My, we've been busy. Lots and lots of cool stuff cooking.

The big announcement of today is that our Mockups for Confluence and Mockups for JIRA plugins are now available on Atlassian Marketplace!

We won't blame you if you've never heard of Atlassian Marketplace yet...you see, it hasn't really officially launched yet (that will happen with great fanfare next week at Atlassian Summit). It's the new incarnation of the Atlassian Plugin Exchange, think of it as Atlassian's "App Store" for plugins and extensions.

Check out our brand new plugin pages on Marketplace for Mockups for Confluence and Mockups for JIRA, and make sure to read the Balsamiq and Atlassian Marketplace FAQ we put together to explain what this means for new and existing customers.

Oh one thing: we could use some more good reviews on the Marketplace pages! So if you use the plugins and like them, you know what to do...wink wink! ;)

What else is in this release?

• All versions: huge editor performance improvement when loading files that use many symbols from the same Symbol library.
• All versions: made it more resilient to occasional Flash Local SharedObject issues.
• myBalsamiq: fixed "images don't refresh after uploading" bug.
• myBalsamiq: fixed "attach button should be disabled until you browse in image upload dialog" bug.
• myBalsamiq: fixed "creating a Site Symbol Library would show it twice" bug.
• myBalsamiq: now properly disallowing cancelling out of save dialog (not supported yet).
• myBalsamiq: the editor now properly downloads thumbnails for mockups that have a dot in their name
• myBalsamiq: Symbols and assets now work again in Propose Alternate mockups.
• myBalsamiq: Improved stability and performance (too hard to explain the details, but we did a lot of work in this area and will do even more).
• myBalsamiq: fixed conversion of some types of PNGs.
• myBalsamiq: fixed "endless spinner" issues (this took a few days but it seems that we really nailed it now).
• myBalsamiq: fixed two issues with people having to refresh or shift+refresh to see mockup changes.
• myBalsamiq: made some major improvements in our operations scripts and metrics. The web app is getting easier and easier to manage for us and so is our ability to update without any downtime (we did a few releases already without anyone noticing, which let me tell you it's a great feeling. :)
• myBalsamiq: fixed an issue with email notifications not going out for mockup edits.
• Mockups for Confluence: the mockup2 macro shows the mockup preview when editing a wiki page again.
• Mockups for Google Drive: now gives a nicely formatted error (and workaround) if you try to access the app from the wrong Google account.
• Mockups for Google Drive: fixed a bug with people unable to save after working for a mockup for over an hour.
• Mockups for Google Drive: removed misleading image file upload tab. I am working on a better solution to allow image upload and import from within the editor but I am waiting on a fix from Google before I can ship my code. Hang in there!

How do I update?

If you're using myBalsamiq, you're already updated. Just log back in and enjoy.

For other versions, simply install from our download page on top of your current installation. You won't have to re-register.

As always, if you hit any snags with the new build let us know immediately and we'll fix it right up! :)

For posterity, these are the version numbers of today's release:

• myBalsamiq: build #3803
• Mockups for Desktop: version 2.1.17
• Mockups for Google Drive: version 2.1.14
• Mockups for Confluence: version 2.1.18
• Mockups for FogBugz: version 2.1.16
• Mockups for JIRA: version 2.1.18
• Mockups for XWiki: version 2.1.16
• Web Demo: version 2.1.16 launch it

Onward!
Peldi for the Balsamiq Team

Today's little update fixes a number of little bugs here and there. As you may notice, some are injections, meaning fixes for code that used to work in the past and broke in the previous release. Clearly we need to do a better job at preventing these issues from happening, so it's a confirmation that putting Florian on building up our suite of automated tests full-time was a good idea, and absolutely necessary. :)

Anyways, let's get right to it:

• All versions: Alert dialog with a single button no longer looks ugly. Thanks halsura for reporting it!
• All versions: Fixed a couple of issues with the mouse cursor not switching back after a crop operation. Thanks Jason Kerchner, Dakota Brown and andreasgibnes for reporting it!
• All versions: Fixed an issue with the UI Library staying open during full-screen presentation mode (and links not working). Sorry about the injection, and thanks Wiking, Jason Kerchner, Tim LaBonne, chris.gatland and Bruce MacNaughton and László Bővíz for reporting it.
• All versions: Fixed a bug with the Data Grid not hiding rows properly. Thank you Marshal Datkowitz for reporting it!
• All versions: Fixed a bug with the tooltip text not wrapping. Thanks to halsura and paul for reporting it!
• All versions: Fixed "some controls don't look disabled" bug. Thanks to Eric Chan for reporting it and to Chris M. for emailing about it.
• All versions: The Button control now uses smaller horizontal label padding when the button itself is small. Thanks ireddick for requesting it and to Chris M. for emailing about it.
• All versions: A Search control with no text doesn't "get squished" any more.
• Mockups for Desktop: fixed "Caps-lock breaks keyboard shortcuts" bug on Win and Linux. This was an old issue, first reported by Armaud 3 years ago, then again by Joe Eckert and pswulius. Florian wrote a blog post about it too!
• Mockups for Desktop: Auto-Save had broken for existing files, it only worked for new files. Thanks rafa for reporting it!
• myBalsamiq: Fixed issues with failing conversions (endless spinner). So sorry about this one. Our conversion servers ran out of disk space. We now updated them to a 20Gb hard drive (from 8Gb) and most importantly made sure old logs and error reports get deleted after a week so that the disks won't fill up again. Thank you sarah for reporting it.
• myBalsamiq: Anonymous users can edit and save mockups in wiki-access projects again. Thanks Jonta for reporting it!
• myBalsamiq: fixed an issue with image upload from the myBalsamiq editor. Thanks dcanarick, blackdr and Keving Fox for reporting it!
• myBalsamiq: fixed an issue with links not showing up in the HTML and PDF views after editing some mockups. Thank you Mattmas and Sarah Edwards for reporting it!
• myBalsamiq: Updated our real-time messaging protocol to something a little more firewall-friendly.
• myBalsamiq: We no longer log out users automatically on suspended sites.
• myBalsamiq: fixed an issue with some mockup thumbnails showing a single band.
• Mockups for Google Drive: renamed the Create New menu from "Wireframe" to "Wireframe (with Balsamiq Mockups)".
• Mockups for Confluence: migrated the plugin to V2, so that it's now compatible with the latest Atlassian SDK.
• Mockups for JIRA: Fixed a bug with mockup thumbns not showing when running JIRA with a contextPath.
• Mockups for JIRA: Now more resilient to mockup names that include special characters.

How do I update?

If you're using myBalsamiq, you're already updated. Just log back in and enjoy.

For other versions, simply install from our download page on top of your current installation. You won't have to re-register.

As always, if you hit any snags with the new build let us know immediately and we'll fix it right up! :)

For posterity, these are the version numbers of today's release:

• myBalsamiq: build #3779
• Mockups for Desktop: version 2.1.16
• Mockups for Google Drive: version 2.1.8
• Mockups for Confluence: version 2.1.16
• Mockups for FogBugz: version 2.1.15
• Mockups for JIRA: version 2.1.16
• Mockups for XWiki: version 2.1.15
• Web Demo: version 2.1.15 launch it

Onward!

In case you missed it, Google just released Google Drive, their new storage and collaboration offering in the cloud.

We've been using it for a couple of months over here, and it's really awesome. You can get to all your files from any device, it all syncs automagically.

What's especially cool in Google Drive are the super-powerful sharing abilities: you can share files and folders with another person, a group of people, everyone on your Google Apps domain, or the whole world. If you've used Google Docs in the past, you know what I'm talking about. Except now you can save ANY kind of file in there, the first 5Gb are free and Google Docs files don't count against your quota. Sweet.

Another feature that really stands out to us is Drive's extensibility. You can create and edit documents directly from Google Drive, using in-browser applications.

When Google approached us to see if we would be interested in integrating Balsamiq Mockups with Google Drive, we jumped at the chance. It's been a couple of months in the making, but we're proud to release it to you today!

Balsamiq Mockups for Google Drive is available on the Chrome Web Store, and it works on all modern browsers.

There's a free 7-day, fully-functional trial. After the trial you'll have to sign up for a paid plan ($5/month or $50/year) to continue to save your mockups with the app, but you'll still be able to view them.

The editor is the one you know and love from the other versions of Balsamiq Mockups, but it's a little more limited in its feature set (linking, image upload and symbols are not supported right now). As usual, we wanted to get something useful out the door quickly, then listen to your feedback to help us prioritize what to work on next. We plan on improving the app FAST, don't worry. Use it for a while and tell us what you think! We're all ears.

Here's a few links:

• Product Page
• Chrome Web Store Page
• Documentation

One of our goals as a company is to be there where you need us, not to force you to work in a specific way in order to use our software.

Mockups for Google Drive brings us closer to that goal. We hope it will help you and your team design better software, and have fun doing it!

Onward!
Peldi and the Balsamiq Team

We just updated myBalsamiq. The process was still rougher than what we'd like, but it definitely went much better than last time. Doing the update on a Saturday lowered the stress level considerably. We'll continue working on our processes to make it super-smooth in the future.

What's new in this myBalsamiq release?

• GIANT refactoring work in order to generate mockup images in the background. This results in dramatically faster saving times from the editor, and most importantly, brings full support of Symbols to myBalsamiq. Now when you update a Symbol, all the images of the mockups that use it get regenerated for you. You'll just see a spinner for a few seconds. Same for images, both site and project. This was a huge effort, and it smoothens what was certainly the roughest edge in myBalsamiq. Thanks to all who reported it here.
• Finally, we have proper timezones! Thanks Sagar A. and Steve C. for reporting it.
  
• We now inject some real-time events in the editor, instead of polling. In English, this means that your editor will work faster and use the Internet a lot less. For us, it should result in hundreds of dollars in hosting savings each month.
• Fixed an intermittent issue with mockup reordering.
• Now we really allow projects uploads up to 100MB.
• We now properly show Renew and Upgrade buttons when a site is in the grace period.
• Clicking "edit this mockup" in presentation mode works now. Thanks Melvin Ram for reporting it!
• Now the editor skin file is versioned as well, so you won't have to clear your cache after our updates.
• We no longer send you an email confirmation request if you're creating a new myB site with an old email - you've already confirmed your email address the first time!
• Fixed a formatting issue on the "What site do you want to work on?" selection page.
• Mockup thumbnails are now in jpg format (smaller, faster to load)
• Made a lot of little performance improvements here and there. The app should feel snappier, let us know if you notice it as well!
• In free for classroom use sites, we now allow students who are project members (but not staff members) to buy Mockups for Desktop at the discounted price.
• We no longer refresh the whole assets dialog when one is deleted. Faster!
• Added an "hideBar=true" URL option to the prototype view, which is handy if you're doing running usability tests on your myBalsamiq prototypes
• We now remember if you selected "show linking hints" across single mockup pages, as well as in prototype view.
• In prototype view, we also remember if you had the bottom bar showing or hidden across different pages.
• We now fail more gracefully if you point your browser to a non-existing project.
• Fixed an error in the editor when switching between mockups that contained Symbols.
• In order to work towards a more RESTful API, we now reserved some mockup names. If you get some weird XML instead of your mockup, just go to the project home page and rename it from there (we could have renamed the few offending mockups automatically, but it felt too aggressive on our part). Sorry for the hassle, we hope it won't happen again.
• We now ignore mockups whose names start with a dot (.) in project uploads
• We no longer refresh the whole project grid when deleting a project. Faster!
• The editor now shows nicer, smoother thumbnails in the project browser.
• We moved our database to a reserved RDS instance to save some money.

We are very happy with this release, can't wait to see how it performs as traffic increases during the week! :)

Onward!
Peldi for the Balsamiq Team

After this morning's total myBalsamiq update disaster, we get back to our regularly scheduled programming...

It's been a little over a month since our last release, but it sure feels like a lot longer: we've been busy!

First of all, let's see what's in today's release. Get comfortable, 'cause this is a HUMONGOUS one! :)

The focus of this release is to pick any low-hanging fruit that make the app better, to reduce our customer support load and to pay back some technical debt accumulated in the past.

Changes that apply to all versions of Mockups

Note: these changes are not available in myBalsamiq yet. They'll be available on the next release (not sure when, but soon).

• Controls are now scaled down in the UI library!
  
• Added text color, state and font size support to the Search control. Thanks Damien for requesting it!
  
• Added text color support to Checkbox, Radio Button, Checkbox Group and Radio Button Group. Thanks Chris M. for requesting it (via email)
  
• Added border color support to ComboBox, Date Chooser and Numeric Stepper. Thanks Chris M. for requesting it (via email)
  
• Added a disabled state to the Tree control.
• Added background color support to browser control. Thanks for requesting it Chris Gruel and Ryan, cobnutweb and Eric T. (via email)
  
• Added link and bar color support to the Link Bar control. Thanks to stephen and Melvin Ram for requesting it!
  
• Added border color support to the Text Area control. Thanks Carol P. for requesting it (via email).
• Added opacity support to the Scratch Out control. Thanks Ivor Potter for requesting it!
• Added text alignment support to the Button control. Thanks Christian for requesting it!
  
• Added multiline support via \r to the Button control. Thanks Martin L. for requesting it (via email)
  
• Added font size support to the Multiline Button control. Thanks Jeffrey G. for requesting it (via email).
• Added text alignment support to the Sticky Note control. Thanks Maria for requesting it!
• Alert Box buttons are now linkable. Thanks pablo.hcontreras and stephen.onkea and Humancell, Chros Thornton hasen12 and karinammorales for requesting it!
  
• The State inspector now only shows you the states that are common to all the selected controls. I could have sworn that's how it worked from the beginning! Oh well. :)
• Made Charts and Geometric Shapes fit within their boundaries better.
• Added a new "Forms" category in the UI library. Why didn't we do this sooner?
  
• added arrange and align menus in edit menu
  
  
• Changed the behavior of the advanced Data Grid formatting options. Now if you specify a percentage, it will win over the column's native width (it used to be the other way around). Thanks missprintt, Ben Norris and John Daues for helping us realize that this is the behavior people expect.
• Added support for up+down arrows / inactive sort in datagrid (with v^ or ^v). Thanks stuartchamberlain and Jeff for requesting it.
  
• Fixed all the display bugs we could find in the DataGrid control. Thanks Adi Roiban and Bruce C., Amy U. and Jeffrey G. for reporting bugs via email.
• Changed keyboards shortcut for Align Center CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+2 to CTRL+ALT+2 (that SHIFT is no longer needed now that Unlock all is CTRL+3).
• The selected Tab background color now matches the background fill of tabs (both horizontal and vertical tabs). Thanks Josh and Isaac Wood for requesting it!
  
• Vertical Tabs now look nice even on the right-hand side and with long labels. Thanks briknow for reporting it and to Bob K. for emailing us about it.
• Added multiline support via \r to Tabs Bar and Vertical Tabs Bar controls. Thanks karenImor for requesting it!
  
• The Quick Add list now gets wider when it needs to show long labels. Thanks Win7Guru and Martin Kessner and Ryan for requesting it!
  
• Added better tooltips for the color inspectors everywhere, so that you know if you're affecting the text, the border, the background, etc.
• Added a link to Little Big Details in the Help menu. We love the site and are proud to support it!
  
• Panning by holding down the space bar and dragging is fixed. Sorry for the injection, and thanks Felix, chrismrink and Gianni C. (via email) for reporting it!
• Fixed the last of the text clipping / "words go missing" issues in in the Button and Multiline Button controls. Thanks to all those who reported it here and here, and to Jeffrey G. for reporting it via email
• Fixed vertical alignment of text when using system font in the Pointy Button control.
• In the iPhone Menu control, the second label no longer gets cut off when using System fonts. Thanks Sean for reporting it!
• Fixed a bug with cropped groups moving around when you switch mockups. Thanks Andreas F. for reporting it (via email).
• The Balsamiq Mockups icon looked a little stretched in the About box. It's fixed.
• Fixed Down Triangle and Down Filled-In Triangle icon labels (they were swapped). Thanks gelzerr for reporting it!
• Fixed an Runtime Exception when loading certain malformed mockups.
• Fixed an infinite loop caused by a bug in the Tooltip control. Thanks Andrew H. for reporting it (via email) and to Russell for reporting it here.
• Harmonized menu capitalizations in all of our products (they were all over tHe pLAcE)
• We now enforce a minimum height if no text is present in form controls. Thanks bkvlinden for reporting it.
• We no longer allow empty text on Radio Button Group and Checkbox Group controls (it just reverts to the default text if you delete it all, like some other controls).
• The UI Library scroll position doesn't get reset on save or mockup switching any more. Thanks Jon Chambers and surfermikel for reporting it!
• Fixed an issue with the focussed state of the Button control not "sticking" on application restart.
• The Label control didn't have equal top and bottom padding - it's now fixed. Thanks Andreas Weder for reporting it.
• The Undo and Redo tooltips in the Property Inspector were not in sync with the rest of the UI. Fixed.
• Fixed the vertical position of the header label in the List control. Thanks rafa for reporting it!
• Added Geometric Shapes to the "Containers" tab in UI Library. Thanks guenne for requesting it!
• Changed the name of Numeric Stepper to Numeric Stepper / Spinner / Spin Control. Thanks Chris M. for requesting it (via email).
• Fixed a couple of bugs around going full-screen or opening a new file while cropping images or groups.
• Fixed a bug with the mouse cursor not getting back to normal after leaving a crop action.

Changes to Mockups for Desktop

• Added CTRL+ALT+S shortcut for "Save All"! Thanks to all who asked for it here and here and via email.
  
• Added a keyboard shortcut (the letter "E") for editing the current mockup while in full-screen mode. Thanks ckhan for requesting it!
  
• You can now save a non-dirty new mockup from the right-click tab menu. Thanks Lana P. for the request.
• Added an option to "Discard All New Mockups and Quit" when trying to quit with multiple unsaved mockups open.
  
• You can now add custom icons from your account assets folder even if the mockup has never been saved. Thanks Scott for bringing this up!
• Added support for custom icons that have alpha transparency. Thanks Brad for requesting it!
• Fixed a bug when using custom icons in symbols and editing their source. Thanks Ryan and Stéphane Bouteille for reporting it!
• We now fail more gracefully if you have an invalid path in your configuration file. Thanks corianda for reporting it (via email).
• Fixed a bug that resulted in a new empty file being created if you double clicked on a bmml file while you had a new and dirty mockup already open. Thanks Leon for reporting it!

Changes to Mockups for Confluence

• The plugin now supports usernames with colon (":") in them. Thanks Femke M. for reporting it

Changes to Mockups for Jira

• Big update! Balsamiq Mockups for JIRA is now a Version 2 plugin! No more restarting JIRA in order to install, uninstall or update. You can do it all via the Universal Plugin Manager now! We updated the Mockups for JIRA Admin Guide to reflect this welcome (and long overdue) change. A little snag is that in order to update to today's build, you'll have to delete the old plugin from .../atlassian-jira/WEB-INF/lib manually and restart JIRA one last time.
• We refactored a bunch of our code to make it fit with our other plugins. A side-effect of this change are the handy new "Save" and "Close" buttons in the top-left of the editor. If you see anything not behaving as expected, let us know and we'll fix it right up!
• Another side-effect of the refactoring is that image uploads now happen from within the editor itself! No more html pop-ups, it now behaves just like in Mockups for Confluence. Smoother.
• The plugin now supports usernames with colon (":") in them.

Changes to Mockups for Fogbugz

• Big refactoring effort. The plugin is now compatible with FogBugz onDemand again (this broke because of a recent change in FogBugz onDemand itself). A side-effect of this is that our plugin is no longer compatible with FogBugz version 8.3.41 and prior (i.e. purchased before 2/2/2011). If you are running an older FogBugz and really cannot update it, you can find the last version of our plugin compatible with your FogBugz in our build archives: MockupsFogBugz2.1.13.zip.
• Fixed a display but on the Mockups for FogBugz onDemand pricing table.
• Fixed and issue in FogBugz 8.7 and url-encoded attachment names.
• Fixed a bug with Google Chrome giving a "double http header" warning on some image attachments.

How do I update?

If you're using myBalsamiq, please wait until we update it with these changes (stay tuned on this blog).

For other versions, simply install from our download page on top of your current installation. You won't have to re-register.

As always, if you hit any snags with the new build let us know immediately and we'll fix it right up! :)

For posterity, these are the version numbers of today's release:

• Mockups for Desktop: version 2.1.15
• Mockups for Confluence: version 2.1.14
• Mockups for FogBugz: version 2.1.14
• Mockups for JIRA: version 2.1.15
• Mockups for XWiki: version 2.1.14
• Web Demo: version 2.1.16 launch it

What else is going on?

Although the list above is quite impressive, it pales in comparison to the effort we've been putting in test automation in the last few months. We now have over 500 unit and integration tests in the Mockups editor itself. We have Selenium-based bots running HUNDREDS of tests on myBalsamiq and now Mockups for JIRA (bots for other plugins coming shortly). We integrated most of the automated tests into our continuous integration server so that if a test fails, the whole build fails. We are changing our processes so that no new feature goes out the door without having an automated testing suite to go with it.

In short, we have a lot of code now, and don't want it to break. Since we rely on your feedback so much, your trust in our release quality is really important for us. These automated suites will help us ensure we maintain that quality and sleep better at night. :)

Of course there will always be bugs, but we're doing the best that we can to prevent them and catch them before you do. Thanks for your understanding if we miss some.

Let's see, what else did we do since the last release...

• We launched an awesome free integration with UX.StackExchange.com!
• We updated some of our pricing to streamline it and match the Atlassian Confluence and JIRA levels more.
• We published 3 blog posts from partners about how to user-test your myBalsamiq prototypes with Usabilla and Loop11, as well as sharing a sweet little HTML -> BMML tool called MockGen.
• We raffled off conference tickets to GR8Conf and UXLX
• We started a six-months sponsorship of Little Big Details, one of our favorite UX inspiration websites on the web.
  
  
• We set up a European T-Shirt store to go with our US-based one.
• Paolo and I went to AtlasCamp Europe to prepare for the Atlassian Marketplace transition.
• We published a bunch of yummy dinner videos!
• Last but not least, we hired Florian!
  

As a last note, I'll be giving a talk in London on April 17th, then Mike and I will be manning a booth at UX London. At the end of April I'll be in Las Vegas for MicroConf, and it looks like I'll be speaking at Business of Software 2012 in Boston in the fall again. Yay! I hope to meet some of you in person at those events!

Alright, back to figuring out how to update myBalsamiq quickly and safely.

Onward!
Peldi for the Balsamiq Team

P.S.Many thanks to our good friend Mims Wright who helped us with many of today's changes!

As you should know by now, our main goal as a company is to help rid the world of bad software, one user interface screen at the time.

We try to do so by making and constantly improving Balsamiq Mockups, by giving our software away to schools and UX teachers, by highlighting software we love to use, by sponsoring blogs and events that teach the world about Usability and User eXperience, and more.

If helping others build more lovable software is your passion, we want to help you. Simple as that.

Today we are thrilled and honored to introduce our latest initiative in this area: a new, free version of Balsamiq Mockups, integrated with UX.StackExchange.com.

If you don't know what StackExchange is, you've been missing out. It's a collection of community-edited and moderated question and answer websites, each dedicated to becoming the single best online resource on a number of different topics. The most famous StackExchange site is StackOverflow.com, the ultimate Q&A site for programming questions. Other popular StackExchange sites are Startups.StackExchange.com or English.StackExchange.com, about the English Language and its Usage. See a full list here.

About a month ago we were excited to see that UX.StackExchange.com launched publicly, and thanks to the long beta period had already become a wonderful resource for anyone interested in creating better software.

Almost immediately, we noticed that people were attaching images made with Balsamiq Mockups to their questions or answers to make them more clear.

Here's a few examples:

• "Animation with a vertical Toolbar?"
• "Best way to show and sort by dates when the item may be repeating/recurring?"
• "List vs tiles for links"
• "How to best represent scheduling information for a manufacturing dashboard"
• "Dealing with Area Codes in Phone Number fields"
• "Examples of “Light table” GUIs for editing and comparing images, text or other data"

Shortly thereafter, ux.stackexchange user Moshe Berman posted this question:

A few days later, I got an email from Joel Spolsky asking if we could make it happen. Clearly, we jumped at the opportunity, it' such a good fit with our mission!

A few mockups later (shared between the teams via myBalsamiq of course), a couple of weeks of coding, and here we are!

It's free for you to use, and - in case you're wondering - it's free for StackExchange to host.

The Integration

StackExchange developer extraordinaire Benjamin Dumke-von der Ehe was able to integrate our core wireframe editor really nicely.

When you first ask a question or submit an answer, you can see our little smiley icon in the StackExchange editor.

Click it and the Balsamiq Mockups editor will pop up in the browser.

Create your wireframe or import an existing BMML (from Mockups for Desktop for instance), then hit Save and Close and voila', the mockup is added to your question.

You can add text above and below, or add more wireframes to the same question.

To edit an existing mockup, just click the "edit the above mockup" link in the preview panel.

Iterating

Taking someone's wireframe and proposing an alternate design is a very important part of every UI discussion.

Here how to do it:

1. edit the original question/answer containing the mockup you want to improve
2. copy the part between <!-- Begin mockup and End mockup -->
3. hit cancel
4. go back to your answer in the text editor and paste the code you just copied
5. look down in the preview and click on "edit the above mockup" to launch the editor
6. make your edits, then hit "Save and Close". This will save your edited mockup as a copy, leaving the original untouched.

If instead you want to make your edits in Mockups for Desktop, you can simply click on the little "download bmml source" link under each wireframe, edit the BMML in Mockups for Desktop, export it (CTRL+E), then go back to the browser and use the Import XML feature in the editor to upload it.

Try it out!

This integration launched today, and we are already seeing the community using it successfully (two examples).

So, next time you have a doubt your UX ideas, why not ask the community at UX.StackExchange.com? Bookmark it now! :)

Many thanks to Benjamin Dumke-von der Ehe, Jarrod Dixon, David Fullerton, Michael Pryor, Joel Spolsky and everyone else at StackExchange who helped with this little project. As usual, you guys are a real pleasure to work with.

Onward!
Peldi for the Balsamiq Team

My do we have a lot of awesome stuff cooking up for you. To start, as pre-announced a couple of weeks ago, we are bringing you Image and Group Cropping / Masking today!

We have improved the feature since the pre-release, watch this little video to see how awesomely powerful this little feature has become:

The crop feature is available on all versions of Mockups.

What else is new in today's release?

• All versions: Geometric Shapes are no longer considered markup. This is a big change but we all agree it's for the best, and it might result in some of your existing mockups showing geometric shape controls when you didn't expect it. To fix it just right-click on those controls and select "Treat as Markup".
• All versions: fixed an annoying bug that prevented controls with odd-numbered dimensions from snapping properly.
• All versions: improved the Zoom-To-Fit algorithm
• All versions: you can finally have the little sorting icons on more than one Data Grid column.
• All versions: renamed the World icon to "World, Globe" for easier searching.
• All versions: we moved the "Dock Property Inspector" menu item outside of the "UI Library Position" menu.
• Mockups for Desktop: Fixed a bug when leaving full-screen with unsaved mockups.
• myBalsamiq: fixed bug when using links that had _ or & characters in them in mockup notes, project descriptions and comments.
• myBalsamiq: improved the performance of displaying the project grid on projects with many mockups.
• myBalsamiq: added a little "promotional code" feature, which will allow us to run some promotions that give you extended myBalsamiq trial periods.
• myBalsamiq: fixed a bug when exiting full-screen on Chrome on Windows
• myBalsamiq: notify project members checkbox is now correctly selected by default for new mockup comments.
• myBalsamiq: sped up project upload (more to come).
• myBalsamiq: we no longer show the "welcome to your new project" helper dialog on cloned projects.
• myBalsamiq: increased the size and throughput of our database.
• myBalsamiq: fixed some issues with displaying project asset thumbnails.
• myBalsamiq: sped up the day/night world map by an order of magnitude
• Mockups for Confluence: New handy Save and Close buttons in the top menu, like we do in myBalsamiq.
• Mockups for Confluence: Refactored a bunch of editor code. Should result in faster loading when editing a mockup.
• Mockups for Confluence: Licenses now properly take into account leap years.
• Mockups for JIRA: now correctly accepts maintenance licenses that start in the future.
• Mockups for FogBugz: fixed a bug with content-disposition on JPG attachments (only shown by Chrome)
• Mockups for FogBugz: now correctly accepts maintenance licenses that start in the future.
• Mockups for XWiki: updated some links and fixed a typo.

How do I update?

If you're using myBalsamiq, you're already updated. Just log back in and enjoy.

For other versions, simply install from our download page on top of your current installation. You won't have to re-register.

As always, if you hit any snags with the new build let us know immediately and we'll fix it right up! :)

For posterity, these are the version numbers of today's release:

• myBalsamiq: build #
• Mockups for Desktop: version 2.1.14
• Mockups for Confluence: version 2.1.13
• Mockups for FogBugz: version 2.1.13
• Mockups for JIRA: version 2.1.13
• Mockups for XWiki: version 2.1.13
• Web Demo: version 2.1.13 launch it

What else is going on?

Oh man, lots of exciting stuff, some of which we can't talk about quite yet. ;)

• We passed the 1,000 paying myBalsamiq customers mark, yay!
• We posted a free ebook on Mockups success stories called Balsamiq Interviews. We're getting great feedback on it, check it out!
• We got a nice little review on Forbes.com, check it out!
• We were also reviewed on Il Sole 24 Ore again, here's the link (paywall? boo!)
• Mike and I were interviewed by the awesome Jan Jursa for his IATV Radio podcast. Our interview starts at minute 16 or so.

Onward!
Peldi for the Balsamiq Team

While we work on a couple of BIG features (Cropping/masking for images, groups and Symbols, a new wireframing skin and Mockups for iPad), we are staying focussed on quality / bug fixes / test and back-office automation.

With that in mind, here's what's in today's release:

• All versions: Geometric shapes are now drawn programmatically, meaning that they look less sketchy but they finally stretch properly!
  
• All versions: Charts controls also got a similar treatment, they stretch much more nicely now.
  
• myBalsamiq: fixed a bug in which the editor would break if you hid and showed the UI Library again.
• myBalsamiq: in the editor, thumbnails in the project browser get updated as you edit mockups. This is a MUCH nicer user experience.
• myBalsamiq: we no longer send email notifications when a user is removed from a project.
• myBalsamiq: Added a "notify project members" checkbox in the add comment form. Thanks Pete K. for asking for it via email and to andygeek for this GS thread about it.
• myBalsamiq: fixed the "propose alternate mockup..." menu item in the single mockup page. Thanks to Dennis L. for reporting it via email.
• myBalsamiq: fixed A LOT of little bugs here and there, too small to mention.
• myBalsamiq: improved A LOT of little back-end features and processes. Invisible to you but resulting in a more stable and manageable web app for everyone.
• Mockups for FogBugz: we were sending a wrong HTTP header response. Thanks Chris K. for reporting it!

IMPORTANT: if things look wonky in the myBalsamiq editor or in the web demo version, please clear your browser cache and reload the page.

How do I update?

If you're using myBalsamiq, you're already updated. Just log back in and enjoy.

For other versions, simply install from our download page on top of your current installation. You won't have to re-register.

As always, if you hit any snags with the new build let us know immediately and we'll fix it right up! :)

For posterity, these are the version numbers of today's release:

• myBalsamiq: build #3717
• Mockups for Desktop: version 2.1.12
• Mockups for Confluence: version 2.1.11
• Mockups for FogBugz: version 2.1.11
• Mockups for JIRA: version 2.1.11
• Mockups for XWiki: version 2.1.11
• Web Demo: version 2.1.12 launch it

In other news, we're a few days away from hitting $10,000,000 in total Mockups sales since launch (June 19th, 2008)...WOW! Who'd have thunk it! ;)

Our newest baby myBalsamiq is also doing well, it already made around $11,000 in December. Not bad for its first full month of being public, very encouraging! :)

We also posted a little blog post about Our Donation Policy. Check it out, 2% of our profits go to charity each year. It's the right thing to do.

Onward!
Peldi for the Balsamiq Team

Jan 17th UPDATE: I just did a quick release today to fix this bug.

We are still focussed on bug fixing and providing better stability for the web app. Just like with any newborn, the first few weeks are the toughest. It definitely feels like the worse is over though...thanks for your patience everyone! :)

Here's what we did since our last update:

• myBalsamiq: When converting a group to a Symbol, you no longer see the confusing and misleading "Symbol not found" message while the symbol is getting saved, but instead a much nicer "Loading Symbol..." message.
• myBalsamiq: fixed a bug with not Symbol edits "not sticking" due to improper caching.
• myBalsamiq: removed the double progress bar on Assets upload.
• myBalsamiq: improved how the footer resizes at small browser window sizes.
• myBalsamiq: moved from a single Elasticache node to an Elasticache cluster.
• myBalsamiq: fixed reconnection code to Elasticache so that we recover properly, should it go down again.
• myBalsamiq: moved session sharing from apache tribe to memcache (Elasticache). This is why you got logged out today unless you had the "remember me" checkbox selected when you last logged in. Our apologies, it shouldn't happen again.
• myBalsamiq: improved the performance of some common queries.
• myBalsamiq: fixed a bug that resulted in some mockups not being accessible due to floating point numbers in link highlight coordinates.
• myBalsamiq: tweaked our database connection pool configuration and memcache levels based on recent usage stats.
• myBalsamiq: fixed mockup image zooming toggle, it now correctly toggles between "fit to screen" and "1:1" again.
• myBalsamiq: improved our zero-downtime-update scripts.
• myBalsamiq: fixed a typo in the image upload dialog in the editor.
• myBalsamiq: fixed an issue with not being able to see images in prototype mode in private projects unless you were logged in.
• myBalsamiq: we no longer show the "edit this mockup" button in prototype view to users who don't have access to the editor.
• myBalsamiq: fixed a bug that prevented anonymous users from uploading mockups in wiki-access projects.
• myBalsamiq: fixed access issues to the "propose alternate mockup" for blog and wiki projects.
• myBalsamiq: fixed an issue with asset thumbnails not showing up in some cases.

How do I update?

This is a myBalsamiq-only release, so you're already updated. Just log back in and enjoy.

For posterity, today's release is build #3704.

What else is going on?

We are investing A LOT of time right now in our testing automation frameworks and automated test suites.

Now that we have more developers, more products, more code, and LOTS more customers, we need to get more rigorous about automated testing.

With our products being in pretty good shape, this felt like the right time for us pay off the technical debt we've accumulated over the years.

Here's a few demo videos I recorded in order to show the team what we're doing in this area, I'm posting them here to keep you in the loop.

First off, it's our "Bot", the Selenium-Webdriver-JUnit-powered functional testing robot for myBalsamiq:

The video above also quickly shows "MailCatcher", a mailinator-inspired little tool that Kyle has been working on as a way to learn groovy, grails and all the AWS goodness.

Next up, Luis shows off his load testing harness:

Today's last demo is our by new friend Florian (with some help from his 2-year-old daughter), who demos his automated testing suites for the Mockups editor, including a sweet Actionscript code-coverage tool I didn't even know existed! :)

Other things we're working on right now are:

• Finishing up Symbols support in myBalsamiq.
• The crop/mask feature (now not just for images any more but also any group!).
• Mockups for iPad.
• Putting the finishing touches on a free ebook (stay tuned).
• More back-office automation.

I think that covers it!

If we don't talk before then, have a great holiday season everyone!

Onward!
Peldi for the Balsamiq team

Today's release is mostly myBalsamiq-centric. We launched less than a month ago, so today's update is focussed on making it smoother rather than adding new features.

Here's what's changed:

• All versions: fixed Help and Support links, they no longer 404 now, sorry about that.
• myBalsamiq: fixed an issue with notifying project members on save.
• myBalsamiq: fixed a number of image upload bugs in the myBalsamiq editor.
• myBalsamiq: greatly improved the "propose alternate mockup" flow. We no longer throw you back to the comment view on save, you submit the comment directly from the editor. Try it!
• myBalsamiq: upped the file size limit for project or assets to 100Mb (used to be 10Mb).
• myBalsamiq: Fixed an issue with some notifications not showing up after cloning a project.
• myBalsamiq: Started the "toggle link highlights" feature both on the single mockup view and the prototype view.
• myBalsamiq: Added some handy buttons to the prototype view (look at the bottom).
• myBalsamiq: you can now erase project description and mockup notes if you want to.
• myBalsamiq: you can now undo a project delete when deleting it from the archives.
• myBalsamiq: Fixed a bug in calculating myBalsamiq credits for Desktop licenses keys.
• myBalsamiq: Anonymous users can now upload bmml assets to wiki-level projects.
• myBalsamiq: fixed an issue with not being able to delete a comment right after deleting one.
• myBalsamiq: project members no longer see an empty "Site Settings" title in the settings view.
• myBalsamiq: lots and lots of behind the scenes stability and performance changes, especially focussed on helping us make releases with zero downtime. The smoother we can make the release process for our users and ourselves, the more releases we can do! :) For the server-side geeks among us, with today's update we switched from a local ehcache implementation to Amazon's ElastiCache, so that the cache stays warm during an update and the new server boots up MUCH faster. We still have some work to do on this front but we're getting there.
• myBalsamiq: Fixed a markdown formatting bug when using the same modifier more than once, *like* *this*. This fix was already live on the other versions since 2.1.9.
• myBalsamiq: lots of little cosmetic changes here and there

How do I update?

If you're using myBalsamiq, you're already updated. Just log back in and enjoy.

For other versions, simply install from our download page on top of your current installation. You won't have to re-register.

As always, if you hit any snags with the new build let us know immediately and we'll fix it right up! :)

For posterity, these are the version numbers of today's release:

• myBalsamiq: build #3694
• Mockups for Desktop: version 2.1.10
• Mockups for Confluence: version 2.1.9
• Mockups for FogBugz: version 2.1.9
• Mockups for JIRA: version 2.1.9
• Mockups for XWiki: version 2.1.9
• Web Demo: version 2.1.9 launch it

We are going to keep focussing on automating our tests and on fixing bugs for the next few weeks. But the image crop feature is almost ready, so that will come soon as well.

Onward!
Peldi for the Balsamiq team