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New Release: Rename, Icons on the Right, Break Apart...

· Posted by Peldi in Products · 7 Comments

Hello old friends. If you've been wondering what we've been up to, I won't blame you. We say we release almost weekly and then if you look at this blog, it looks like we do nothing for a month.

Well, that's actually not the case. We have been doing lots and lots of releases (I think we did maybe 6 releases since our last blog post), but we've been releasing myBalsamiq, our web app, which is still invitation-only.

Since I don't want those who are not invited to feel too bad, we haven't been posting release updates for myBalsamiq here. When myBalsamiq finally goes live we'll be posting that stuff here along with the Mockups updates and everything will be back to normal, with weekly or biweekly updates. Give us a few more weeks, and thanks for your patience and understanding.

So we've been totally heads down in myBalsamiq, but we've also had time to work on Mockups for Desktop and on the plugin versions a bit.

Let's see what's new in today's release, starting with a few new features.

Rename Mockup in Mockups for Desktop

This new feature will help those of you who use the linking feature extensively.

Just right-click on a file tab at the bottom of Mockups for Desktop and select "Rename Mockup...": the app will go through all the BMMLs contained in the same folder as the one you're renaming and look for links pointing to the current mockup. If it finds any, it will show you this:

Pick a new name, hit Rename and voilà, Mockups will rename your file and update all the links in all the other mockup files for you! This should save you a few hours here and there... 😉

Break Apart Symbols in the BMML I'm about to Export

This one is pretty advanced.

As the dialog says, this is primarely useful if you're uploading a mockup from the Desktop to a version of Mockups that doesn't support symbols yet such as Mockups for Confluence, or myBalsamiq (symbol support for myBalsamiq is getting there...).
The feature transforms the symbols into groups in the exported BMML (without affecting your file), so that the BMML snippet you're sending or uploading is more self-contained. Note that images will still not be included.

Icons on the right in "Icon and Label" control

You can now place the icon on the right of the label in the "Icon and Label" control.

Thanks to all those who pushed for this feature!

What else is new?

  • All versions: changed the behavior of the property inspector. It no longer fades in and out as you move your mouse, nor it fades out after a few seconds of inactivity. If you want it to disappear, click on an empty spot on the canvas to deselect everything. We also made it so that the inspector will "jump around" a lot less often. This makes the inspector more predictable, and, maybe, finally, not annoying - Mike, who lives in Mockups, loves it. We hope you will too.
  • All versions: we now disable cut/copy/delete icons in toolbar when nothing is selected.
  • All versions: fixed a number of little ComboBox bugs. Thanks Andi, rcollings, baseliners, Jenni Merrifield and Jason for the bug reports.
  • All versions: updated the icon in the About Box to the new smiley one - thanks Leon Barnard for the request (via a Twitter DM).
  • All versions: updated the copyright notice to say 2011 - thanks again Leon for noticing!
  • All versions: fixed "View Graph Paper". It didn't work until you resized the application window. Thanks Mike for noticing.
  • All versions: made sure "Use System Fonts" works for all control types, and updates immediately as you toggle the option.
  • Web Demo version: export to PNG and PDF no longer crops the bottom and right of the image.
  • Web Demo version: improved the text of the nagging dialog to better describe the benefits of switching to another version.
  • Mockups for Desktop: added some text to the activation dialog to help you when the key is invalid: this should cut down on support emails a bunch! 🙂
  • Mockups for Desktop: when using symbols, Z-order of label was sometimes being changed (moved back) when dropping the symbol on the canvas.
  • Mockups for Desktop: fixed a bug with auto-save dialog being shown incorrectly when using "Save As". Thanks samshoulders for reporting this (via Skype).
  • Mockups for Confluence: fixed a bug in the plugin when browsing space admin pages in Confluence 3.1.2. Thanks alex.holtz for the bug report.
  • Mockups for Confluence: links between mockups now continue to work even if you change your Confluence URL altogether! Thanks apschenx for the feature request.
  • Mockups for JIRA: fixed a bug when browsing certain JIRA pages. Thanks Ryan Rich for the bug report!
  • Mockups for XWiki: fixed a compatibility issue with XWiki 3.0. Thank you Kevin Foote for reporting it!

That's it!

On other news, we added a new member to our Balsamiq family! Her name is Joy, read the announcement here!

We also added a bunch of new recipes to our What should I make for dinner? feature, check them out! Yum! 🙂

How do I update?

Easy! Just 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, these are the version numbers of today's release:

  • Mockups for Desktop: version 2.0.21
  • Mockups for Confluence: version 2.0.20
  • Mockups for FogBugz: version 2.0.22
  • Mockups for JIRA: version 2.0.21
  • Mockups for XWiki: version 2.0.19
  • Web Demo: version 2.0.18 launch it

Onward!

Peldi for the Balsamiq Team

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Comments (7)

  1. Thanks Guys!!

    Love the rename feature.

    Others may already know this – I thought I was hanging out for the rename as my ‘home’ page was actually a few mockups into my project and so when exporting it wasn’t the first screen.

    I didn’t know all I had to do was drag and drop the mockup on the bottom tab bar to be first in the project, ie Balsamiq relies on it’s own internal ordering via the tab and not the way the folder is organised where the mockups are stored.

  2. Serge, maybe the iOS Symbols Libraries here will be helpful to you.

  3. iPad! Please! iPad stencils!!!

  4. I did the whole rename-and-manually-fix-all-links thing last week, so the rename feature is definitely welcome.

    One small suggestion: add it to the File menu as well – most of the other commands in the context menu are already there, and I had to actually check back to the blog post here to find out where the rename function was.

    Johan Strandell
  5. I really appreciate the behavior change of the property inspector. The fade in/out was very annoying.

  6. The renaming tabs feature is awesome. It allows me to look at the incoming links which is really useful on large projects. Thanks guys!

  7. Some great new features. Thanks! By the way, incorrect link to Joy’s announcement.

    [Peldi: Link fixed, thanks!]