubts about asking for the email address, in the end almost all those that answered my questions have also let their email so I could answer back when needed. I am so grateful! Not that I’ll use those emails in any other ways. I absolutely won’t! Is just that I’m so happy for the confidence people have in software creators like myself. That’s truly very, very nice!

Now, from some of the people that said they liked Flairbuilder “a lot!”:

I’ve worked with Axure RP until now. But Flairbuilder is much easier and you can do pixel correct interactive mockups.

Nice, isn’t it!? Of course, the same people also found problems. For instance, the undocumented list of icons supported by FlairBuilder. That’s a minus, I know, and I’ll get it fixed soon enough. At one point, I wanted the desktop application to be independent of an internet connection. But for help resources, I think it makes sense to have it dependent on being online. I also plan to add a series of video tutorials that you could watch directly from the application.

Specifying the default selection for a radio button group, this is also a constant request, so I’ll take care of it as soon as possible. I’d like to introduce a more general concept of states into the application. I’m currently thinking about what form it should get and which problems it will actually solve. It may bring a certain level of extra complexity so I want to be very careful about it.

Those that find it cool, but still need to take a closer look say they need things like export to HTML/JavaScript or exporting comments/specifications to a document. While I see why this makes sense, these are two features that will take me sometime to implement. HTML export is on the pipeline, but still it’s not production ready. PDF export seems reasonable too, for documenting purposes, but then, I’d have to let you specify somehow the structure of that document. Screenshots with comments beneath would not do it, or will it?

Somebody else also asked for more interactive charts? This is a very interesting idea. What would you think about it?

Again, someone found the help system to be hard to use. I hear you!

No one said that they don’t like it. I guess that if they didn’t, they didn’t even bother responding the survey. You can’t please everyone, of that I’m sure.

In the end, I’d like to thank once again to all those that cared to take a minute or two out of their busy days and share their impressions with me. This adds to the overwhelming support and feedback I get from the existing FlairBuilder community. What else could I ask to be determined to keep working on this project for another decade or so?

Unknown, here I come!

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