Pencil: open-source GUI prototyping tool
pencil.evolus.vn
pencil.evolus.vn
I prefer Pencil to more commonly referenced options like Balsamiq. Looks like no commits in a few months, but hopefully the form is still going. An open source UX tool focused on software application workflow prototyping rather than GUI layout is an asset to the software development community.
I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the "sketchy" widgets that look hand drawn and the ability to easily link between layouts. Great for rapidly validating mobile app workflows with users!
Other than Marvel App (which companies uncomfortable with hosting design work in cloud services can't use), I've found Pencil to be the most productive UX-focused design tool out there. Every other tool seems to be UI-focused, but it's usually easier to prototype UI right in HTML5 once the UX workflow is well understood.
Why would they use KDE screenshots as the main screenshots too. KDE looks awful IMHO.
What's the context? Is it somehow notable regardless?
I wandered to this software awhile ago but then moved immediately to Lucidchart.com then Draw.io
It helped me out just last week because employer has no license for paid software...
The V3 release is quite recent and although the features are similar to earlier versions, the GUI is much improved. It is also Win/Apple/LINUX software, so projects should be portable.
What lacks most of all, imo, is that finding sets of templates for newer OSes needs a bit of work. If I was the developer I would spend some time creating these myself, and then beg for donations on the back of that.
Above what they have on their website, there's various extra packs (stencils) [0] that you can install with Bootstrap elements and Android Material elements. Albeit that I find its better to keep to the sketchy UI as otherwise you focus too much on the details.
[0]: http://nathanielw.github.io/pencil-stencils/Not bashing QT, but QT designer is not a wireframing/mockup tool.
The point of wireframing is that the client doesn't look at it and go "this detail is wrong!" Wireframes and mockups should only communicate pre-prototype ideas, work-in-progress ideas and workflows. I think you might not understand what a tool like this is for if you think QT creator is better than every sketching tool on the market. Not a personal attack, but we seem to be talking in circles already.
This is one of the reasons why find people taking pains in some of these type of tools to not make it look like the real deal, because the closer it looks to the real deal, the more some people get hung up on irrelevant details.
Although I would agree that they often (but, ime, not always) appreciate an export (eg pdf) that can be signed off and stored.
We've had some project managers who were almost the most enthusiastic team member about interactive prototypes because they were the most effective (and understandable) thing to demonstrate/give to customers.
(To your general point though, I entirely agree, I wouldn't use QT Designer for this role -- and I'm also quite a fan of pencil, because it feels intentionally plain/bland.)
I feel like I'm being a pedantic a-hole in this thread, but the terminology of UX/IxD and the process seems like one of the more misunderstood aspects of building software and as a lot of developers (in my experience) want to either dismiss the process as unnecessary (they don't need to be told what to do) or they want to take on the process themselves (experienced coder, of course I can analyse and plan a user interface). I'll stop now before I start ranting.
edit: No really, why? Genuinely curious. You have to at least come with one reason after writing that.
b, they are slow
c, they don't integrate well with desktop
d, they put 1 of not 2 additional layers to execution ( a browser in the background + the node nonsense stack )
In short, they are wasteful. I want to get the speed of my desktop back; it is ridiculous that a 3 year old laptop with a high end ssd lags running these crappy electron things; all of them just keep swallowing memory like there's no tomorrow.
a & b. Yes, Electron is going to be slower than writing something in a lower level language and yes, it's going to take more memory due to the JS runtime. But it's entirely possible to create an efficient piece of software that can be easily extended (examples: Visual Studio Code, Slack).
c. I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. Electron is built _specifically_ as a way of writing desktop applications and it works on just about everything. I even wrote an Electron app that runs smoothly on my old Raspberry Pi 2.
d. You don't get a full browser, just the WebKit rendering engine and V8 with Node.js bindings. Node.js has proven itself to be a worthwhile venture. A number of companies now use Node.js in their backend. It's definitely not perfect nor is it the fastest thing in the world but it isn't so terrible as to toss it out entirely.
[1] http://photonkit.com/ [2] http://reactdesktop.js.org/demo/
"Because this library is being currently built for Electron and NW.js, the examples and demos on this site will only work properly in Chrome."
/me closes tab
It's fast, and isn't entirely an enormous executable (40-ish MB).
However, most Electron apps are slow, laggy, and 100+ MB.
It seems great when used by an expert, or great for a stopgap when you need to get something into public hands, but you plan on replacing it with something smaller and faster.
Yes, because it's common in (Node)JS land to add many dependencies. I guess MS simply coded most of the stuff on their own, which keeps the size low.
Also, they use TypeScript and I heard that it reduces function polymorphism, which can increase performance (but I don't know how much). Also, as far as I know, VSCode runs plugins in different processes, which makes the main process snappier.
But I heard that the static typing (implicitly) leads devs to write more monomorphic functions, which seem to be much easier to optimize by the JavaScript-VMs. But yes, you can write such code in JavaScript yourself.
The thing is that writing polymorphic stuff is a bit more effort in TypeScript, if you don't want to throw 'any' around everywhere.
VS Code does, its fast, extensible and has been the launching pad for some very cool things like a unified syntax protocol.
Atom does, but quickly becomes unuseable with too many extensions, and so I find myself not using it. What did the extra bloat give it over something like Sublime?
It happens frequently, regardless of platform and regardless of the underlying platform's actual strengths and weaknesses.
Also, companies like Slack just use Electron as a 60MB wrapper for their website.
Size is still on higher side than desired, but not really much, especially in today's context. If you package it lean, it could come around 40-50mb compressed. That's downloadable in couple of seconds on modern networks and desktop devices.
But the convenience it offers is huge. Same codebase for Linux, Windows, Mac and most importantly Web. Want to convert your project into a SaaS offering? Don't rewrite it, just ship it with an abstraction layer to swap the Native file system calls with Ajax. You can't beat that (yet).
Seems like a step forward to me.