Balsamiq Blog

Weekly Release: WebORB Integration and More

Hi there. The main feature of this week’s release is the previously announced WebORB integration.

The nice folks at MidnightCoders (the creators of the WebORB application server for RIAs) have created a web service which converts BMML into a full-blown 3-tier client-server Flex application. The client-side code is a Flex representation of the mockup, and the server-side code generated can run in either .NET, Java or PHP. The generated server-side code provides all the data from the controls in the mockup to the corresponding controls in the Flex application.

To access this functionality, just select “Generate Flex Application (WebORB)…” from the Help menu:

You will see a nice little dialog with some explanation and a big “Generate Application” button:

The generation step only takes a few seconds, after which you’ll be able to download a .zip with all the files necessary to deploy it and run it from the midnightcoders’ website:

You will also find lots of instructions there on how to deploy it and a link to their support forums in case you need help with anything.

I am really excited about the possibilities this feature offers and I’d like to once again thank Mark Piller and all the guys at MidnightCoders for making this possible.

This feature is available on all versions of Mockups starting today. It doesn’t support linked pages at the moment, but we’re working on it…this is just the beginning!

Also in this release

With the help of the community we (and with “we” I mean Marco) fixed a number of bugs this week:

• fixed the “Can’t open multiple files from Windows Explorer” bug, which was a really tricky one!
• fixed “SHIFT-key appears to be “stuck” when moving selected objects” bug
• fixed an issue with the hand pointer in presentation mode not working properly when navigating between mockups with the left/right arrows.

How do I update?

• Mockups for Desktop: here (you might hit this one-time error if you haven’t updated in a while)
• Mockups for Confluence: here
• Mockups for JIRA: here
• Mockups for XWiki: here
• Web Demo: here

Have a great week everyone!

— 2 Comments

2 Responses to “Weekly Release: WebORB Integration and More”

1. Alexandre Fabri Says:
   June 10th, 2009 at 6:48 am

   Correct link for Desktop app:
   http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups/desktop#download

   [Peldi: thanks Alexandre, I just fixed all the links].

2. Phillip Hunter Says:
   June 10th, 2009 at 7:09 am

   Cool. One fix will definitely help me and the Flex gen looks interesting. So, I should have version 1.6.14 after the upgrade, right?

   [Actually the latest is 1.6.15, we just posted a quick hotfix right after the blog post]

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