FlairBuilder 1.7.7 – Now with explicit feedback request

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Hello there,

The past two weeks got me working hard on figuring out a better way to stay in touch with those of you using FlairBuilder daily, weekly, seasonally or once in a life time. As with any piece of software, there are many cases where you download an application try it for a few minutes and then close it down and move to the next one. Regardless of who’s behind that app, which are intentions, the product road-map or… you got the idea. I believe that there should be a tighter connection between software creators and users.

There are many things I have in mind to improve this aspect, most of which I learnt from those smart people out there. In this release, however, I’m introducing two or three elements that, I hope, will make your experience with FlairBuilder friendlier and, of course, more productive.

A new welcome screen

ScreenShot045

Instead of the old way of welcoming you with a blank project, FlairBuilder now starts with nice little screen that offers quite a few options:

Recent projects – A list of most recent projects you’ve worked on. This extremely handy and I’m sure you’ll appreciate it. (I’m ashamed to say that I had to code in place for a long time but haven’t got to really roll it out. Sorry! )
New project creation is just right there, under your mouse pointer.
Import from Balsamiq – I strongly believe that Balsamiq Mockups and FlairBuilder tend to form a nice workflow. You make quick sketches in Mockups, or you receive them from somebody else, get to a certain level of agreement on those sketches, and then you head into more details and interactivity by importing all your work in FlairBuilder. I wish that those of you that already own a copy of Mockups would try this integration feature and let me know what you think.

On the right had side of the welcome screen, I put few items that should really help you get started if you’re just trying FlairBuilder for the first time.

View an introductory video. This feature is not enabled yet, but will be soon. You’ll be able to watch an extensive video introduction to FlairBuilder user interface and to its most important features. You’ll also have a set of smaller videos for various features and tutorials. I’m very excited about this. I got all my gear in place, the Rode podcaster mic, my Macbook, Camtasia for Mac, Garage Band. Hey, I may very well try to compose a backing track for it! But that would hurt your ears just too much.
A new sample project – I redesigned the sample project that comes with FlairBuilder to contain more features and be better organized. Take a look and let me know what you think.
A list of the last 5 blog posts on FlairBuilder Blog. Can you think of better way to stay in touch with me? I can’t! I’ll have to blog more, too.
And finally, a big GetSatisfaction badge that will invite you to come up here and offer me feedback, ask questions and request features.

If you are during your trial period, when exiting the application, FlairBuilder will ask you if you’d like to share your thoughts on your experience with the app during your trial. Here’s the online survey, if you already purchased the app but still would like to take the survey. Thanks!

And bug fixes, of course…

It seems that I somehow prevented more than one action to be executed when attached to a conditional event. So for instance, if you wanted to perform two actions when user clicked on a link in a Link Bar, only the first action would execute. Thanks so much Anthony and Jay for reporting this in two separate but related cases. I’m so grateful.

Christian Sachetti, in a private email conversation, reported that chars like {} and [], which are part of FlairBuilder special text formating syntax, were not treated correctly. Now you can properly escape them if you wanna use the chars themselves. Thank you, Christian!

These being said, I’ll wrap up here by thanking you all for choosing FlairBuilder and for being such great supporters for me and your, by now, little prototyping tool.

Unknown, here I come!

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