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Quick Release: Text Orientation, Colors Back to Normal

· Posted by Peldi in Products · 7 Comments

Hi all.

I just released a new version to address a couple of critical bugs and snuck in a new little feature while I was at it. 😉

Text Orientation on Labels

You can now select 3 types of orientation in the Label control.

Thanks so much to kaveh, Vega, Chris Bennet, Luke Freiler, Catherine, Srinivasan S., yoliker, grid212, djzeaman, Ilya Ryzhenkov, dB., Adam Lang, Alex D. and Carl Robinson for requesting this handy little feature (here, here and here)!

This was a quick feature to add, but it relies on something that's only available with Flash Player 10, which we have started requiring only a couple of months ago. It's interesting how even a little feature can only be added "when the time is right".

I'm more and more getting the sense that building a software product is like cooking a big asian stir-fry...you have to wait for the right moment to throw in each vegetable... 😉

For those of you who are waiting for Right-To-Left orientation, please be patient for a little longer. Adding RTL support requires us to switch to a whole new Text Layout engine. It's something we plan on doing (it will take care of many other issues), but it's not easy. We plan on tackling it later this summer, after we've shipped components and the web app.

Bug Fix: Colors are now back to normal

I had made what seemed to be a no-brainer optimization in how we apply color to controls, which resulted in an UGLY bug. See for yourself (click to enlarge):

I can't believe I let this one slip through, my apologies. It's all back to normal now.

Thank you to László Bővíz and Sergei Khvatkov for reporting this one!

How do I update?

Easy! Just use our badge button below! Blog-via-email readers, head to our download page instead.

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

For posterity, these are the version numbers of today's release:

  • Mockups for Desktop: version 1.7.12
  • Mockups for Confluence: version 1.7.16
  • Mockups for JIRA: version 1.7.14
  • Mockups for XWiki: version 1.7.15
  • Mockups for FogBugz: version 1.7.11
  • Web Demo: version 1.7.13 launch it

A couple of quick announcements

  • David Sandor has started building a BMML to XAML converter, check it out and let them know if you're interested in it!
  • I'm going to be speaking at The Hub in Milan on Tuesday, hope to see you there! 🙂

OK back to work for me, we hope to have a pre-release version of "double-click to edit groups" ready for you to test tomorrow!

Peldi for the Balsamiq Team

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Comments (7)

  1. Can’t wait for the Right to Left feature…mock-ups in Hebrew are almost impossible for me to do at this point without thinking backwards 🙂

  2. Ahhhh it’s indeed working now. My version was the .14 and the current is .16.

    Thanks a lot ! I thought it was indeed strange to have borders that thick.

  3. Thanks for this new release.

    I’ve noticed that the borders for boxes are now much, much thicker than previously. Too me, they are far too thick. Is there any plan to allow a resize of the border size (similar to the CSS approach, in fact)? That would be awesome but you have the right to tell me that I’m irrelevant 🙂

    [Peldi: Hi Regis, that was a bug! What version are you using now? I’ve fixed it all up since the original blog post…or at least I thought so! Let me know! As for a border-thickness, I think that’s too much detail for Mockups…but you’re NOT irrelevant! :)]

  4. I know about creating my own tabs, but I’ll lose all the other tab-features (left/right align, border, scrollbar, selected tab…).

  5. Bought this app a few apps ago and was afraid there was no text rotation.

    Thanks for reading my brain and adding this feature 😉

    Christian
  6. cool, the rotating text feature. i hope, you add rotated tab as next feature 🙂

    [Peldi: Hi Andi. You can make your own tabs with rectangles and labels now, no? Sounds like a great Mockups To Go candidate!]

  7. i’m testing balsamiq for few days and i like your tool. I have some comments
    1. why labels, radio buttons and other elements are bold by default ? At my point of view, it would be better if they are in normal state (or at least make some settings page to set it)

    [Peldi: that’s how we’ve been since we started, I think it helps encourages people to write less and focus on structure more than detail. It’s the same reason our lines are so thick]

    2.the “r” is not working in tree pane

    [Peldi: that’s already on the TODO, thanks]

    3. can you add an option on “paragraph text” ui element to display formatting tool bar on the top ? This will simulate a html input control

    [Peldi: you can add a toolbar on top yourself, easy! :)]
    thanks
    Dimitri

    [Peldi: in the future I suggest using http://community.balsamiq.com for feedback and bug reports, you might get an answer faster there]