Show HN: Couldn't sleep; added 960gs support to jMockups | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Couldn't sleep; added 960gs support to jMockups

jmockups.com

75 pointsmatt129 comments

I'm glad you couldn't sleep because otherwise I wouldn't find out about jMockups. :) This is going to come in handy!

Thanks I hope you like it. Let me know how I can make it more useful to you.

Placeholder images - really, stretchable white boxes with borders would be fine - or the ability to upload an image would be helpful. having to put in a URL means I have to stop my workflow to create and FTP or whatever an image.

Me too - it looks like a handy little tool.

It would be nice if I could share the mockup without creating an account. This little tool makes snippets shareable by giving all snippets a unique public url: http://write.fm/ymg5p79

I feel dumb for having to Google "960gs"... Other than that, looking good!

Googling for things you dont know is a mark of intelligence, not stupidity :)

I even consider googling for things you know but didn't touch for a while a mark of intelligence :)

"Not knowing is not a sin. Not learning is."

I used to be a teaching assistant for a class which was ostensibly meant to teach engineering freshmen miscellaneous math and how to program, but the real goal was to get them in the habit of finding out things they didn't know.

So many people, when they come across something they don't understand, just freeze up like Windows 95: they don't know something, and it doesn't occur to them to google it, or look for notes on the subject, or ponder the subject from another angle for a minute or so. These are such essential skills that we had a class deliberately constructed so that you would not pass unless you got in the habit of looking stuff up when you don't know it. A few years later, a lot of the students said it was the most valuable class they'd taken.

Don't worry about the detractors, they may well be right but the only way to find out is to go on and make this tool as good as it can be. Then we will know if there is a market.

What are the detractors saying? This looks totally awesome.

That mockups should be wireframes like Balsamiq. They are right that is the stronger model (I love Balsamiq) but that doesnt mean that there isnt room for other ways.

With respect to Balsamiq, the strongest model is to do both. :)

Agreed, did I read somewhere that you were contemplating offering a wireframe version as well?

I love both the tool in general and the "couldn't sleep so i coded" sentiment. I had the same burst two nights ago when I made http://fstr.net (not nearly as cool as jmockups, but not bad for an evening's work).

Kudos to you! What's more, I may try to redesign my layout in jM. I tried to use a 960gs style "formula" for the buttons and ads... but really just did back of the napkin calculations. This might help :)

Nice! One thing I like about this service is that I can pretty rapidly wrap up a prototype of the layout of a site I'm about make a design for, and then try out different colors, fonts, paddings and margins etc. Excellent tool to get a rough idea on how to further expand a design.

Would love to see an export to code button. Just to see it live in a browser. Love this new demo though!

It would be awesome if you could start from an existing web-page and work from there.

Looks really nice! Any possibility of adding other grid systems, or perhaps a customizable grid? I'd love to be able to specify column and gutter width.

Yeah, that should be doable.

Do many people use grids other than the 12-col 960gs? (You can email me at matt@jmockups.com if you want to continue this off-HN).

I believe that a lot of people use Blueprint's grid system. By default that's 40px/10px at a total width of 950px.

http://www.blueprintcss.org/tests/parts/grid.html

I may email you with more details later. Thanks!

looks nice! minor point (maybe i'm too used to looking for small differences): when you do the browser test the font doesn't match in my browser (FF 3.6 on Mac), suggesting the answer to the question "Do these match?" may be 'No'. Maybe a "Do the words match?" may be clearer.

Thanks for pointing that out. Can you send me a screenshot? matt@jmockups.com

Stutters like crazy when I drag any elements around the canvas. Looks promising, otherwise!

i think that maybe a local problem for you, i tried chrome and firefox on windows and ubuntu.. no stuttering at all

This could be your browser/local machine or it could be because there are a lot of element on the canvas and when you try to move one around, it tries to snap to all the other ones.

I'm not sure what the best way around this is though, as snapping is a key feature. Any ideas?

Perhaps holding a modifier key while dragging could disable snapping?

That's a great idea--I'll see what I can do.

Try to snap only to a few items? I'd suggest the outermost items and the closest items.

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