Balsamiq

New Product: Balsamiq Mockups for XWiki

Hi there. Less than a month since shipping Mockups for JIRA, I have some more exciting news to share.

In case you didn't know, XWiki (xwiki.org) is both a generic platform for developing collaborative applications using the wiki paradigm and a set of products developed on top of it.

The excellent XWiki Enterprise, for instance, is a full-featured, highly usable and really powerful wiki. Oh and did I mention that it's open source, free software? 🙂 If the words "open source wiki" make you uncomfortable, don't worry: XWiki is a mature product - the  first release was in 2003, can you believe it? - and it's backed by XWiki SAS, a Paris, France-based company that offers support, training, hosting, consulting and custom development around the platform - here's a sample of XWiki-powered projects.

So it is with great pleasure that I am announcing the immediate availability of Balsamiq Mockups for XWiki, the latest version of Balsamiq Mockups.

You can download it, test it and if you wish, buy it today!

Quick and dirty screencast

I suggest watching the video in HD and going full-screen, it’s so much better! Here it is as well.

Benefits of Mockups for XWiki

“Mockups for XWiki brought us the power of two great tools to put our

customer and the project team on the same page.” - Luis Arias, Pilango

Using a wiki for software or web site design makes your team more productive. Add the ability to create, edit and embed UI Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups and you'll save even more time and money. On top of that, with quick and easy iterations, your software or web site's usability will be much higher, resulting in happier customers and ultimately more sales.

Mockups for XWiki is tightly integrated with XWiki: the UI mockups stay with the wiki page, are versioned and you can specify who in your organization is allowed to edit mockups and who isn't.

Always wanted Mockups but couldn't afford a wiki?

XWiki is free! With all the money you are saving on the wiki software, you'll certainly be able to afford Mockups for XWiki, right? 🙂 Licenses start at $900 for a 25-user, perpetual license. That's only $36 per user!

Licenses come with a year of free support and updates: see here for full details.

I’m sold, what do I do next?

• Watch the video above if you haven't yet: here it is in HD.
• Look at the product's home page for more details.
• Read the documentation for a full tour of the Mockups/XWiki integration.
• Download the free 30-day trial and give it a spin on your own XWiki installation.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me via email, IM, etc.

Special thanks

Most of the development for this product was done by Luis Arias, a rock-star developer of Colombian origin living in France who happens to have joined XWiki's founder Ludovic Dubost as employee #1 back in 2005. Luis has since moved on to start Pilango, a lifestyle company focusing on crowdsourcing applications, but his deep knowledge of the XWiki platform and his passion for high quality software made working with him a real pleasure. Luis was the first contractor I ever hired, and I'm afraid he has spoiled me! 🙂 Luis has already used Mockups for XWiki for one of his personal projects in a coporate setting with great success, and is interested in working on collaborative design projects using Mockups for XWiki.

I would also like to thank Guillaume Lerouge and Pascal Bouche from XWiki SAS: it is thanks to them that I can now boast about being an "XWiki technical partner". I am looking forward to working with them and everyone at XWiki in the future.

On a personal note, building this 4th version of Mockups has been a great project for me. Working with someone else after three months of being by myself was quite refreshing (I missed the human interaction!), and I am looking forward to doing that more...stay tuned. OK, back to Image Upload, Choose your Font and Printing Support! 🙂

Peldi

Wait a minute: what about Twiki? Wasn't that next on your list?

Well, I'm glad you asked! 🙂 I have had "Mockups for Twiki" on my TODO list for a long time, mostly because a friend at a very large tech company told me that if I ported Mockups to Twiki his company might buy it. Recently I looked into the licensing for Twiki (and MediaWiki, and Mindtouch Deki Wiki), and they are all open source applications released under the GPL license. The GPL license has a clause in it which might be interpreted in a way that forbids developers from selling proprietary plugins like I do. It's a gray area, and unfortunately I haven't been able to find a definitive answer on the subject (here's one, here's another, here's some legalese, here's a controversy...). Because of the grayness of this area, I have decided to put ports of Mockups to Twiki, MediaWiki and Deki Wiki on the back burner for the time being, at least until I after I investigate the question and its risks fully with my lawyer.

You'll notice that I have removed mentions of Twiki from this web site for now...but you never know, it might come back one day! Stay tuned for updates.

I have waited until Mockups for XWiki was ready to announce this so that if you like Balsamiq Mockups and open source wikis, you now have an option! XWiki is still open source and free, but it's released under LGPL, which is more commercial-plugin-developer-friendly. 🙂

Onward!

[Update: you can now read Luis's blog post about this and the XWiki partnership announcement as well.]

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