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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December 13, 2009

ForeUI V1.85: Vertical Tabs and Enhanced ComboBox

by Xavier

Hello everyone, it is my pleasure to announce that ForeUI V1.85 is released today! In this version, we added a new vertical tabs element, improved the combo box element, implemented some useful enhancements and fixed a few bugs.

Vertical Tabs

We’ve put this vertical tabs in our TODO list for a while, and finally it is available now. It is very similar with the Tabs element, but it will place the tabs on the left or right side. Also the vertical tabs has four different looks according to the current UI theme.

The vertical tabs also supports the “Selection Changed” event, just like the tabs element does. You can handle this event, and control the visibility of elements within the tabs, just like this:

Enhanced ComboBox

Now we have more options to manipulate the ComboBox element during simulation. The ComboBox element now provides “Selection Changed” event, “Selected Index” property and “Set Selected Index” action.

This example demonstrates the usage of the “Selection Changed” event and “Selected Index” property:

We can also use “Set Selected Index” action to change the selection of ComboBox:

combobox_action

Pin Windows

The element selector window and the page management window will be closed automatically once they lose focus, now you can pin it and keep it opened. Just click the small pin icon on the top-right corner, the window will be pinned and will not close until you click the “x” button.

Other Enhancements:

Ctrl+Click to bring up context menu in Mac. (Thanks Todd Sieling for the suggestion!)
Command+Click to remove element from selection in Mac. (Thanks Todd Sieling for the suggestion!)
Store last modify time in .4ui and .fce files for future usage.

Fixed Bugs:

Bug_0117: Page name editing should be stopped when closing the page manage window. (Ulrich reported, thanks!)
Bug_0118: Page information in status bar is not correct if switching page in “Page Loaded” event handler. (Thanks Ulrich for the reporting!)
Bug_0119: Empty tab in Tabs element can not be selected in simulation.

Enhanced ComboBox | Vertical Tabs

November 29, 2009

ForeUI V1.80: New Events and Interactive ComboBox

by Xavier

Hi everyone, I’m here to proudly announce that ForeUI V1.80 is released today! This version bring us two new events and interactive ComboBox element, with some bugs fixed.

MouseOver and MouseOut Events

Now you can use these two new events in the behavior editor, they will be very useful to implement tooltip or element rollover effect. The MouseOver event will be fired when you move your mouse cursor over the element; and the MouseOut event will be fired when you move your mouse cursor out of the element’s area.

Interactive ComboBox

The ComboBox element is improved a lot in this update, it is no longer an image during the simulation, you can now interact with it. In order to support multiple items, ComboBox element can have multi-line content now, one row for one item, you can assign the default selected item in edit mode.

When you run simulation, you can click the ComboBox and then the drop down list will be poped up, the ComboBox will have different appearance according to currently used UI theme.

Other Enhancements

We changed the default state for newly created radio buttons and checkboxes, this is suggested by Ulrich and we really think the “Normal” default state is more reasonable.

Fixed Bugs:

Bug_0114: Can not add more cases after defining the switch branching. (Thanks Trevor Keegan for reporting)
Bug_0115: The “Element Clicked” event should also be fired when clicking on the Menu element. (Thanks Trevor Keegan again for reporting)
Bug_0116: Should not allow changing plot via Undo/Redo when editing element content.

Trial Duration Changed

BTW, the trial duration is changed to 15 days from this version, you can still contact us to extend the trial for another 30 days 🙂

Feature | ForeUI | Uncategorized | Update

ComboBox | MouseOut | MouseOver

November 25, 2009

Some Tips for Behavior Definition

by Xavier

With ForeUI we can define actions for each element, thus we can create interactive prototype and run simulation in web browser. The behavior of element can be described as one or more event handlers, each handler is a flowchart that indicate the way to perform actions. Here are some tips to help defining a clear and effective flowchart.

Don’t Place Pause Action at the End

The Pause action will pause the current thread and wait for a while before executing the subsequent actions. In other words, Pause action can delay the subsequent actions. So if no action is defined after the Pause action, the Pause action will not really take effect, even if you place it in a loop, the Pause action will not pause anything in the next circle.

So placing the Pause action at the end is not a good idea, the table below show some good and bad cases:

Good Cases	Bad Cases
Event Pause 1000ms Action A	Event Action A Pause 1000ms
Event Action A Pause 1000ms Action B	Event Action A Action B Pause 1000ms
Event Loop Pause 1000ms Action A	Event Loop Action A Pause 1000ms
Event Loop Action A Pause 1000ms Action B	Event Loop Action A Action B Pause 1000ms

Use Only One Pause Action In the Loop

When you are defining animation, Pause action will be very useful. Sometimes we need to place the Pause action in a loop. But there is a limitation: if you place multiple Pause actions in one loop, the loop will not really work. So please use one Pause action in one loop. The table below shows a good case and a bad case:

Good Case	Bad Case
Event Loop Pause 1000ms Action A Action B Action C	Event Loop Action A Pause 1000ms Action B Pause 1000ms Action C

If you really need the behavior showed in the bad case, you can use this structure to workaround:

Case to Workaround
Event Loop Pause 1000ms Switch Case A: Action A Case B: Action B Case C: Action C

Thus you can perform one action in one circle, with one second interval.

Make Good Use of Copy and Paste

The behavior editor is improved a lot in V1.70 and provides copy and paste feature. You cut, copy or paste item in the behavior tree via the context menu. You can do these cross items, cross events, or even cross elements. That will a lot of time when you try to define similar behavior for multiple elements.

Of course you can also use drag and drop to move or copy items in the behavior tree.

Feature | ForeUI | Uncategorized

November 18, 2009

ForeUI V1.77: Arrow Line and Alternate Row Color

by Xavier

Hello my friends, today we just released ForeUI V1.77! This version bring us a new Arrow Line element and some interesting features / enhancements.

Arrow Line

The Arrow Line element is in our TODO list for a long time, and today we finally make it. Arrow Line is very useful for making annotation on wireframe / mockups, so it is added to the “Annotation” category.

The new Arrow Line element provides many useful options for tweaking, you can change its color, thickness, shape and size etc. The animation below shows the details:

Alternate Row Color for Table/List/Tree

Now you can specify the alternate row color for table, list or tree element. Here is an animation to show how to do this:

This feature is requested by Michael Matti, thanks for the good idea!

Color Picker Enhancement: Clear Color

We’ve made a small enhancement of Color Picker, so it can clear the editing color now.

Just click the new button on the top-right corner can clear the current editing color. This feature is only available for “optional color”, for now only alternate row color belongs to this category. Once you clear the alternate row color, it’s actual value may vary according to the UI themes.

Fixed Bugs:

Bug_0111: Double-click the .4ui file to open ForeUI, sometimes it may hang. (Reported by Michael ScolaVisa, thanks!)
Bug_0112: The group element can not be smaller than 20×20, ignoring its content’s actual size.
Bug_0113: Press Page Up/Down to switch page should not scroll the plot as well. (Reported by Ulrich Bottger, thanks!)

Feature | ForeUI | Uncategorized | Update

Alternate Row Color | Arrow Line

November 8, 2009

ForeUI V1.75: Handy Element Selector

by Xavier

Hello everyone, today we just released ForeUI V1.75! This update includes some small enhancements, and a very useful tool: Element Selector.

Handy Element Selector

When we are prototyping a very big design, we may meet difficulty when trying to pick a small element that covered by a lot of elements. In V1.37 we provided a slider for hiding some elements that on top of the target elements, but when you are facing a huge number of elements on the plot, the slider may not be sufficient since you don’t know where to stop dragging the slider. In this new version, we provide a very useful tool to help picking elements in plot.

You can open this tool by clicking the button above of the plot editing are. It will list all elements of the current page and group them by their types, like this:

Each item has a check box so that you can check / uncheck it to select / deselect element. What’s more, you can filter the content of the tree structure by inputing a keyword at the bottom, the elements will be listed only when their ids or notes content the keyword (case insensitive), thus you can find your desired element very quickly. The animation below shows the way to work with the new element selector:

This feature is requested by Ulrich, thanks for suggesting this useful feature!

Change Image More Easily

The image (or say image box) element is very frequently used, yet changing the image is not so easy in previous versions: you need to click the button on the “Image” row in floating tool pane. Now we’ve made an improvement: just double-click the image element and the popup menu will show up and allow you to select the image from image dock, existed icon library or external files.

The animation below shows the details:

Some Enhancements:

Save image export settings in configure file.
Avoid launching multiple instances of application (Windows).

Fixed Bug:

Bug_0110: Can not turn off Auto Resizing behavior for elements in group.

Feature | ForeUI | Uncategorized | Update