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I would like the ability to create control libraries of groups of existing controls that can be reused and shared.
I work with designers across the globe and having a predefined UI library of grouped controls would be very useful to encourage consistency. It would be nice if I could build a grouping of custom controls in a mockup page and add them to a user defined UI library category. The custom UI Library category would then be able to be exported and imported.
I am of course stealing this idea from Axure (http://axure.com/widgetLibraries.aspx). From a enterprise perspective, it is very useful to share elaborate groupings of controls.
I know that this could be done by defining controls on a mockup and then sharing the mockup. The idea would be to create a new UI Library category where I could drag and drop the grouped controls from.
I am of course stealing this idea from Axure (http://axure.com/widgetLibraries.aspx). From a enterprise perspective, it is very useful to share elaborate groupings of controls.
I know that this could be done by defining controls on a mockup and then sharing the mockup. The idea would be to create a new UI Library category where I could drag and drop the grouped controls from.
I’m thankful
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The company has this under consideration.
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Inappropriate?Hi Crink, thanks for the request. It's a common one, but it's a pretty advanced use-case and a pretty hard one to implement while keeping the application as easy as it is today. I have it on my list, so we'll get there eventually...Mockups is still a version 1 product after all! :)
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This is one of the best points
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Just to clarify -- this is basically either the option to drag controls from a mockup in place into the library, or an "import" option in the menu - so I can create an image for a control in photoshop and have it added to my balsamiq library, right?
This would be a VERY useful feature, as right now I'm having to do this by hand in XML and upload the image to my web server...it would be much easier to have a "import image to control library" option, where i could give it the image and choose the type of control it is, and it'll add that to my library in the appropriate category.
For more advanced controls, like sliders that you can define the position, that would be much more complicated, but really all that is now is a dual image control, right? In the import dialog, it could show a small canvas where images I import are placed, and I could upload as many images as I want. For each image layer added after the first layer, it could have a "adjustable" checkbox option, where I can define how I want to adjust that layer based on the option's value (if it were restricted to only defining a move action, that would probably work for 99.9% of the needs to have adjustable controls... like the slider or scrollbars work now).
That's basically all it's doing now in the library items, right?
This shouldn't be much more than just a UI interface to add new images and create the XML for the mockup the same as it exists for library controls now, just it'd be nice to not have to hand code it or even deal with server uploads. They could be posted to mockupstogo.com in a "user created controls" area or something.
Hope this helps you out in your planning or development of this feature, to know more about what an end user would expect to see?
-nate
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