FlairBuilder 1.7.0 Beta – I need your feedback!

Update: FlairBuilder 1.7.0 was actually released since this blog post. Here’s the official announcement.

That day has come. After many, many, so many hours and days of hard and punctilious work, here you have it: FlairBuilder 1.7.0 Beta. Be the first one to get it while is fresh and hot!

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Why a Beta version? For several reasons.

1. The user interface has been dramatically changed. It’s you that have to decide that it’s an improvement.

2. A brand new theme has been added that allows you to do sketch-like interactive wireframes/prototypes.

3. FlairBuilder lets you now better organize your wireframe pages in folders and subfolders. I know many of you will be very excited about this. Beside that, I merged the master functionality into the pages management feature such that, now, every page can be a master to another page. Thus you can have as many levels of masters as you need. There is a lot to say about the potential of feature, so I will let you imagination do a little bit of work first before a speak my mind in one of the next posts.

These are at least the three important reasons for which I will take a short period of time to do some beta testing with those of you that will have the pleasure to give this version a quick try.

Allow me to say that FlairBuilder is now officially the first and only prototyping tool to support hand-drawn look’n'feel for interactive widgets. Don’t get me wrong, sketch stencils have been available for tools like OmniGraffle or Visio, and Java Swing had this simply genius Napkin look’n'feel. But while the first are for static wireframes, the second hasn’t a dedicated prototyping tool accessible to non-developers. Prove me wrong.

I won’t get into details about what is new in this version (nothing significant has changed in the core functionality). The improvements flow will regain its track right after this big UI layout update.

Unknown, here I come!

9 Comments »

1. [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Cristian Pascu. Cristian Pascu said: FlairBuilder 1.7.0 Beta – Exciting updates: I need your feedback! http://bit.ly/18qCXh [...]

   Tweets that mention FlairBuilder 1.7.0 Beta - Exciting updates: I need your feedback! | FlairBuilder - Wireframes. Mockups. Prototypes. -- Topsy.com
   September 21, 2009 — 2:31 pm

2. Since you asked … the new interface is a real improvement. It allows more space to be devoted to the region, without sacrificing access to the application’s control widgets.

   And while it’s good to have a sketch theme, and handy to have folders, it’s GREAT that any page can be a master. Can’t overstate how helpful that is, and didn’t realize it was in the pipeline. Many thanks.

   Michael Matti
   September 21, 2009 — 9:01 pm

3. I am glad you like the improvements Michael. I have spent a little while trying to figure out which is the best approach on improving the masters feature and in the end I ended up with this choice. It saved me on tab down there and it also gives you a lot of flexibility. Again, I so glad you find it useful.

   Cristian Pascu
   September 21, 2009 — 9:05 pm

4. Love the beta, using hierarchy in master pages saves a load of work.

   Thijs
   September 22, 2009 — 2:46 pm

5. I like the interface, I agree having all of the palettes on one side is a major improvement. I miss the black background, though. I thought the page was easier to look at. Maybe you could make that a project setting in the future. I am not sure I would ever use the sketch tool, but the ability to organize the pages into folders is great. I like having the Preview and Design as buttons instead of just F Keys.

   Looks great!

   Liz Patten
   September 22, 2009 — 5:25 pm

6. I LOVE the new interface! For me, it’s much, much easier to see and work with. Once again – thank you, Christan for all of your hard work.

   Linda chadwick
   September 22, 2009 — 5:53 pm

7. Well, Linda, you where one of the first to tell me about the dark interface as being hard to use. I had your words in mind for the entire redesign process. I am so glad you like it!

   Cristian Pascu
   September 22, 2009 — 6:00 pm

8. Congratulations. As for the hand-drawn interactive widgets, I have to say you are wrong, actually ForeUI provides skinnable interactive widgets more earlier, and it supports more themes (including hand-drawn).

   Jack Mark
   September 23, 2009 — 4:58 am

9. Jack,

   I know ForeUI is skinnable, just like iPlotz is. But none of them have the level of interactivity that FlairBuilder provides. Are their Tree widgets expandable?

   Cristian Pascu
   September 23, 2009 — 10:54 am

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