Martin's dashboard

Did this get addressed? I'm just about to do a Win 7 beta at work and want to know which of my apps are not likely to work properly. I'm *really* hoping Balsamiq doesn't make that list. – Martin, on February 26, 2010 20:34

Hmm. I see what you mean - this is not so much of an issue than I thought. There is some logic there but strangely often it's moving to obscure *more* of the selected item than it did originally! It has a definite left-side emphasis that I don't remember seeing before. I have tried the released version and seen that the same behavior can be seen in 1.6.61. It's certainly not as severe as I originally feared. I guess my concern was that since you were fixing code in that area for the delay that something inadvertently got set to zero! – Martin, on February 05, 2010 20:27

Version Next.471 also seems to be working for me - no jumping or missing drag handles so far! The issue I'm noticing now is that if I move the properties pop-up then it jumps to the left-side of the window (x=0, same Y as where I moved it to) when I click on the next item. I just confirmed that the pop-up stays in place on a colleague's 1.6.54 so it seems to have been introduced in recent builds.

I notice that it's not jumping now... Yay! Sadly, there is a definite delay on mouse movement after the click to select the item - I'm pretty sure that didn't happen before. Note that I'm not dragging the item - just clicking around to select various parts in my mock-up. – Martin, on February 05, 2010 03:19

I notice that your fix is doing something! I see the controls jumping out and back so at least you're able to recognize the fact that it's happening. Now to make it so the move never happens :o) Thanks! – Martin, on February 04, 2010 20:37

OK, so from what I can see the problem is related to the drawing of the drag handles when selecting items. I just recorded an AVI and found that when I select items *SOMETIMES* the drag handles are not displayed at the border of the object and hence I believe the item is being shifted by a small amount. That amount equates to the amount of the drag handle that would be displayed outside the boundary of the item.

You can see this in the attached image - I have the same label in 3 different states:
1. Unselected (initial position)
2. Selected (correctly showing drag handles)
3. Selected (erroneously not showing drag handles).

If you observe the red lines that show the vertical alignment of the left side of the label and that of a neighbouring text box you can see that the bounding box of the label is shifted left to account for the drag handles. So when the drag handles are not added then the label itself moves instead.

Note that subsequent selections of items will continue not to draw the drag handles but will not shift the items. However, if I subsequently click in white space to de-select and start selecting again then most likely the drag handles will start appearing.

Let me know if you want me to send you this AVI.

Good luck fixing it!

Martin

I like Michael's idea and would love to be able to develop it further. My issue, as raised earlier in this thread, is that I often try to 'storyboard' a mock-up that shows the same small set of dialogs in various states (e.g. as a user fills data in).

Prior to using Mockups I made use of layers in Illustrator to make use of a common base dialog and turn layers on one-by-one to show how the dialog is filled in or responds to other external stimulus. This helped in two ways:

1. I was able to keep the complete design for a dialog in one file
2. A significant number of dialog changes could occur on the base layer and would thus be propagated to the other views very quickly

Unfortunately I never found a way to automate the export process so it can be a time consuming job but it was manageable.

Thus I'd love to see an ability to define a mockup as a template that was linked to and not modifiable within a frame of the storyboard. I could then add any new controls on top where required. However, if I changed the template then it would propagate to those mockups that were created based on it.

I've actually achieved a mashup between Balsamiq and Illustrator in a similar way by exporting a BMML as a PNG and using that as my base layer but it still requires the manual export of each layer.

Please let me know if you need more information on this.

Thanks!