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March 14, 2010

ForeUI V2.15: German Language Supported

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Hello friends, there are two weeks elapsed since the V2.12 relased.  So it is time to rollout a new version 🙂  We will try to release new version for every two weeks.  I think two weeks is a suitable duration as the update will not be too small or too big, also users don’t have to update the software too frequently.  The update today includes German language support, new event,  new property and some enhancements and bug fixings.

German Language Support

Here we must thank Marcus Barkhahn for the translation.  He contacted us about two months ago and asked for this task, and finished translating the 1400+ sentences himself.  Thank you Marcus Barkhahn, with your help ForeUI supports Germany language now!

 To change the current language, just go to the settings window (menu “Advanced->Settings”), and choose language in the drop-down list under “General” tab:

Press Shift + Arrow Key to Nudge Element

This feature is requested by Danm.  Now you can hold the Shift key to accelerate the moving of element with keyboard.

If you need to change the step length of movement when Shift is pressed, you can go to menu “Advance->Settings” and change the value under the “Edit” tab:

Icon in Menu Bar

This feature is requested by Ari and daniel.goertzen.  Usually the menu bar has no icon but Mac OS is an exception, also we need icon in menu bar when creating wireframe for website.

Auto-Fit the Screen of Mobile Web Browser

We take the inspiration from Tobias Severin’s question.  By adding the meta declaration in the exported DHTML, the mobile web browser will zoom the page properly after the loading.  So if you design a 320×480 wireframe, you will get the 1:1 simulation in iPhone Safari.

This enhancement is not only for iPhone, Android system can also take the benefit.  The two pictures below shows the effects on Google Nexus One.

DHTML Exported with ForeUI V2.12 or Lower

DHTML Exported with ForeUI V2.15 or Higher

Changing Workspace Location

This feature is requested by pgbw.  This feature is useful when you don’t have enough space in your user folder.  Also it may solve the issues caused by non-native workspace.

Other New Features:

  • New “Element Initialized” event.  The event is triggered when the element is initialized.  It is similar with the “Page Loaded” event for page.
  • New “Current_Page_Title” global property.   The global property to represent the title of current page. (Requested by Tim)

Other Enhancements:

  • Right-clicking item in action editor will select the item before showing context menu.  (Requested by Tim)
  • Remember the recently used case type in Switch Branching editing.
  • Set property action supports setting numeric value.
  • Add a button for custom element creation in floating tool pane.

Bug Fixings:

  • Bug_0160: Temporary folders for elements in user defined category is not removed from workspace after closing ForeUI.
  • Bug_0161: Modify the action for group member, the modification will be discarded after moving the group.
  • Bug_0162: Renaming the custom global property should also update them in expression.
  • Bug_0163: The properties in the message of User Decision Branching are not updated when properties are renamed.
  • Bug_0164: Select an element that supports image, drag an image from image dock to the element, the floating tool pane should be restored after releasing the mouse.
  • Bug_0165: Change icon command for Tree/List/Menu can not undo correctly.
Feature | ForeUI | Uncategorized | Update
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February 9, 2010

ForeUI V2.10: Keyboard Event Handling

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ForeUI V2.10 is released today!  From this version ForeUI supports keyboard event handling, it is very useful feature when making prototype for game or other applications that need to manipulate with keyboard.  This version also provides enhanced Text element and more (details below).

Keyboard Event Handling

In order to support keyboard event handling, we implemented a new “Key Down” event.  It is a basic event and can be handled in any element or page.  Usually we need to check the state of certan keys in the “Key Down” event handler, so the new system global properties are provided:

  • Current_Key_Code: The key code of current pressed key.  Here’s a key code table.
  • Ctrl_Key_State: Value will be 1 if the CTRL key is currently pressed, otherwise 0.
  • Alt_Key_State: Value will be 1 if the ALT key is currently pressed, otherwise 0.
  • Shift_Key_State: Value will be 1 if the SHIFT key is currently pressed, otherwise 0.
  • Focused_Element_Id: The id of element that currently has input focus.

Also we can retrive the Id of the element as an element property, thus we can detect if the element has focus by comparing its id and the Focused_Element_Id system global property.

Here is a simple example, a message box will popup when we press the ENTER key within the text edit box.  It can be  used when we need to simulate the data submit process.

Enhanced Text Element

Text element is very frequently used in creating mockup / prototype.   In this version we enhance the Text element so that it can have a border and can align text vertically.  The animation below shows the details:

Export Image / DHTML via Command Line

This is a very exciting feature!  It makes things easy if we want to integrate ForeUI with other tools.  From now on, you can invoke ForeUI to export image or DHTML with a single command.  Here is the how-to:

Export Images:

executable plotFilePath -Export:Image -Format:JPG -Pages:1,3,5 -FileNamePrefix:Img -NamingWith:Index targetDirectoryPath

The executable will be “launch.bat” in Windows, “sh launch.sh” in other platforms.

The parameters in red are required, parameters in green are optional.

Parameters (except source plot path and target directory path) are in -Name:Value format.
 
The target image file names will be formated as: FileNamePrefix_NamingWith.jpg

ForeUI will use the value below if the optional parameters are omitted:

  • -Format: PNG
  • -Pages: <all pages that are not excluded>
  • -FileNamePrefix: <same with the plot file name>
  • -NamingWith: Index

Export DHTML:

executable plotFilePath -Export:DHTML targetDirectoryPath

All parameters are required.

Other Enhancements:

  • Switch page in simulation, do not hide current page if the target page does not exist.
  • Shows multiple menu items to launch action editor if right click on multiple elements.
  • Make text content in Table element unselectable for FF, Chrome and Opera.
  • Tool windows can be resized.
  • Allow reseting all parameters in settings window.
  • Allow renaming custom event.

Bug Fixings:

  • Bug_0139: Single row Table with header cause error in simulation.
  • Bug_0140: The “Auto resize element after editing its content” option does not take effect when adding image into button.
  • Bug_0141: Copying page allocates duplicated element ids.
  • Bug_0143: Copy element that contains “Switch Page” action and paste it to new plot, the new plot will contain the old plot data.
  • Bug_0144: Mutirow, encrypt text edit box can not be properly auto resized.
  • Bug_0145: The tree view in page management window may become too narrow if any page has a long title.
Feature | ForeUI | Uncategorized | Update
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January 31, 2010

ForeUI V2.05: Multiple Selection in Action Editor

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This is a minor update that aim to fix some bugs in V2.00, and support multiple selection in action editor.

Multiple Selection in Action Editor

Action editor allows us to drag and drop, copy/cut/paste item in the behavior tree.  In previous versions we can manipulate one item a time, which is not convenient enough.  Now we implement the multiple selection support in action editor, thus we can manipulate a batch of items a time.

We can press the SHIFT key on keyboard to perform the multiple selection, the animation below shows the new way to move or copy items in action editor:

Also we can press the right key to bring out the context menu for manipulating the multiple selected items.

Fixed Bugs:

  • Bug_0133: V1.xx plot that contains conditional branchings may not be loaded in V2.0.  Thanks Wolfgang for reporting this bug.
  • Bug_0134: Loading rectangle element with width=20 or height=20 in V1.xx plot file, the rectangle will be resized.  Thanks Tim for reporting this bug.
  • Bug_0135: Create several instances of same custom element, move the newly created element, its action will be messed up.
  • Bug_0136: Single row table (without header) shows nothing in simulation.
  • Bug_0138: Custom event (and its child nodes) can not be pasted.

2010-02-03 Update:

Some bugs are found today and one of them is quite serious, so we provide a non-offical update for bug fixings.  Please read this thread for details: http://tinyurl.com/yzwxkcu

Feature | ForeUI | Uncategorized | Update
January 25, 2010

Exciting News: ForeUI 2.0 is Released!

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Today I am so happy to announce that ForeUI V2.00 is released!  As a major upgrade, ForeUI 2.0 is so exciting.  You can find improvements here and there, it is quite hard for me to introduce all of them.  So I will just pick a few big updates to write up.

Windows 7 UI Theme

Now you can create prototype with the brand new Windows 7 UI theme.  Although many people are still using Windows XP, more and more people are moving to Windows 7.  So Windows 7 UI theme may be frequently used in the future.

Community Site Integration

About 3 months ago, we have considered such a community site for users to share their resources.  Now the site is online!  The community site provides user a new channel to get more plot examples and custom elements.  User will be able to get new examples and elements more quickly and more frequently, since they don’t have to wait for our new release.  Please keep in mind that the community site is not only powered by us, but also by all ForeUI users.  So if you have any plot or custom element that you think is interesting or may be useful to others, please consider uploading it to the community site.  You may not get paid by submiting the resource, but you will definitely get return from the community 🙂

The community web site has been integrated with ForeUI 2.0.  You don’t have to visit the site in web browser, just open the community window from ForeUI via the “Resource Sharing” button (on the bottom left corner), then you can do the resource download / upload.

Element Categories Management

Now you can configure the element categories on the left.  You can hide the category that you don’t like by setting it to “inactive” state.  You can also create new category and manage the elements inside.  To open the element categories management window, please click the “Manage Categories” button (on the bottom left corner).

Page Management Window

In 2.0 we implement a new page management window.  The pages are managed as tree structure, page can have its child page so that the entire sitemap structure can be built.  You can also create folder in the tree structure.  Folders can help organizing the pages, they can also control the content to be exported.  When the “Excluded from export and simulation” option is checked, all pages under the folder will not be included image/pdf/dhtml export.  This feature is useful when we want to hide the master pages from output.

Global Properties

Global properties are some properties that do not belongs to any element, it can be a system property (read-only) or a user defined property.  System property will be updated by system in the background, we can retrive its value when we need; User defined property can be a String or Integer, we can set its value via the “Set Global Property” action.  We can always insert a global property into the expression.

Custom Event

From now on, we can define event handler for custom event.  That means we can define a complex action in a custom event handler and then trigger the custom event from different places.  It is a powerful machanism to reuse the defined logic and make our work more easy.

There are still many new features, enhancements and bug fixings.  I do not have enough time to introduce here, so I will list them below.

Other New Features:

  • Display settings for toolbar icon, toolbar text, action flag and element button size.
  • Table element supports “Table Cell Values” property.
  • New placeholder element.

Enhancements:

  • Table content should not be wrapped, unless ‘n’ is used.
  • When inputing the target element id, the id list should include ids for group members.
  •  Property chooser also allow inputing element id directely.
  • Add page navigation buttons on bottom tool bar.
  • Improved some dialogs UI (page management, plot configure, element selector etc.)
  • Avoid selecting text within table body by double-clicking in the simulation. 
  • “Show Message” action can do optional calculation within the message.
  • Allow specifying the loop interval in behavior editor.
  • Adjust the title position for window element.
  • Rectangle, ellipse, triangle and placeholder support line stye (solid, dashed, dot).

 Fixed Bugs:

  • Bug_0126: The table element with spaces in content will be shows as “&amp;nbsp…” when export html more than one time.
  • Bug_0127: If one row of table element contains less columns than other rows, error occur when exporting to html.
  • Bug_0128: Post commands list is disabled by default, even the post commands are enabled.
  • Bug_0129: ComboBox element can not contain “<“, “>” sysmbols.
  • Bug_0130: Delete a master page may cause the page manage window crash.
  • Bug_0131: Page management window should be closed when the plot is closed.
  • Bug_0132: The window icon and title is not aligned well when title contains parenthesis.

Try ForeUI V2.00  Now:

You can run ForeUI V2.00 in your browser via this URL:  http://www.foreui.com/demos/demo0/

 You can also download ForeUI and install it:

For Windows: http://www.foreui.com/download/V2_00/ForeUI_Setup.exe

For Mac OS X: http://www.foreui.com/download/V2_00/ForeUI.dmg

For Linux/Unix: http://www.foreui.com/download/V2_00/ForeUI.tar.gz

About the ForeUI 2.xx License

The price of ForeUI 2.xx license is $99 per user, if you buy license for multiple users, you can also get volumn discounts.  You can use the license on ANY V2.xx versions.  You can use the license on any machine you own.

To ForeUI V1.xx customers, you can upgrade your license with just $10 per user.   Comment: Since V1.xx is $79 per user, and now you can have the 2.xx license with another $10, so you totally pay $79 + $10 = $89, which is still less than $99.

Feature | ForeUI | Uncategorized | Update
December 27, 2009

Year 2009 Last Update – V1.90: Enhanced Table Element

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HAPPY NEW YEAR!  Year 2009 is such an exciting year, we launched ForeUI product and achieved unbelievable success.  Here I must on behalf of our company thank you again for your generous help, it is your ideas and creativity that push ForeUI become better and better.  Can you imagine what will we do today?  Yes we just released ForeUI V1.90!  This version will be our last update in year 2009, and it will also be the last one of the V1.xx serial.  As we’ve mentioned in our newsletter, ForeUI 2.0 is coming soon!  No doubt the 2.0 will be very exciting but today’s leading role is still V1.90 🙂

V1.90 is a big update actually; it contains many things.  Now let me show you the details.

Enhanced Table Element

Table Scrolling

In previous versions the table element is just a static image during the simulation, but now things have been changed.  Table element will be converted to real HTML table and support scrolling (if you enabled it).

The animation below shows how the scrollbar works in the simulation:

Table Cell Alignment

The table cell alignment can be configured independently, with the “<“, “=” and “>” prefix for the text.  The text alignment of the whole table will be the default alignment for each cell.  We can use “<“, “=” or “>” at the beginning of cell text to specify the alignment for the cell.

Set Cell Value Action

The enhanced table element supports the “Set Cell Value” action, this allow you to change the table cell value dynamically.

Input Action Target Element Id

This feature is requested by Ulrich, it can save your time to find element in a big plot.  Thanks for the good idea Ulrich 🙂   Now you can input the target element id for the action.  We also provide an auto-complete assistent when you type the id, it will show all candidates in a popup list and you can pick one with mouse or keyboard.

Post Commands for DHTML Export

This feature is requested by Tim, we find it very useful when you want to do some successor task after the exporting, thanks Tim for the idea!  Now you can input some commands in the “Export” tab of settings window, they will be invoked in turn after the DHTML is generated.  Here is an example, we will run the simulation in FireFox, Opera and Safari when the DHTML is generated.

“Set Selected Index” Action

In order to provide more flexibility for behavior definition, we implemented a new “Set Selected Index” action.  This action is supported by  Table, List, Tree, Tabs and VerticalTabs elements.  So you can change the selection of these elements in the simulation.

Other Enhancements

  • Avoid selecting header of table element in edit mode.
  • Press Backspace to delete element for non-Mac system.

Fixed Bugs

  • Bug_0120: Main window may be hidden when click the action button on page management window.
  • Bug_0122: Calendar element is not displayed correctly in FireFox.
  • Bug_0123: Tabs/VertcialTabs/Tree/List/Table elements should invoke the handler for “Selection Changed” event when default selection is changed.
  • Bug_0124: Sometimes Page Up/Down can not switch page in simulation after clicking some element.
  • Bug_0125: List/Tree element without selected item is not painted correctly in simulation.
Feature | ForeUI | Uncategorized | Update
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