Balsamiq Blog

BAM! Geometric Shapes, Multi-Line support, Oh my!

Hello friends! We’ve got a great show for you today!

Let’s get right to it.

Multi-line Support in the Data Grid and iPhone Menu!

You read it right: you can now FINALLY type multi-line cells within a Data Grid. Just enter “\r” to insert a “carriage Return” in your table’s cell. Here’s a sample screenshot:

It’s that simple. I am SO thankful for all of those who’ve asked for this feature and stuck with us for so long without it. And also to Marco for whipping this out in about 4 hours!

For the iPhone menu, the syntax is the same:

Notice also that Marco also added support for escaping commas in this control, something you couldn’t do before.

New “Geometric Shape” control

You’ve asked for it over and over…and we resisted adding it for a long time. The other day I had an epiphany, I figured out how to add this without affecting the focus of the app (or at least I hope so), so here it is: a tiny little control with a hidden power: the Geometric Shape control (formerly in the app as the “Round Button” control):

This little and purposely unassuming control packs a powerful punch. Add one to the stage and look at its property inspector:

You can choose one of six different shapes, and for each you can specify a border color, a fill color and fill opacity. Oh, and the control also supports icons and text on it, and is linking-enabled.

We hope it will enable you to really unleash your creativity when using Mockups, without hindering your productivity – that’s why all this stuff is so hidden in a property inspector. We are NOT building a generalized diagramming / flow-charting tool, OK? This is more or less as much as you’ll get when it comes to generic shapes, please don’t ask for the ability to rotate shapes, connectors and things of that nature. Mockups is a wireframing application. There are plenty of awesome other apps out there for diagramming.

Labels on Arrows and Images

Another improvement many of you have asked for is the ability to add labels to Arrow controls, which helps when specifying application flow between different screens.

While we were at it we also added text support to the Image control. Text is optional on both control types of course (and the default text is blank).

To edit text in an image control, use ENTER, F2 or CTRL+double-click (a simple double-click will launch the image import dialog). Don’t worry about memorizing this, it’s in the tooltip.

Other enhancements

• You can now remove the border around a Tree control. Thanks so much Martin and Joes for asking for it. And to Brian Topping too!
• On the Desktop, CTRL+ALT+S now maps to “Save As…”. Hurray! Thanks Veddermatic for asking for it!
• On the Desktop, you now get a nice and friendly “Thank you for registering!” message when registering, so that you know your key was accepted.
• On the Desktop, the little file tabs at the bottom now have tooltips, so when you have a lot of them open you’ll be able to tell which is which more easliy!

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed a permission issue with Mockups for Confluence where read-only users could add/edit mockups if they knew the (long and complex) URL to go to.
• The color picker in the Color property inspector now shows the correct color when a shape is selected.
• Same issue with the font size of the selected controls. Titles will no longer show “13″, so to speak. Finally!
• Made a couple of performance improvements here and there.
• The text of the Sticky Note control no longer spills over sometimes. Thanks Berl for bringing up this very important issue.
• The red dot in the Line Chart control is gone. Thanks essepi and others for noticing!
• The Desktop application now uses its last window size and position even when you launch it by double-clicking on a BMML file
• If the Desktop version is not registered it will no longer load BMML files loaded via a double-click or drag+drop operation. Sorry guys, those are features for paying customers only.
• Fixed an issue when sometimes data was lost when saving while quitting! Please update now before it happens to you!
• Fixed an issue where Mockups would quit if you did this: have some dirty mockups. Then quit, then hit cancel if prompted, then hit save again. The app would quit. I know, weird. Well it’s fixed now.
• I didn’t mention this last time, but you now get prompted when trying to overwrite an existing file on Save As… Many thanks to Claudia for reporting it!

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
• Mockups for FogBugz: here
• Web Demo: here

What’s next on the list?

We have stopped accepting new members to the web app beta.

Mockups for Fogbugz is shipping this week-end! Head over to the product page to see the final pricing details and look at this extensive documentation we are putting together for it! We’ve already sold 5 copies of the On-Premise version, so we’re really excited about finally “unleashing” this plugin onto the FogBugz community!

I have also posted a photo of our fall/winter roadmap on Twitter a few days ago. Here it is again:

Notice how Multiline support is already done, check!

Speaking of Twitter, check out our new Twitter background. We’re so thankful you guys!

Having so much fun it’s almost unfair,

Peldi and the Balsamiq team

— 9 Comments

9 Responses to “BAM! Geometric Shapes, Multi-Line support, Oh my!”

1. Régis Says:
   September 24th, 2009 at 6:04 am

   Congrats! Labels and geometric shapes are definitely useful.

2. Sue Anderson Says:
   September 24th, 2009 at 6:58 am

   The “\r” feature is not working. I installed the newest update and see the “new line” feature in the grid, but it is not creating a new line.

   Thanks,

   Sue

   [Peldi: Hi guys, our apologies. We have fixed the issue and the new build is "in the oven". I'll update here soon, give us 5-10 minutes.]

3. Michael Bourque Says:
   September 24th, 2009 at 7:05 am

   Sue,
   Peldi knows the issue with line breaks not working. Probably a windows issue as it does work on Mac.

   I am sure Peldi will send an update. – Cant wait to start using it.

   [Peldi: ok 1.6.35 is live now, all fixed. Thanks so much Michael for the speedy bug report and the help testing it!]

4. Nathan Sudds Says:
   September 24th, 2009 at 7:05 am

   Nice! Labels on Images is a great solution, I have been dragging over an extra text element to label images — this removes the extra step and looks much better too! Some other great updates too!

5. Martin Says:
   September 24th, 2009 at 7:36 am

   Thanks for the updates and the shout! I’m so pleased to see the ability to remove the border for the tree and also to add labels to arrows – just the other day I wished for that function!

6. Jesper Rønn-Jensen Says:
   September 24th, 2009 at 12:22 pm

   Congratulations on the multiline. Finally you could implement the idea that we have been talking about for a long time!

   One note, though. \r is probably not as intuitive as \n for newline

   May I suggest that you add support for \n as well as \r for the new line?

7. Maxence Says:
   October 1st, 2009 at 1:02 am

   Labels on images and arrows are a very usefull feature. I do not regret my investment.

8. terraGirl Says:
   October 21st, 2009 at 7:08 am

   Love the table \r feature! Great to see that Balsamiq continues to develops this tool.

9. Hardeep Virdee Says:
   February 4th, 2010 at 8:15 am

   I may be a little late to the party – but adding mulit-line support in the grid is a fantastic improvement based on customer feedback. I googled for this feature, which lead me to the Ideas Forum, which led me to this blog post. So I’ve found out that I already have this excellent feature!

   Keep up the great work!

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