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What tools do you use for mockups?

Discussion in 'HTML & Website Design' started by Revanx, Jul 25, 2011.

  1. #1
    Hey, just a quick question:

    Ho do you like to to do your mockups? Do you use a tool/service/app?

    I really love balsamiq mockups (http://balsamiq.com/products/mockups) and I do my stuff with it.

    If I work with other people or want to show and discuss my stuff, I use Conceptboard (http://conceptboard.com). It's like a huge whiteboard with comments and scribble tools.

    What about you?
     
    Revanx, Jul 25, 2011 IP
  2. wbthomas

    wbthomas Greenhorn

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    #2
    I do all my mockups in Adobe Fireworks as you can then actually use the graphic prototype for the actual website design as it allows you to 'slice' up and export the different images which then just need to be integrated with the html design

    William
     
    wbthomas, Jul 26, 2011 IP
  3. BlentiWebDesign

    BlentiWebDesign Peon

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    #3
    I usually use Adobe Photoshop. It too has an option for exporting and slicing up individual graphic components.
     
    BlentiWebDesign, Jul 26, 2011 IP
  4. CourageTheCowardlyDog

    CourageTheCowardlyDog Well-Known Member

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    #4
    I too stick to Adobe Photoshop.

    Simple, and it gives me complete control over the image to show it the way I want to.

    Besides, clients are more interested in what I've done - rather than HOW I am presenting it to them ;)
     
    CourageTheCowardlyDog, Jul 29, 2011 IP
  5. ReneeRen

    ReneeRen Peon

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    #5
    I am using Mockup Plus, I usually mocks our ideas on it and then show them to our clients. And our product managers think highly of it. So I tried it. I also want to try some other mock tool. I will choose a perfect one from it to use it in my work.
     
    ReneeRen, Nov 6, 2014 IP
  6. deathshadow

    deathshadow Acclaimed Member

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    #6
    I make my mockups in HTML and CSS, since I consider dicking around drawing goofy pictures in some goofier paint program to be putting the cart before the horse and a completely back-assward approach to developing a website. The ONLY reason to make "mockups" is to prey on the ignorance of clients who don't know enough about websites to make informed and rational choices; which is to say exploiting the "Ooh, shiny" reaction.

    Semantic markup of your content or a reasonable facsimile of future content, arranged in a logical document order as if HTML never even existed, marked up semantically, then bent to your will to create your layoutS -- YES, PLURAL... Since good screen layouts should be elastic (scaling to the user's default font size), semi-fluid (max width to prevent long lines from being hard to follow) and responsive (re-arranging to best make use of available device space)... the breakpoints for the responsive layout being based on the needs of the content, not some arbitrary device/pixel size!

    There's far more to a proper well written accessible website than just what it looks like on screen targets, much less the screen you happen to be seated in front of!

    Something that unless you're willing to waste time drawing hundreds of images, you're not going to accomplish with some stupid "mockup". Clients who fail to grasp all that, probably aren't worth dealing with in the first place. Web "designers" and developers who fail to grasp that, likely have no business "designing" jack **** for anyone.

    See 99.99999% of PSD jockeys and the inaccessible train wrecks they vomit up and then have the giant pair of brass to call a "web design".

    So far everything listed in this thread is idiotic bull that much like a lot of other crap people use, just increases my "disgust to the point of nausea" with "designers" to the point of projectile vomiting. Developers are dumber for these tools even existing, and you are throwing yourself into the pit of failure by using them.
     
    deathshadow, Nov 6, 2014 IP
  7. jasmeencress

    jasmeencress Member

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    #7
    im using Adobe Photoshop. love to work on it simple and interesting for me.
     
    jasmeencress, Nov 12, 2014 IP
  8. GoHalo3

    GoHalo3 Active Member

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    #8
    I use mockflow Pro , it is really a great tool and very fare in cost. About $89.00 for the year.

    I mock up websites, web apps, and basically anything on there. You can export it as well on JPEGs or PDF. It is a neat tool.
     
    GoHalo3, Nov 13, 2014 IP
  9. kk5st

    kk5st Prominent Member

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    #9
    Who're you calling "Ho"? Sorry, couldn't resist.

    What are you mocking up? When it's time to apply graphic design, the layout is pretty much determined by the content, the order in which you want the visitor to view the page elements and the requisites of navigation. The vocabulary has been decided and each element has been judged on its affordance. (The latter falls within the purview of the designer and will be tweaked as other design elements are decided.) I haven't met a 'designer' yet who knew what affordance is. It's simply not taught to design students. In its simplest example, affordance is why some doors have push plates and others have grab handles.

    I'm not saying that graphic design is unneeded, but there's a butt load of other stuff that must be worked out first.

    So, again, what are you mocking up?

    cheers,

    gary
     
    kk5st, Nov 13, 2014 IP
    deathshadow likes this.
  10. deathshadow

    deathshadow Acclaimed Member

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    #10
    Or accessibility, or UI design, or the difference between reflective and emissive colourspace, or colourspace conversion math, or why designing in pixels is for mouth-breathing halfwits, limitations of the medium, efficiency concepts like bandwidth targets, HTML/CSS and what they are ACTUALLY FOR, or as I keep saying, enough about what the Internet actually is to be designing but two things...

    Which of course is why you have "designers' dicking around in photoshop not qualified to be designing a blasted thing, front-end coders sleazing together bloated framework garbage because they aren't qualified to be coding a blasted thing, and back-end coders who don't know enough HTML to have their code output a blasted thing! Nobody seems to be taking the time to learn enough about the entire process to be qualified to do ANY small part of it!

    Naturally why we have dumbasses out there sleazing out pages that perform worse on fiber than sites did two decades ago on 33.6 dialup! Personally, I'm not rocking a i7 4770k and a 25mbps connection to have things like webmail be less useful than they were on a 486DX-50 running Windows 3.1 with IE3... but that's where the whole "letting graphics designers dick around making mockups", "let front-end coders sleaze together jQueery and Bootcrap", and "let's have the guys not working on the back end know enough about HTML to have their PHP be outputting HTML" has led us.
     
    deathshadow, Nov 14, 2014 IP
  11. KewL

    KewL Well-Known Member

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    #11
    I don't really create website mockups anymore. At the most I'll use illustrator to create a logo and/or icons, and photoshop to color match and/or create patterns. Everything else I do in the code editor. Sometimes I'll code it sloppy then go back and clean it up once I find the style I'm looking for.
     
    KewL, Nov 15, 2014 IP