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[Release] Mockups 3.3, Another Big Step Forward!

Hello friends of Balsamiq!

We're very excited to share today's release with you. It's a big one, so we're switching the minor number from 3.2 to 3.3 for it.

Make yourself comfortable and let's dive in! 🙂

A New Way to Organize Your Mockups!

This has been one of our most requested features for years, and we've finally done it! You can now organize your mockups in groups, creating a simple parent/child relationship between them, just by using TAB and SHIFT+TAB. If you've used Powerpoint or Keynote before, this will feel very familiar to you.

hierarchy_list

hierarchy_thumbnails

This feature is useful for projects of all sizes, but it especially shines with larger projects.

Here's a little video to see it in action on a simple project:

As you can see at the end of the video, we also increased the size of the thumbnails in the Grid view, to make them more recognizable at a glance.

Thank you so much afeinman and all the others who contributed to the feature request, as well as JeromeR, Trevor A. and Andrei B. via email.

Better Sizing of Thumbnails

We now resize the thumbnails in the navigator proportionally, instead of just horizontally like before. Take a look:

thumbsize

This works for Assets thumbnails as well, so if you want to see your images nice and big, now you can!

assetsthumbsize

Big Boy Arrows!

The term "big boy arrows" comes from our friend and long-time-power-user Adam Wride, who used it in the Balsamiq Interviews eBook to describe what he wished our Arrow control would behave like.

Well, our arrows have finally grown up! You no longer have to fiddle with weird property inspectors about direction and curvature, you can simply drag the ends where you want them to be, and drag the middle control point to specify the curvature.

Take a look, it's so simple now:

As you can see, the property inspector has been simplified, and we even added a couple of highly requested features:

arrow_inspector

As you can see in the video below, you can select either a curved arrow or one made of straight lines, and you can double-click on the middle control point to make the arrows straight or at a right-angle. Handy!

You can also adjust the position of the arrow's label, another highly requested feature.

We also, FINALLY, fixed the clipping bug for arrows when exporting them to PNG or PDF!

Thanks so much to all the people who requested these improvements over the years! You're too many to list, but you know who you are! 🙂

"Back" Meta-Link!

This is another little feature that's been requested for years. In short, you now have the ability to create a link that goes to the previous page visited while in Full Screen.

backlink_inspector

This is especially useful for modal dialogs that have to be invoked from different screens, as shown in the little video below:

Due to technical limitations of the PDF format, this feature will sadly not work in exported interactive PDFs.

Thanks for all those who requested this over the years!

New "Link to a New Duplicate of This Mockup" Functionality

We added the "Link to a New Mockup" feature a while ago. Today, following a good idea by ariley, we're also adding a variation that duplicates the current mockup instead of creating a new blank one. Handy!

We Now Remember Zoom and Scroll Settings across Restarts!

Another little but highly requested feature. We now do a better job at re-creating the exact situation you were in when you last closed a project, by saving zoom level and canvas scroll position on a cookie on your computer.

Thanks mikecimelli, melogranato and megdesilva, Matt, Alex R., Andrew K., Visnja Zeljeznjak, Steven S., Mark G., Bob J. and others for requesting this!

20 New Icons from FontAwesome 4.5!

We incorporated the newly released version 4.5 of FontAwesome, which comes with 20 new icons and a bunch of little fixes here and there (see details).

fontawesome45

With this update, we were also able to improve how some 2.2 icons in BMMLs are converted when imported into v.3.

Other Improvements and Bug Fixes

  • Resizing a selection from the top-left corner made the right side of the selection flicker. That's now fixed.
  • Similarly, drawing controls with R, T or Y from bottom-right to top-left made the right side of the new control flicker. This is now also fixed.
  • We improved how the button control works when small. Thanks wichase for your assistance!
  • We fixed an issue in the Data Grid where the text in the first row might be white instead of black when the header row was off, nothing was selected and the project selection color was dark.
  • Fixed an issue in the Data Grid showing a selected row at the bottom even after the text for that row was deleted.
  • The Property Inspector for Data Grid controls now says "Data Grid" instead of "List".
  • We fixed an issue with the List control not displaying properly when the font size was very big, some of the text "spilled over" the bottom of it.
  • We fixed an issue with icons getting underlined when a control's text was set to underlined. Thanks heringsfilet for reporting this!
  • Dragging mockups between projects now also brings any alternates along.
  • We changed how the Color Inspector looks to make it much clearer. Take a look:
    newcolorinspector
  • We also moved the color picker for text color next to the other text-related settings, where it belongs:
    textcolor
  • The Icon Inspector now shows which icon is selected, finally!
    iconinspector
    Thanks thesec and mhohlfeld and Tadhg_Kelly for requesting this!
  • We fixed an issue introduced in 3.2.3 with images with a transparent background getting a white background when cropped. Thanks Aude L. for pointing this out!
  • We made "Zoom All to Fit" work for alternates and mockups you hadn't visited yet as well.
  • We added a Project Link Color feature!
    projectlinkcolor
    This affects links all over the project.
  • The Inspectors for Symbols, Links and Data Grid now have handy help buttons that take you to their respective documentation article.
  • As a measure to future-proof our application, we added a check on the BMPR format version number when you try to open a project. If the format is too new to be compatible, Mockups will show you a message suggesting an update instead of trying to open the file, which could corrupt it.
  • Fixed an issue with the Alternates Panel getting "squished" when exiting Full Screen presentation mode.
  • We added a scrollbar to the Mockup Notes section. Great idea Liubi!
  • Fixed an issue with linked groups no longer showing the little linking arrow icon.
  • Fixed an annoying bug that made little changes "snap back". Finally!
  • Added Text Color support to Text Input and Text Area controls.
    textinputtextcolor
  • We fixed the horizontal alignment of Checkboxes and Checkbox Groups, and of Radio Buttons and Radio Button Groups so that they look better when used together in forms.
  • We now show a more helpful error in the rare cases in which a BMPR cannot be loaded for some error.
  • Fixed the message you get when installing an extended trial key.
  • Fixed an issue with Custom Properties not showing up properly sometimes in web-demo or Mockups 3 for Google Drive. Thanks Paul F. for reporting this!
  • Improved the look of the ON / OFF switches in Full Screen Presentation Mode, to make the selected value more obvious.
    newfullscreenswitches
    Thanks phillipbligh for requesting this!
  • We added an option to only select the active mockups or only select official mockups in the Export PDF dialog. Handy!
    newexportoptions
    Thanks Chris_Gatland, Scott_Harrington, PhilippQF and Tony B. for requesting this!
  • We now use part of the original file name when creating our local working copy of your BMPR files, so that they're easier to identify should you need to.
  • We now maintain zoom level and scroll position when cloning a mockup.
  • We now remember the last folder you exported a PNG or PDF to and use it in the next export.
  • We made the Switch control a little smaller, to fit better in forms and in the iOS Menu control.
  • We darkened the look of the Switch control when in the OFF position in the wireframe skin.
  • We improved how the Calendar control behaves when resized to be pretty small.
  • We finally fixed a bug with the tooltips showing up too quickly. They should be a lot less annoying now. Thanks Ryan Shelby, Jim S, readygo and others for the request!
  • We fixed the icons for Distribute Centers: the horizontal and vertical ones were swapped! Thanks Patrick H. for bringing it up!
  • We now give you a handy way to lock controls from the right-click menu!
    lock
    Thanks ariley, Julio T. and Dirk K. for asking for it!
  • We now give you a handy way to edit a symbol's source from the right-click menu!
    editsource
  • Fixed an issue with the Color Picker incorrectly behaving like a modal dialog.
  • We made \r work in the Alert control, in the 1st and 3rd line of text.
  • Made the text editing pop-up much faster. Since it's something we use all the time, this should be noticeable!
  • Fixed an issue with the Property Inspector "stealing" focus from the navigator.
  • Fixed an issue with the "Are You Sure you want to replace this file?" dialog not showing in some cases in OSX El Capitain. Thanks Jason H. for reporting it!
  • Changed our terminology from "Clone" to "Duplicate" everywhere, since cloning has a specific meaning for developers, and Duplicate is more generic and friendly to non-technical folks.
  • Fixed an issue in Mockups 3 for Google Drive when exporting to PNG when two mockups had the same name. Thanks Pete K. for the bug report!
  • The "Export Current Mockup to PNG" feature didn't propose a filename in Mockups 3 for Google Drive. It works now.

How Do I Update?

If you're using the Web Demo or Mockups for Google Drive, you're already updated.

For Mockups 3 for Desktop, simply install from our download page on top of your current installation. You won't have to re-register.

As always, if you hit any snags with the new build let us know immediately and we'll fix it right up! 🙂

For posterity, today's release is build 3.3.1 3.3.2 3.3.3 (we just did a little update on Friday Dec 4 to fix a little regression with symbols, and another on Monday Dec 6 to fix an issue with resizing arrows in groups and symbols).

What Else Is Going On?

Onward!

Peldi for the Balsamiq Team

Leave a Comment

Comments (6)

  1. Hi peldi
    Sure, you’re right, curently thats the only way, but

    1. the different receivers (clients, freelancers colleagues) of the bmpr files aren’t always allowed to install balsamiq so they have to involve the IT and this seems to me to much of a hassle.

    2. If you have grouped elements in balsamiq the process of copying text can only be accomplished by a lot of double clicking (first double click –> group second double click –> text element) and if you have a lot of text to copy that feels quite painful. In a PDF you simply mark the text and copy it

    Dominic
  2. It it going to be a glorious day when the PDF export function will produce text that can be marked and copied for use in photoshop or other designtools. A glorious day indeed 🙂

    Dominic
  3. Another fantastic update as usual. Keep up the excellent work! Look forward to seeing what’s coming further down the line!!

    Marc Duncliffe
  4. Great as always – I really like it!

  5. Really enjoy your updates. Everytime I read your posts on the topic, I see a few minor annoyances addressed. Keep it up! 🙂

    Krushidhar