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UI element transformations
As I work on my mockups, I often find myself experimenting with (or changing my mind about) various controls and it would be extremely useful, if I could automatically transform one control to another. Currently, I have to add a new control, cut and paste text from the old one, remove the old control, and then resize and position the new control in the right place. Even for controls that have no text, I still have to get the size and the position right.
Here are just a few examples of control transformations that come to mind:
- checkbox <-> radio button
- various charts (bar <-> column <-> line <-> pie)
- string of text <-> paragraph of text
- text input <-> text area
etc.
There are probably others; this list is just a starting point.
Here are just a few examples of control transformations that come to mind:
- checkbox <-> radio button
- various charts (bar <-> column <-> line <-> pie)
- string of text <-> paragraph of text
- text input <-> text area
etc.
There are probably others; this list is just a starting point.
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The company has this under consideration.
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Inappropriate?I dunno if Peldi would be interested in adding that into the product but as a developer I can easily see an external extension where you select a BMML file, tell it to change specific controls like that. If the file is open you'd get a notice that the file was changed and you can simply OK to reload and see the new controls. I don't think Balsamiq is "extensible" so I don't think guys like us on the outside can do this as an addon to the product. But if you don't mind a separate executable then I don't think this would be too tough.
Any thoughts from anyone about similar extensions or other "gee I wish I could zap my mockup" ideas?
Peldi, I have ideas of how to allow Balsamiq to be extensible without many changes on your side. Interested?
I’m glad to help when I can, just wish I had more time ... and more people to pay for what time I have.
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Inappropriate?Hi MaratB, good idea. This happens to me as well.
I was thinking of adding that capability in a right-click menu, would that work for you?
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This is one of the best points
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That would certain work for me, however, I have two reservations about putting this capability into a context menu:
1) There are currently no context menus in Mockups. How would a context menu be discoverable by the existing users? How would the new users learn about the context menu?
2) Common interaction design wisdom about context menus is that they should provide secondary means of accessing functionality. Where else would these operations go? Top-level menus?
Why not just add transformation operations to the Inspector? They can be hidden by default in a collapsible panel to minimize visual clutter. -
Inappropriate?Peldi maybe we should talk about a general extension concept anyway. My UML experiments show that there is a minimal effort to get a better extensibility:
* Add new components to the components palette
* Make a any grouped components to a new one
* Allow the definition which parts of such a group area allowed for editing
* Define a set of templates what editing means in this context (e.g. select an text field as editable inside such a group)
* A better scaling of grouped elements would be nice -
Inappropriate?I just came across this issue as well, although in my case, I wanted to convert a label in text input. -
Inappropriate?I can see a new right menu click on certain UI controls that let them be changed to a different UI control...
What a clever idea! -
Inappropriate?Hi there, the new way I'm thinking of implementing this is in this mockup:
Basically some control types would have that little down arrow next to their type in the inspector, and show a menu of similar "compatible" types on click.
Thoughts?
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This is one of the best points
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oh, and we'd have a menu item in the right-click menu as well
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Inappropriate?Love it!!!
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Inappropriate?I think anything that is editable should be able to be transformed to anything else that's editable.
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