Freeform Pencil and other Annotation Support

Being able to have arrows to show the connection from a link/button to a new page/dialog box would be useful to me, as my current use case involves WML, which typically consists of a set ('deck') of small pages ('cards') which link together.

I definitively would love to see a freeform pencil, lines, and other shapes. Currently you can only draw horizontal and vertical lines.

If this ends up getting implemented I have a few suggestions:

- Annotations should be on a new layer and not mixed with the other layers.
- You should be able to toggle on/off the annotations

Annotations will be helpful, but they should not become part of the UI design. I see it similar to MS track changes.

I agree with Michael's comments. Annotations should not be part of the design.

Now, free form penciling or sketching should be part of the design. There are a few elements that may need to be drawn since there isn't a tool or symbol for them. It would be nice to allow this drawn elements to be its own layer etc, just like any other inserted shape.

As far as pencil and sketching, I am bit skeptical. I would much rather see Balsamiq round out the icon and UI Library, rather than allowing users to free form draw something that is missing.

What is it that is missing? If the icon palette was extended to include dingbats and weddings, would that cover it? That is unless your trying to model a game UI or some new undiscovered UI pattern.

@Michael: What is missing? I find myself mocking up a UI that will be rendered in WPF and will display what is essentially an electronic circuit, which provides the ability to select different paths between blocks, rerouting to something else, splicing something in. I need to rough out what this might look like, which is where freeform drawing capabilities would be useful. ATM I'll revert to Paint.NET but I'm losing the advantage of doing it in Balsamiq. Sometimes there are things beyond Line Of Business applications that you want to prototype. Even LOB apps will start looking funkier as WPF takes hold, and because the forms controls take will become LESS standard, freeform tools to draw how things are to be customised will be needed. And (as is requested elsewhere) the ability to essentially build up new control elements for ready reuse.

I just need arrows to show the flow between screens - I don't think that is there now and it seems pretty basic

I'd love to see freeform sketching integrated - ideally with some smoothing, but just a simple sketch with tablet feature would change this from a useful tool to a vital one...

Yes, I absolutely agree with Martin. I would love to see a freeform sketching feature. I'm using Balsamiq Mockups integrated with Confluence, and a lot of times you just want to add a simple freeform sketch to illustrate an idea.

Seeing how well Balsamiq works got me thinking of other ways to apply the tool. It mostly revolves around the addition of a freehand pencil tool. Of course this could open up a can of worms, but you could also get away with just tweaking the current Arrow (or horizontal/vertical rule) and forgo the freehand aspect.

But if you wanted to go further and create a simple freehand pencil:

1. Draws a basic line - click and drag


2. Each line is then an object which you can group together to make objects


3. Ability to rotate, adjust thickness, and change color

With the freehand pencil tool we could begin to use Balsamiq to create quick sketches like in the book The Back of the Napkin. Maybe add a few stock stick men that you can adjust in minor ways.GoAnimate gives you a few emotes with their stock characters - smile, happy, etc. If you skim the Napkin book you'll see a few basic objects that you could also build intoBalsamiq. Many of these wouldn't be that far from the current markup objects. But I also understand that catering to this might take Balsamiq away from its singular focus on being a web layout tool. It's just an idea.

More basic shapes would be great (Circle please). Free form would be great too.

Free pencil please to be easy to sketch uncommon shapes.

I can't tell you how important this idea is to me. The ability to freehand sketch a page and then lay components on top of the sketch would be a HUGE incentive for me to push my boss into buying a license or 3