ForeUI is an easy-to-use UI prototyping tool, designed to create mockup / wireframe / prototypes for any application or website you have in mind.
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July 24, 2015

ForeUI V4.0: Disable/Enable Part of Behaviors

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Sometimes you may want to disable part of behaviors, for debugging purpose. Before V4.0, you have to cut those behavior items and then paste them back after running the simulation. That is very inconvenient, especially when you are dealing with a plot with complex behavior definition.

ForeUI V4.0 allows you to disable/enable part of behaviors with a single click on the left of the row. Please see the demonstration below:

disable_behavior

Once you disable an item, all its descendants will also get disabled (displayed in light green), and they will not get exported to the HTML5 simulation. If you doubt a part of behaviors cause problem, you could disable them and run simulation to see if the problem gets disappeared.

Clicking again on the same place can enable the item and its ancestors (if they get disabled already).

Feature | ForeUI
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July 23, 2015

ForeUI V4.0: Use Built-in Animations

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Since ForeUI V4.0, you can use some built-in animations to make your HTML5 simulation nicer. Although in older versions, you can also make animation with ForeUI by correctly using the loops and actions (for example, this one), it does require some efforts to make it work. In the new version, the built-in animation could be applied by a single click (on the check-box).

move_ani

By simply checked the “Animation” check-box, and input the duration of animation (in millisecond), moving element has animation applied. Below is the comparison of HTML5 simulations that with/without animation.

move_ani

The same options are also available in resizing element, and changing visibility of element. Below is the demonstration with 400 ms duration:

resize_visibility_ani

Although we only demonstrate the animation on those basic shape elements, you can use animation on ANY type of element (Window, Button, Text Box etc.).

With ForeUI V4.0, using animation is easy as that, enjoy it 🙂

Feature | ForeUI
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July 22, 2015

ForeUI V4.0: Apply Shadow on Elements

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Since version 4.0 beta, ForeUI supports shadow on all elements. In the tools panel you will see a new “Shadow” category, and there is a “Paint Shadow” checkbox that allows you to enable the shadow rendering. Once you enable shadow on element, you can also change the shadow color, opacity, offset, blur and spread.

shadow_options

All elements, including basic shapes and interactive controls can have their shadow. The shadow will also be applied in HTML5 simulation (thanks to the shadow attributes in CSS).

shadow_examples

Some UI themes may also apply shadow to certain elements by default, such as Window, Post-It and Balloon elements.

Feature | ForeUI
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July 22, 2015

ForeUI V4.0: New Collapsable Tools Panel

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If you are familiar with ForeUI, you will notice the tools panel is completely different once you open ForeUI V4.0. The picture below shows the differences.

new_tools_panel

 

We have to admit the old tools panel is more compact and can place more buttons within the same area. However, the new tool panel is better organized and allows you to collapse the categories that you are not frequently used.

collapse_category

ForeUI will remember the collapse state of the category, and will not expand it until you manually do so.  Depends on how you use ForeUI, you will have different preferences to show/hide certain categories.

The “Current Selection” category might be the most commonly used category, it is refactored in V4.0 and become more easy to use. Here you can see the number of elements that are currently selected, all their ids, who is the leading element etc. You can also rename the leading element here. By clicking the element id you can set it as the leading one. By clicking the small cross button you can remove the element from selection. The animation below shows the details.

change_selection

If you select a container element (Group, Window, Table, Tree, Tabs, Scrollable Container etc.), you will see another bar below the leading element id. Here you can choose the embedded element within the container by clicking the small right arrow beside the container name. Clicking on the embedded element can choose its sibling element (if any).

select_embed

We wish you like the new tools panel. If you have any question, please feel free to contact us 🙂

 

Feature | ForeUI
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July 21, 2015

ForeUI V4.0 beta is out!

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Dear ForeUI users, it has been a while since ForeUI’s last update, and today we finally bring you the good news: V4.0 beta is available now!

Screen Shot 2015-07-21 at 1.10.32 PM

Why BETA First?

Why beta version instead of an official release? Has this version get tested before releasing? The answer is YES, we already went through 15 iterations in alpha phase, and we are sure this beta version is usable (and much better than older versions).

The real reason that we have it as beta, is this version contains a lot of new features and enhancements, and we don’t have time to update the documents for them. Since today, we start to blog about the new features and enhancements in V4.0, and these content will also be updated to ForeUI’s documents. We are expecting to have the documents all up to date in about a month, and fix some bugs if we found any, then we release the V4.0 official version.

How to Upgrade?

If you run the older version of ForeUI, you will get the notification about the new version. However you will not be able to upgrade directly in the software, instead you will have to download the new version here, then install it.

Since this version, ForeUI supports Java 7 and higher. If you are using Mac OS X, the system will not complaint about the requirement of legacy Java run-time anymore.  If you download the installer for Windows, it contains the latest Java 8 run-time (both 32bit and 64bit) in package and will install the suitable one in your system.

If you already have a license key that younger than one year (purchased after 2014.7.21), you can use that license key directly on this version. Otherwise you can use the public beta tester license key below for testing (it will be expired in about a month):

NWE3NDI3OGM4MDU4M2RlMTdkZDQzMzdlOWNjM2NmYTRRBE1pNTRxEE1UUTBNREl3TWpNek53PT1g
GFZqUXVNQ0JDUlZSQklGUmxjM1JsY25NPWEITWpBd01BPT1QCFJtOXlaVlZKcBBNVFF6TnpRM05E
WTFNUT09YmY0YmEwZTBjZmJiODAwOGRiYzM3ZWE2NWVmMTQ0MjY=

Should I Use This Version?

If you are new to ForeUI, we encourage you to use this new version. Comparing to the older versions, it is much more powerful and can do better work in the major of cases.

If you know ForeUI well, and you are about to start a new project, we encourage you to use this new version. You will feel comfortable to work with it and find the new features and enhancements very helpful.

If you are working on a old project with ForeUI, we suggest you not to use this new version to work on it. Although we worked hard on the compatibility, there are still some angles that we have not considered. If you really want to try it, please make sure to backup your plot file (ForeUI will actually do it for you, when you load the old plot in new version). In the worse case, if your are unhappy with the new version, your work on the new version can not be ported back to the older version (means you lose the work on new version, if you still keep the plot backup).

Please notice that, since this version, ForeUI uses a newer format to store the plot data. For this reason, the plot file created with new version could not be loaded by the older versions. However, plot files created with older versions could be loaded by the newer version.

What’s New?

There are many new features and enhancements in this version. You can find a full list of them here: http://www.foreui.com/history/

The most obvious new feature is the two new UI themes: “Windows 8” and “Ubuntu”. The “Blueprint” UI theme has been added to the default UI theme list too. So now there is 8 UI themes available by default.

Screen Shot 2015-07-21 at 11.49.22 AM

In the coming few days, we will continue blogging about the new features in V4.0. Considering the leak of document of the new version, those blog posts may be the best materials to cover these new features and enhancements. So please stay tuned 🙂

 

Feature | ForeUI | Update
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