Balsamiq

Dev Update for Summer 2023

Hello, friends of Balsamiq!

It’s been a little while since we last spoke (and even longer since we have spoken at length here - most of our conversations have been happening in the desktop app’s release notes). But I’m here now with a massive update to Balsamiq Cloud (and our other web apps).

It’s been a season of shucking here as we look at every aspect of the editor, trimming the unnecessary bits and making it leaner and more approachable. Fear not; we are not removing features from the editor (in fact, if you keep scrolling, you’ll see a couple of things we have added); we are simply tidying things up - like you would if you had company coming to your house. So, without further ado, here is the new Balsamiq Wireframes editor.

Now I understand you might think, “Oh, that looks very similar,” and you’d be right. The idea is to ensure it’s still comfortable for folks who want to use it with everything open. But if we close everything (have to tidy up before company comes), it looks like this.

And that, friends, is the beautiful new Balsamiq Wireframes editor. We have hidden everything away so that you can focus on wireframing. It’s as close to pen and paper as our app has ever come, and we are so excited about it. It’s been months in the making (the first project to bear fruit after we announced the splitting of Desktop and Web codebases), and we are happy to share it with you finally.

A Quick Breakdown of the new Editor

Here is your cheat sheet. With the editor closed, these are what the various buttons do. Everything is there, tucked away until you need it.

If you think this looks a little too bare, fear not. You can toggle the Navigator, UI Library, and Property Inspector back on, and the editor will look mostly as it did before this release. However, we suspect that the more time you spend on the new version, the more you’ll find that it’s all you’ll need. It’s really great wireframing on such a clean canvas.

There are also, of course, menus, and they, too, have changed.

The quick hits here are that the Project Menu (which shows the name of the Project) and Wireframe Menu (which shows the name of the current wireframe) have your Project and Wireframe options, respectively. The Smiley Menu is mostly your view and administrative actions.

There are a couple of other things that you can read more about in the documentation, but that is hopefully enough information to get you wireframing in the new editor. Of course, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to email the support team. We are ready to help!

Frequently Asked Questions

When is this coming to Balsamiq Wireframes for Desktop?

This is a tricky question to answer because we honestly don’t know. Right now, we don’t have plans to bring this interface to the desktop app. Does that mean it’s never coming? Maybe. We are still evaluating how the desktop app fits into our product lineup.

Can I go back to the old editor?

While there isn’t a way to revert the entire editor to the previous version, you can toggle all of the panels (Navigator, UI Library, and Property Inspector) to bring the editor to a very close copy of the old editor.

New Features

The Color Picker now has an eye-dropper tool for sampling colors in your browser. If you’re a Chrome user, you can also sample colors outside the browser. We hope also to bring that feature to other browsers (once they support the technology).

The UI Library got a makeover to match the new editor. It should be much easier to tell controls apart, especially with all the icons we recently added.

We made some minor tweaks as well:

• Spell check now works on the web.
• Creating a Balsamiq Cloud account should be much easier, thanks to a new 6-digit verification process.
• Our Jira Application now has a dark mode to match Atlassian’s new UI
• We renamed all the text controls so that they show up together in the UI Library
• We adjusted the search terms for icons (you should see the icon you expect to see now)

Overall, it’s been a productive first half of the year here at the ole’ corner restaurant. Summer means things will slow down as folks take vacations. But we are still cooking up some good stuff for the fall, including being in the final steps of what we call our “Flexible Canvas”.

We can talk about that and more next time, friends. Until then, we hope your summer is restful, and you get a little time in the sun.

Until then,

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