Review of EaSynth ForeUI

As a follow up to last weeks posting on prototypes and mockups I'm reviewing EaSynth's ForeUI UI Prototyping Tool (www.foreui.com).
getting started is easy and you can quickly get a mockup up going. I like that in the trial version you can use all the advanced features including saving/load your work. This helps evaluate the true value of the tool.
The UI of the tool is pretty intuitive with the central components library always visible and a toolbar at the top for common operations. Components are dragged in from the palette but no ability to stencil multiple components with the mouse. When editing a properties panel shows up and allow you to adjust individual setting on the component.- I had a hard time getting the panel to be pinned down though.
The toolbar lacks cross component functions like grouping and alignment, I kept searching for grouping and 'bring to front' on the toolbar or in the menus until I found it on the components properties palette.
A very nice feature is the ability to extend with new components and share you own customized components with other users (like google sketchup). I'm always weary about if a tool has all the components I need down the road and this definitely helps me feel sure about that.
Components can be pre-poulated easily with data and you can skin the whole prototype with a hand drawn, wireframe, XP, win7 or MaxOS look and feel.
ForeUI has a nice pagination concept although it's hidden at the bottom of the UI and the dialog box keep showing up partly outside the screen.
ForeUI appears robust (it never crashed on me) but show signs of being young (e.g. the properties panel and page dialog behave differently as the latter can be placed outside the main window like Photoshop but the first can't).
ForeUI also has a quite advanced action concept that can create interactivity in the mockups during simulation. The actions can be designed in details with events on individual components and there is the ability to models loops and conditions in a visual programming language so that pretty advanced simulations can be performed.
Once you have made prototype there is plenty of options for export to image, PDF and interactive DHTML with the ability to do simulation.

Pros
Easy to get started
Flexible (e.g. Ability to bring in additional components from other users)
Advanced interaction

Cons
Too little help. e.g. lacks a quick tutorial a'la Google's Sketchup tool and detailed ref guide aon action functionality.
Action functionality is comprehensive but then also harder to get started width
collaboration

Conclusion
ForeUI is definitely a tool I would consider for prototyping. It has the ease of use for quick mockup generations as some of the lighter tools out there and also include the ability to extend it and do complex interactive prototypes should you need to do so.

(disclousure: I participated in the FourUI Free License giveaway for bloggers)

Fast prototypes and mockups

This week I found myself in need of doing some fast prototypes. We had set the ambition that we wanted to do a new webapp for a project in 7 days. Obviously that requires things to go fast but we still needed to do some prototyping. Previously I had used Balsamiq Mockups (http://www.balsamiq.com) back when they first launched, so I gave it a run with the desktop (Adobe Air) based version. Still same great functionality and above all easy to get the first mockups done. I really like they sketchy style that lets you focus on functionality and the ease with which you can add sample data into the components.
After a while though when I got into the more complex screens of the prototype I found myself i need of a more expressive tool. I reverted to Google searching for alternatives and guess what showed up. Good old Powerpoint. A good example is : http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/interactive or the 10 minute intro http://www.krisjordan.com/2008/09/07/10-minute-mock-prototyping-tips-for-powerpoint/. On MSDN there is a little bit older intro : http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/02/20/535444.aspx There is also some great templates out there and I ended up trying out : http://www.istartedsomething.com/20071018/powerpoint-prototype-toolkit-01/ which somewhat simple and limited in terms of the number of controls. Powerpoint gives you the flexibility, but is also harder to get started quickly as you need to setup basic controls and master slides.
I’d probably be continuing w. powerpoint for now, but when writing this blog I researched a little more and others before me have created better reviews. take a look at a pretty extensive list from Dan Harrelson from Adaptive Path http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/2009/03/24/rapid-prototyping-tools/ and good pointers can also be found on Henrik Olsens blog http://www.guuui.com. The latter led me to http://www.foreui.com which I’ll be trying out in the near future. Stay tuned