Leon Barnard's dashboard

Leon Barnard replied on March 17, 2010 16:15 to the problem "Mockups does not remember "last loaded files"" in Balsamiq:

I encountered this the first time I loaded version 1.6.68. Haven't run into it again however.

Leon Barnard started following the problem "Mockups does not remember "last loaded files"" in Balsamiq.

Leon Barnard replied on March 17, 2010 16:13 to the problem "CTRL+Left/Right overrides text editing behavior" in Balsamiq:

Great turn-around time guys. As usual.

Leon Barnard marked one of Michael Angeles' replies in Balsamiq as useful. Michael Angeles replied to the problem "CTRL+Left/Right overrides text editing behavior".

Leon Barnard reported a problem in Balsamiq on March 16, 2010 17:05:

CTRL+Left/Right overrides text editing behavior

When pressing CTRL+Left/Right in an editable text box the cursor jumps entire words. This is useful for editing text-based components, especially large ones like the table component. The new tab navigation using this key combination overrides the default Windows behavior and makes me lose changes whenever I use this frequent key combination for editing.

Leon Barnard replied on March 15, 2010 09:36 to the problem "Property inspector shows incorrect default settings for some controls" in Balsamiq:

Hi Marco,
I didn't have a chance to check all of the components, but I did notice that there is still a problem with Color for the Text Input/Text Field component. The inspector shows black, but the actual color is white.

A comment on the problem "Toolbar menus getting crowded" in Balsamiq:

Looks great! – Leon Barnard, on March 10, 2010 09:32

Leon Barnard replied on March 09, 2010 13:08 to the idea "Component overload ahead. Consolidate?" in Balsamiq:

I think that there's nothing inherently wrong with having specific controls, even if they can be approximated using other controls, I'm just thinking that each additional control places some sort of extra cognitive burden on the user. But, yes, each additional configuration option also adds to the complexity of the user's mental model, so it's not so easy. Maybe a better approach would just be to try to improve the browsability and/or discoverability of the components, I'm not sure.

I guess I'm making a "feature creep" argument, in essence. Each control should have a good reason for being there.

Leon Barnard replied on March 09, 2010 12:45 to the problem "Toolbar menus getting crowded" in Balsamiq:

I like how clean the export flow is right now. There's just the little hiccup of choosing the right Export option at the beginning. Maybe merging one or two options? A single "Export All..." with the choice of images or PDF fomat? Or get rid of "Export Mockup..." and make it an option in the "Save As..." menu to save as XML/Text format (even though it already is)? Or change the text of "Export Mockup..." to "Export Mockup XML/Text..." since it could be confusing as it is now. I guess none of these is really better than what's there now, it just seems to me a little messy and possibly confusing that there are so many similar options. But I really like that you don't need to specify a file name when you choose "Export Snapshot to PNG File", so I wouldn't mess with that part.

Leon Barnard replied on March 08, 2010 16:02 to the idea "Extend text fields to enable quick form creation" in Balsamiq:

Great minds... ;-)
http://community.balsamiq.com/balsami...

Leon Barnard reported a problem in Balsamiq on March 08, 2010 16:00:

Toolbar menus getting crowded

I've noticed the toolbar menus getting more populated. This in and of itself isn't so bad, but some of the similar items can be confusing and visually hard to distinguish. In particular, I find the 5 Export commands overwhelming. I have a hard time remembering the keyboard shortcuts and always spend longer than I'd like looking for the Export command that I'm looking for.

Leon Barnard shared an idea in Balsamiq on March 08, 2010 15:54:

Component overload ahead. Consolidate?

A potential task for balsamiqMike. I've seen Balsamiq grow from a few, mostly specific components to many components, both general and specific. I feel that it is starting to become overwhelming, especially for novices. What about consolidating some components and assigning options to change their look or behavior instead? I know that backward-compatibility would be a pain, but I think that it might provide a net benefit overall.

Some consolidation ideas:
- Vertical Tabs + Horizontal Tabs -> Tabs, with "orientation" option, same for Sliders and some others
- Title and Subtitle could be eliminated now that font size control is available
- Webcam + Playback controls could be merged to "Video Player" or something, with options to show playback controls and webcam image, play button image, or nothing
- Chart types can be set as Chart Type option and made into one Chart/Graph component
- Geometric Shape + Rectangle/Canvas - both are similar now
- Link can be merged with Label because of the new [bracket] notation (would be bad for new users though)

There are probably others, too, just my quick ideas while looking at the current components.

Also, what about even getting rid of some components completely? Any data on which ones are very rarely used? "Help Button", for example, can easily be replaced by the icon component.

Leon Barnard replied on March 08, 2010 15:29 to the idea "Extend text fields to enable quick form creation" in Balsamiq:

When you do it, could you get rid of the current radio button group and checkbox group controls (since this would presumably offer the same functionality and more)? As it is, I feel that it's a little inelegant to have separate checkbox and radio button group controls and think that it would be better to replace them with a better, universal solution once it exists.

Leon Barnard replied on February 10, 2010 15:56 to the problem "It's difficult to drag a tab to create a copy." in Balsamiq:

Seems to work. Thanks.

Leon Barnard marked one of Marco Botton's replies in Balsamiq as useful. Marco Botton replied to the problem "It's difficult to drag a tab to create a copy.".

Leon Barnard replied on February 07, 2010 08:29 to the problem "It's difficult to drag a tab to create a copy." in Balsamiq:

Win XP.

Leon Barnard reported a problem in Balsamiq on February 04, 2010 15:06:

It's difficult to drag a tab to create a copy.

It usually takes me about 3 tries to create a copy of a mockup by dragging to the [+] area of the toolbar. Actually, once I start to drag the tab the [+] icon disappears, which seems to be different than was shown when the feature was released. As a result, I don't know where to drop the tab to create a copy. I am on Win XP, flash player 10.

Leon Barnard replied on February 04, 2010 14:54 to the problem "Objects sometimes move ("jump") when selected" in Balsamiq:

I spent a few minutes playing around with your fix and I haven't been able to reproduce the problem. What I have seen that is new, though, is that a few times it looked like an object jumped, then quickly jumped back to where it was. So maybe this is the result of your fix. It doesn't seem like the ideal solution, but it does seem to address the original problem. That's my experience based on using your updated version for 10 minutes, at least.

Leon Barnard replied on January 15, 2010 14:10 to the problem "Undo text edit does not work on text" in Balsamiq:

I encountered this today. Been doing a lot of tree editing and it's kind of frustrating to have to start over.

Leon Barnard started following the problem "Undo text edit does not work on text" in Balsamiq.