samsonsu's dashboard

Basically, when you move a new object on the workspace, Balsamiq automatically shows guide lines as you move to help you align. Apperantly these guide lines are edges or center-split lines of existing objects.

The only problem is: I don't know which object is the reference I'm aligning to. When your diagram gets more and more objects, it's harder and harder to figure out the reference. Your new button "seems" to be centered in the window container, but you don't really know if that guide line is truly the center line of the window, or happens to be an edge of an irrelevant object, or a center line of another object on the far corner of the workspace.

Hopefully the attached screenshot helps explain my concern. I'm trying to make "new button" vertically centered in "container" but ended up with aligning it mistakenly to the center line of the "irrelevant object". Imagine when you get a real complicated diagram -- you won't even be able to tell what you are aligning to.

Is it possible to temporarily highlight the reference object along with the current guide line? Also, the guidelines need some intelligence -- when I place a control inside a container, relevant references should be used first, such as the container and other controls in the same container. Other objects are more likely to be irrelevant and they should be demoted in the reference queue.

My 2 cents. Thank you!

First, thanks for your great product. It helped me a lot in recent new product planning.

Arrows deserve more attention and design makeover than they've currently got. Problems and suggestions:

1. When you draw an arrow, the entire bounding box becomes the "hot area" to select this arrow. This makes it extremely difficult to select objects behind it. Since arrows were usually drawn as the last (top) layer, and some reach really far, this issue is more annoying than I thought I could cope with. Is it possible to select the arrow only when I click on the line?

2. Sometimes arrows with dashed or dotted lines are needed. Also its line width should be adjustable -- sometimes I think the default one is so broad that it looks intrusive on the big picture.

3. There is no way to make a "straight" arrow. You can make it "sort of" straight but it looks weird. Also, it's almost impossible to move such "sort of straight" arrows without first expanding its bounding box a little.

4. No way to make an arrow of "arch" shape -- you have to connect 2 half-arch as an approximation. Same for "Z" shape, or simply a right angle.

5. This one might be too much to ask -- auto connect. Can I "glue" the ends of the arrow to other objects, so that when the objects move, the arrow automatically follows, and chooses the best path/shape to minimize overlap with other objects?

Arrows are very important in UI mockups. I usually use it to tell people which button/menu leads to which figure. It can be improved a lot in my opinion.

Thanks again.