[Release] 3 New Mobile Controls, and More!
Hello friends of Balsamiq!
Even if we are SO busy with so many different long-term projects which will see the life of day soon, we want to make sure we keep improving the current product line regularly.
Today's release brings 3 new controls that are useful for wireframing mobile interfaces, and some bug fixes. Let's dive in!
New App Bar Control
Say hello to the App Bar control!
Formerly known as the Android Action Bar, the App Bar is useful for designing material design inspired UIs, but also lots of other mobile screens.
It's a powerful, flexible and very handy control, check out those inspectors!
New Android Time Picker Control
We kept this super-simple.
It's the android Time Picker. The CANCEL and OK labels are linkable, and it tells the current time.
New Android Date Picker Control
This one is simple as well, it doesn't need much customization aside from showing either a monthly calendar or year view, just like the real Android picker.
Other Improvements and Bug Fixes
- When you transform a control to a Shape control, we now automatically select the Rectangle shape instead of the ellipse. It just makes more sense.
- Fixed a typo in the Field Set property inspector. Thanks Sarah E. for reporting it!
- Fixed an issue with colors getting preserved erroneously when transforming some control types to others. Thanks Berthold N. for reporting it!
- Fixed an issue with the text alignment in the Popover control.
- Fixed an issue with pasting controls after changing a color. Thanks Berthold N. for reporting this one too!
- Shortened the Edit menu in the web versions, which will help people working on very small monitors. Thanks Luis L. for reporting it!
How do I update?
If you're using the Web Demo, Mockups 3 for Google Drive, Confluence Cloud or JIRA Cloud, you're already updated.
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 3.5.14 (3.5.10 was a behind-the-scenes web-only release for Google Drive, and 3.5.11, 12 and 13 were short-lived because of little bugs).
What else is going on?
- We started a new blog post series called "UX/UI Links". Basically, we share the best 5 links we found searching the web every month. Check it out!
- We published an interview with Alex Jacobs of Coder Kidz, the #1 not-for-profit tech camp in Australia.
- We published an update to our Vacation Policy. For years it was: Take some! But now it's: Take at least 20 days off a year.
- We started a new weekly video series on YouTube called Wireframing with Balsamiq where you'll watch me and other people while we wireframe new web pages, software features or product ideas, in real time. Here is the Intro blog post.
- Leon was interviewed for Pajamas about remote working: Leon Barnard - Balsamiq.
- Marco gave a talk at JSDay 2017 about how we are rewriting the codebase of Balsamiq Mockups.
- I gave a talk at Business of Software - Europe about "Everything Changes at 25".
- We are sponsoring 8 UI Breakfast podcast episodes.
- We are also sponsoring the Bologna Ultimate Frisbee teams for the next 4 years. They’re some of the best in Europe and have been invited to play at a tournament in the US.
- We sponsored the Atlassian Summit Europe in Barcelona, where 5 of us met a lot of nice people at the Balsamiq booth.
- We also sponsored Mind the Product in San Francisco and had there an awesome booth too.
- We changed the Welcome email we send to new newsletter subscribers.
- We sent out the April and May Newsletters to our inner circle, about the Company growing and User Interface/User Experience, respectively.
- We raffled off some tickets to Pixel Pioneers Bristol, One Day Out, and Collaborate Bristol. We are still accepting applications for Northeast PHP/UX Conference.
- We published 2 new "What should I make for dinner" videos: Hot Date Chicken and One Pot Mac & Primavera.
- Last but not least, we are looking to hire a Customer Champion in California. Here's the job post.
Onward!
Comments (2)
Any idea when these will get added to a release?
* Feature Request: Page Numbers and Spell Check – Mockups 3 – Balsamiq Community Discussion || https://forums.balsamiq.com/t/feature-request-page-numbers-and-spell-check/308
* Feature Request: Automatic Date Update – Mockups 3 – Balsamiq Community Discussion || https://forums.balsamiq.com/t/feature-request-automatic-date-update/3645
* Export to PNG – Page num in file name? – Mockups 3 – Balsamiq Community Discussion || https://forums.balsamiq.com/t/export-to-png-page-num-in-file-name/3895
Sure thing, DBG.
The top two (Spell check and Automatic Updates) are coming after we release the native version of the desktop app (they would be too hard/impossible to do with the Adobe Air version). We are hoping to talk more about that update soon.
Adding page numbers to projects and exports is still something we are talking about. We are pretty heads-down on the new versions of the desktop and web app, but we will circle back around to features like this once the native apps are done.
Thanks for checking in on these, my friend. I’m sorry we haven’t been better about updating their status.