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I will keep repeating how important is to plan your webdesign, sitemaps, draw flowcharts,wireframes before even start to do actual functional and design planning! Since I am deeply researching this topic myself, this time I found the most popular wireframing software available.
Just 3 of tools I found were free, but every tool has free trial or basic plan so you can definitely try and test it yourself for one time projects.
For me – I don’t do redesigns too often, so I don’t need such tools daily, but for design companies I think one of these tools will be life and time saver from drawing, planning and collaborating view – worth spending some money for! To get started I suggest to read also previous planning article I did – Know How To Plan Your Website Redesign & Get Inspired.
With Lovely Charts’ extremely simple and intuitive drag’n drop drawing mechanism, you’ll be able to focus on what really matters. You won’t have to draw boxes or arrows, and you won’t have to worry about what symbol to use.
Lovely Charts’s biggest strength lies in its innovative workflow and in its ability to generate lovely diagrams in minutes, with no effort.
The Pencil Project’s unique mission is to build a free and opensource tool for making diagrams and GUI prototyping that everyone can use.
Top features:
Prototype Composer is a completely new way of gathering requirements. Prototype Composer makes it possible to see how an application will look and function before any code is ever written. Instead of endless text documents, Prototype Composer makes it easy for business users and business analysts to collaborate on requirements by building simple, high-fidelity prototypes that simulate a working application.
MockFlow is an online tool for creating wireframes of software and websites. It helps to enhance your planning process by enabling to quickly design and share interactive UI mockups.
Can be used as desktop application and one more great thing you can collaborate real-time with fellow collegues and discuss development process right in the application if you use premium account.
Little video demo about this software:
Axure RP enables application designers to create wireframes, flow diagrams, prototypes, and specifications for applications and web sites. It provides the features you need to get started quickly whether working alone or collaborating with your team.
Used by user experience professionals, business analysts and product managers in over half of the Fortune 100, leading agencies and thousands of small and medium businesses around the world. Axure RP has become an essential tool for successful application design.
Watch video tour about Axure RP
Using Balsamiq Mockups feels like you are drawing, but it’s digital, so you can tweak and rearrange controls easily, and the end result is much cleaner. Teams can come up with a design and iterate over it in real-time in the course of a meeting.
Mockups is designed to help you and your team or clients iterate on wireframes as early in the process as possible, when it’s cheapest to do so.
Watch video demo about this software:
Great application, with a lot of tutorials, forum, active twitter account and Faqs/Help section! Interface is very modern as well, one of my favorite applications by far.
Mockingbird is an online tool that makes it easy for you to create, link together, preview, and share mockups of your website or application.
ProtoShare is an easy-to-use, collaborative, Web-based prototyping tool that helps teams visualize requirements for interactive projects and work together in real-time.
Big or small, the key to successful projects is getting people talking and cooperating early. ProtoShare helps all stakeholders — Web developers, account execs, management, marketing, and clients — get on the same page before money and time are sunk in various development dead ends.
Check out online video tour explaining good features about this product.
You can use Gliffy to build almost everything, I don’t like though there are too much features. If I would need tool just for wireframing I think I would choose different one, because there I have too many distractions and options I don’t need.
With Gliffy online diagram software, you can easily create professional-quality flowcharts, diagrams, floor plans, technical drawings, wireframes and more.
Wireframes and mockups have been used to think and define websites or applications before their implementation. But with the coming of the web 2.0, dynamic websites and RIA, you need to think everything from UI to conditional navigation or the type of interactions you want to use. Mockups or even clickable wireframes aren’t enough anymore.
Justinmind Prototyper 3.0 is a powerful wireframing tool designed to build fully functional dynamic prototypes without any coding, both on Windows and Mac.
See also short video demo:
Different than classic wireframing tools, because of functions, you can change less hierachy, but it’s very easy to build sitemaps and separate content in categories there.
Use Jumpchart to quickly plan out the navigation of your site by adding pages, and sub-pages. If you change your mind, easily drag pages to new spots within the site hierarchy. There is no better way to organize the content for your website.
Watch their online video tour.
Integrate usability testing into your production cycle by making use of pidoco°’s easy-to-use testing module. You will be developing applications which will work with the end-user as well as your clients whilst increasing the turnover!
Real-time collaboration with several co-workers will optimize communication patterns and will decrease expenditures in many areas within your production team!
With iPlotz you can create clickable, navigable wireframes to create the experience of a real website or software application. You can also invite others to comment on the designs, and once ready, you can then manage the tasks for developers and designers to build the project.
Check out video tour.
FlairBuilder is built such that you will feel comfortable with the application’s user interface and complete each task fluently and efficiently. That is why you will find many common elements such as the toolbar, the menu, a component palette, a context menu for common tasks and a set of handy keyboard shortcuts. All these to simply let you focus on you job and get it done as fast as possible.
GUI Design Studio is a graphical user interface design tool for Microsoft Windows that you can use to rapidly create demonstration prototypes without any coding or scripting.
Draw individual screens, windows and components using standard elements, connect them together to storyboard operational workflow then run the simulator to test your designs. Watch video demo overview.
Need a diagram, process chart, quick page-layout, website wireframe or graphic design? OmniGraffle can help you make eye-popping graphic documents quickly by keeping lines connected to shapes even when they’re moved, providing powerful styling tools, importing and exporting Microsoft Visio files, and magically organizing diagrams with just one click.
Whether you need a quick sketch or an epic technical figure, OmniGraffle keeps it gorgeously understandable. Watch introduction videos and tutorials here.
Microsoft Office Visio 2007 makes it easy for IT and business professionals to visualize, explore, and communicate complex information. Go from complicated text and tables that are hard to understand to Visio diagrams that communicate information at a glance. Instead of static pictures, create data-connected Visio diagrams that display data, are easy to refresh, and dramatically increase your productivity. Use the wide variety of diagrams in Office Visio 2007 to understand, act on, and share information about organizational systems, resources, and processes throughout your enterprise. View video tour.
Did you make your pick? Which was it? Let us know in comments!
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Dainis Graveris is 23 years old blogger and designer, founder of 1stWebDesigner, now more silently managing everything behind the scenes. He usually hangs out in Twitter tweeting design related links and chatting with people. If you have any questions or feedback that's the best place to start! Cheers!
Friday, November 19th, 2010 07:32
Yes it is a great list, maybe you could be interested to participate to this collaborative comparison of mockup and wireframing design tools (you can rate or vote for the best ones):
This new platform is like a “wikipedia of comparisons”, you can compare everything and embed the table on your blog.
Thursday, October 28th, 2010 00:50
Great set of resources and information. Thanks for sharing!
Tuesday, October 19th, 2010 18:26
Would be interesting to compare the tools according to the size and complexity of the site.
Tuesday, September 21st, 2010 14:08
I like working in Balsamiq. But now cant access the mockup demo page, that i need to work online. I cant point out the error. I thought it was regarding with flash player in my system. When i tried reinstalling it ‘s working fine. But again i cant access the page when i boot up my system on the very next day. Can any one help me fixing the problem :(
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 12:37
You forgot to mention GridPapr ( http://gridpapr.com ) which is a very lightweight Wireframing/Collaboration too. As it been descsribed in REWORK, too much details can hurt planning.
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 14:42
I absolutely love Balsamiq because I can use it to prototype interfaces and not have all the suits saying stuff like, “Can you move that input field over two pixels.” “Can you use Times Roman Italic and Comic Sans fonts? Those are my kids’ favorites.” “Can you make some pointless change so I can feel important and take credit for the entire project when all I really did was waste your time? Thanks.”
The sketchbook, cartoon like drawings seem to get the point across that at this stage we’re focusing on the functionality of the app not the minutiae of the interface design.
Friday, June 11th, 2010 09:37
I use http://www.justinmind.com and I love it! The best price/features choice!
Thursday, May 6th, 2010 01:20
Dainis,
Thanks for including ProtoShare in your list of wireframing and prototyping tools!
More and more options are popping up, so resources like this help designers and developers sort through the ones to best fit their needs, then trial them to determine, which will work for them.
We just updated our website with new information, including tutorials, on ProtoShare for those interested.
Keep up the great posts.
Cheers,
Andrea
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 06:33
This is a great list! However, I thought I’ll introduce http://creately.com – This is great online diagramming software which is definitely worth a try. Creately is a great software with excellent support for wireframes, mockups, web sitemaps, UML Diagrams and a host of other diagram types.
The real clincher is that Creately is accessible anywhere at anytime with no downloads or installs. You can have a great diagramming experience with the pre-built extensive shape sets and ready-made templates. Also, Creately comes with both free and paid plans. You can also try out creately now without signing up – http://creately.com/creately-start.
Regards
Indu
Monday, May 3rd, 2010 22:20
For web app prototyping using CSS3 Media Queries, check out this article about ProtoFluid.
http://menacingcloud.com/?c=cssMediaQueries
Thanks for the list!
Monday, May 3rd, 2010 10:13
I’m missing among a few more- Flash Catalyst, Microsoft Sketchflow and Google Drawing from the list. We’ve seen these 18 many times before on lists. Would be nice if someone took the time to review all the other options.. Or even frameworks like Protokit for instance.
Monday, May 3rd, 2010 14:50
Wow nice job. Good to see HotGloo listed. Thanks for that. If you have any questions about or feedback regarding our service, feel free to contact me at any time. Plus we will come up with something really cool very soon!
Regards,
Wolf
@HotGloo
Monday, May 3rd, 2010 12:06
Great list! Been on iPlotz for quite a while and really like it. Though I will definitely try some new free apps for comparison. Thanks for getting all those together!
Monday, May 3rd, 2010 05:24
Thanks for this article! I tried Lovely Charts; it’s really easy to learn and I’ll probably be using it again in the future. Great list, thanks!
Monday, May 3rd, 2010 05:13
Thanks for another great list of resources! Seeing the “Free” price tag on most of them is nice too, haha!
Monday, May 3rd, 2010 05:18
Good Post.
from all tool, i was trying MockFlow. Simple and so easy..
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 22:02
Nice listing! However, I wonder where Expression Blend 3 + SketchFlow are… there is a free trial for them, too: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e82db5e2-7106-419e-80b0-65cce89f06bb&displaylang=en
Monday, May 3rd, 2010 00:37
This article is going to help me out loads. Thanks for sharing. I’m going to put this to good use in my Web Design work
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 22:22
#19: Adobe Fireworks CS5!
$299 (Retail Full), $149 (Upgrade)
(30 days free trial available also)
Great for prototyping for Web, UI, mobile!
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/fireworks/articles/mobile_workflows_fw_dc.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_in/bbowman_fwcs5.html
Excellent design and prototyping tool — not free, but much more powerful than Photoshop AND Illustrator, combined!
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 16:26
WireframeSketcher is a wireframe and mockup tool for Eclipse-based IDEs. It integrates seamlessly with Aptana, Eclipse, Flash Builder, Flex Builder, ColdFusion Builder, MyEclipse, RadRails, RAD and Zend Studio: http://wireframesketcher.com
Saturday, May 1st, 2010 22:24
Hey Dainis,
Thanks so much for including FlairBuilder in your list. I appreciate it!
Cheers,
Cristian
Saturday, May 1st, 2010 14:53
Another free tool for wireframing or sitemaps is Cacoo (http://www.cacoo.com).
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Cristian Pascu
Saturday, May 1st, 2010 22:24
Hey Dainis,
Thanks so much for including FlairBuilder in your list. I appreciate it!
Cheers,
Cristian
designbyarm
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 02:50
I will try these tools soon.
Nice Sugguestion Thanks.
dolce
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 13:28
I think you forgot the new Google Docs Drawing Feature!
Peter Severin
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 16:26
WireframeSketcher is a wireframe and mockup tool for Eclipse-based IDEs. It integrates seamlessly with Aptana, Eclipse, Flash Builder, Flex Builder, ColdFusion Builder, MyEclipse, RadRails, RAD and Zend Studio: http://wireframesketcher.com
Thomas Immich
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 22:02
Nice listing! However, I wonder where Expression Blend 3 + SketchFlow are… there is a free trial for them, too: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e82db5e2-7106-419e-80b0-65cce89f06bb&displaylang=en
Gavin J Pearson
Monday, May 3rd, 2010 00:37
This article is going to help me out loads. Thanks for sharing. I’m going to put this to good use in my Web Design work
Michel
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 22:22
#19: Adobe Fireworks CS5!
$299 (Retail Full), $149 (Upgrade)
(30 days free trial available also)
Great for prototyping for Web, UI, mobile!
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/fireworks/articles/mobile_workflows_fw_dc.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_in/bbowman_fwcs5.html
Excellent design and prototyping tool — not free, but much more powerful than Photoshop AND Illustrator, combined!
Anton Karbanovich
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 15:50
great list of resources!
helped a lot!
Christine
Friday, June 11th, 2010 09:37
I use http://www.justinmind.com and I love it! The best price/features choice!
brinda
Wednesday, July 13th, 2011 02:28
“Hi, this is great and on the same note would like to request and give mockuptiger a look”
Brinda
brinda
Thursday, July 7th, 2011 21:46
MockupTiger is a good html5 wireframe, you can host it on your domain, desktop, switch between hand drawn look, change fonts and prototype dashboard mockups with data
Ahmad Mosley
Saturday, February 11th, 2012 05:07
Thank you about sharring powerful tools for webs. free and opensource tool
Stan
Friday, February 24th, 2012 13:24
In case you want to add interactivity to your static designs, ClickThru can be the ideal tool. Since ClickThru focusses on adding interactivity layer to existing designs, you can use your favorite design tools and hence you can decide the visual fidelity of your prototypes.
Will
Tuesday, April 10th, 2012 16:09
Thanks for putting together this list of prototyping tools. It saved me much time researching the topic. If you ignore price, what tool do you think is the best?
I have used MS Visio for years generating tech docs, network diagrams & system diagrams and agree you can use Visio for prototyping… However each time I have attempt to use it for visual prototyping I get lost in the act of drawing vs. trying to get ideas down on paper for discussion and collaboration. Also making changes and updates can be slow.
Joe
Sunday, March 11th, 2012 02:22
Dainis you’re a lifesaver. Been hawking for a good UI prog for a while. Thank a mil!!!!
Joe
UXer2012
Friday, March 9th, 2012 19:44
Lovely Charts is no longer 100% free.
Kathie
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 02:14
Geez, how anybody knows when this article was written, or when the comments were created? There is no freakin’ date anywhere :-) LOL
Lovely Charts is outdated, it is not free, nor the web version neither the desktop app.
Rean John Uehara
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 06:36
May 1, 2010. I’m also wondering about the dates too. :D
Rejeesh R
Tuesday, September 21st, 2010 14:08
I like working in Balsamiq. But now cant access the mockup demo page, that i need to work online. I cant point out the error. I thought it was regarding with flash player in my system. When i tried reinstalling it ‘s working fine. But again i cant access the page when i boot up my system on the very next day. Can any one help me fixing the problem :(
Dann
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 12:37
You forgot to mention GridPapr ( http://gridpapr.com ) which is a very lightweight Wireframing/Collaboration too. As it been descsribed in REWORK, too much details can hurt planning.
Patt
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 14:42
I absolutely love Balsamiq because I can use it to prototype interfaces and not have all the suits saying stuff like, “Can you move that input field over two pixels.” “Can you use Times Roman Italic and Comic Sans fonts? Those are my kids’ favorites.” “Can you make some pointless change so I can feel important and take credit for the entire project when all I really did was waste your time? Thanks.”
The sketchbook, cartoon like drawings seem to get the point across that at this stage we’re focusing on the functionality of the app not the minutiae of the interface design.
mprove
Tuesday, October 19th, 2010 18:26
Would be interesting to compare the tools according to the size and complexity of the site.
Brett Widmann
Thursday, October 28th, 2010 00:50
Great set of resources and information. Thanks for sharing!
John
Monday, May 30th, 2011 21:34
This is a great list for someone just getting off the ground. I went through about six different tools (including some of the ones mentioned) before I landed on LucidChart which does not appear to be listed here.
The key differentiators were that it was web-based, had real-time collaboration, Visio import and a host of other features that made it quick and easy. Plus, they make hilarious videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLF8LqbWoCs
Victor
Friday, April 29th, 2011 13:40
Justinmind Prototyperrel is a bit outdated. It has a 30-days trial, is in 4.2 version and the website changed months ago. But great list anyway!
Vanina
Friday, November 19th, 2010 07:32
Yes it is a great list, maybe you could be interested to participate to this collaborative comparison of mockup and wireframing design tools (you can rate or vote for the best ones):
This new platform is like a “wikipedia of comparisons”, you can compare everything and embed the table on your blog.