Announcing: Wireframes to Go!
Hello friends of Balsamiq!
We have a pretty exciting announcement for you today.
But first...
A little bit of history
Back in 2010, when we were just getting started, Balsamiq super-user Michael Bourque had an idea: we should create an online marketplace for wireframes! People would be sharing and buying and selling their creations made with Balsamiq!
That seemed a little extreme, but we talked it over and decided to start with a shared blog (powered by the now-defunct Posterous) where people could send in their BMML files for others to download.
The idea took off, and when we shipped myBalsamiq a few months later, we moved the community to a dedicated myBalsamiq site called Mockups To Go.
The site has been successful, but we've also neglected it a bit lately... you know, small team and all that.
Lucky for you, it all changes today!
Announcing... Wireframes to Go!
As you may already know, we're renaming our product from Balsamiq Mockups to Balsamiq Wireframes to better reflect what we're all about. It's only fitting that we rename the community site as well.
So without further ado, I encourage you to check out https://wireframestogo.com - our free user-contributed collection of ready-to-use UI controls, templates and design pattern libraries to use with Balsamiq Mockups 3 and Balsamiq Wireframes.
You can browse categories a-la-Pinterest, or quickly search for keywords. Once you find what you're looking for, you can preview the project and download it as a BMPR file.
As you can see from the quick screencast above, we tried to make the site usable, intuitive, and quick, so you can get in, find what you need, and get back to work. 🙂
The real value we provide with Wireframes To Go is the careful curating and editing of the content. We try to give you projects that are well-designed and useful. The site contains 156 projects right now, but we're constantly adding new useful ones and removing old and no-longer-useful others.
We think the new Wireframes To Go will be very more useful to you, no matter which version of Balsamiq you're using.
But wait, there is more! 🙂
Wireframes to Go is integrated with Balsamiq Wireframes!
That's right! If you're using one of our Balsamiq Wireframe-powered products (soon to be all of our products), you can access the new Wireframes To Go directly from the editor!
The site will show up inside a pop-up dialog, and instead of a Download BMPR button, you'll see an Import into Project button!
Click it and voila', your new set of symbols or templates will be ready to use immediately. It's kind-of-scary how fast it is actually. 🙂
Want to contribute to the site? We'd love that!
Do you have a go-to template that you use to start every project? Do you have a set of Symbols you cannot live without? Why not share them with the community? We'll give you full credit, of course!
The process is pretty simple, you just create your BMPR and email it to us. Here's the full set of instructions.
As you may know, what we care about the most at Balsamiq is to provide value to our community. We think Wireframes To Go is a great service which will save you a bunch of time and effort. We hope you'll love it as much as we do.
Onward!
Peldi for the Balsamiq Team
Comments (2)
I don’t see to have a Import from Wireframes to go option in my version of Balsamiq (3.5.15), any ideas?
Hi Ed and sorry for the confusion.
The project menu option is not available in our current Desktop version but it will be in the new major version that we are preparing.
In the meantime, the steps for importing Wireframes to Go elements in your project are detailed here.
Hope this helps! Let us know if you need anything else. 🙂