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I am proud to announce that ForeUI V1.65 is released today!   We are planning to provide more and more web stuff in ForeUI, this new version contains a new line chart element that is useful for web app prototyping.  Here’s the overview of this update:

Line Chart Element

The new Line Chart element provides a intuitive view of data.   It can render multiple lines in a chart.  You can double-click the element to edit the data, the chart data looks like this:

Each row is for a single line, it is formated as “Color: x1,y1; x2,y2; x3,y3; ……“.  We know specifying the chart data is not so interesting if you just need a chart to show, so we provide the Shuffle command to generate random data for the chart, just input the line number and press “Shuffle” button, all data is regenerated randomly, that’s fancy 😉

New Hotkeys

We implemented some new hotkeys in this version:

Options for Exported Image File Name

In this version, we provide new options to specify the export image file name.  This feature is requested by Michael Matti, by using the title of the page in the file name, we can easily find out the image we want.  The options are available in the file chooser dialog when trying to export image files:

If you choose the second option, the image file name will include the title of the page (all non-alphanumeric characters are replaced with “_”).

Scroll Options for IFrame

In V1.60 we introduced the IFrame element, now we provide the scroll options for it.  These options allow you to define the scrolling strategy of iframe:

Show Page Title

 This feature is requested by Ulrich Bottger,  now the page title will be displayed on the bottom-left corner of the tool, and you don’t have to open the page management window to get this information.

Folders Moved

When running ForeUI in VISTA with non-administrator account, you may meet the privilege problem when trying to output something.  In this version, we moved the output folders (workspace, plot and customize folders) to the system preferred user directory, it will avoid that problem.

Other Enhancements:

• Text edit box has no text content by default.
• Change the minimum size of image element to 5×5.

Fixed Bugs:

• Bug_0099: TextEditBox element lists some actions that are not implemented yet.
• Bug_0100: IFrame element should have thicker border in hand drawing theme.

Hello everyone, here’s a good news: ForeUI V1.60 is just released!  This version is relatively big update, we’ve added more elements, events and actions, and some important enhancements are included.

iFrame and Web Browser Elements

Now we’ve provided the iFrame element to ease the web prototyping.  After you drag iFrame to the plot, you can double-click it to change its default URL.

And the figure below shows the  simulation:

What’s more, you can change the URL of the iFrame during the simulation, via the “Set iFrame Source URL” action:

We also provide a new customized element to simulate the web browser, it allow you to input any url in the address bar and show the web content in it:

Add Note on Pages

From now on ForeUI allow you to add note on page, the note for the page can briefly introduce the page, which is very useful.

And the page note will be converted to footnote when exporting the pages to PDF:

New “Element Hidden” and “Window Closed” Events

These two new events actually work in the same way, yet the “Window Closed” event is for Window element only and the “Element Hidden” event is available for all other elements.  The event will be fired when element is  hidden (by the action).

More Actions to Control Text Box Element

In V1.60 we added 4 new actions for controling the text box in simulation, they are “Change Size”, “Change Opacity”, “Change Background Color” and “Change Text Color”.  These new actions provide more flexibility to implement many many special effect, that depends on your imagination 🙂

Improved Master Page

The old implementation of master page has a limitation, but now this limitation is eliminated.  The diagrame below shows the difference:

Other Enhancements:

• TextEditBox element does not paint the caret by default.
• Smarter id allocation.
• Show page title in the browser status bar.
• Allow turn on/off the z value auto adjustment when overlapping elements.

Fixed Bugs:

• Bug_0093: The actions on page level is not updated when involved element id is changed.
• Bug_0094: The element id “A_B_C” is regarded as “A_B” when trying to edit the id.
• Bug_0095: Javascript exception when click on Table, List, Tree, Menu or Tabs element that has no “Selection Changed” event handler.
• Bug_0096: Copy & paste multiple elements, the element id in actions are not mapped correctly.
• Bug_0097: “Page Loaded” event handler is invoked twice.
• Bug_0098: The master page background is not updated immediately when switching the UI theme.

Today ForeUI V1.57 is released!  This version mainly focus on the bug fixings, yet a few new features and enhancements are also included.

Enhancements for Mac OS X

From this version we associate .4ui file with ForeUI in Mac OS X, that means you can double click any .4ui file and open it in ForeUI.  We also make so GUI tuning for Mac OS X in this version, such as hiding the black border when dragging element to the plot area, changing some buttons’ size etc.

Display Settings Tab

Now the settings window contains one more tab: Display.  It allow you to specify the way to paint the invisible elements and the master pages in the editing area.

Window Draggable On/Off

In V1.55 we implemented the dragging simultion for window element, however we realize that the window dragging is not always required, so we make it configurable.  The default value is off, thus the old sample plot will work as they were.

Get Text Value During the Simulation

Now we can get the value of Text element during the simulation.  This feature existed in Text Edit Box for a long time, now the Text element finally have this.

Fixed Bugs:

Bug_0088: Duplicated page may have repeated element ids for same kind of elements.
Bug_0089: Tabs element has no default selected index value in simulation.
Bug_0090: Progress bar freezes when trying to save customized element.
Bug_0091: After dragging image from image dock to replace the image on element, the cursor can not restore.
Bug_0092: Invisible element on window element is shown when window is close.

Hello everyone, today I’d be happy to announce that ForeUI V1.50 is released!

From V1.50, ForeUI provides the settings dialog, which allow you to specify its look and feel, some parameters for editing and the preferenced parameter for new created plot.  You can open the settings dialog via menu “Advanced->Settings”:

In the “General” section of the settings, you can change the look and feel of  ForeUI.  We use EaSynth look and feel (the bronze-coloured style) as the default look and feel,  someone like it, and some one hate it.  The reason that we don’t use the native look and feel is to avoid mixing up the editing content (with high fidelity) and the tool itself.  Now we provide the options to switch the look and feel so users can pick the one they like. 

The “System Look And Feel” option means using the native look and feel provided by the system,  so the final result varies depending on your operating system.  If you choose this option, your ForeUI will look like this in Windows XP:

And if you are using Mac OS X, your ForeUI will look like this:

There is an option that allow you to input the class name of the look and feel, it is not so useful to most users.  If you want to use the Java metal look and feel, you can input the “javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalLookAndFeel” here to see the result.

Another interesting update is the element library supporting (requested by Ari).  Now you can define your own library for customized elements.  This can help you to manage large number of customized elements.  In the future, we will also allow upload/download/share the libraries via internet.

You can switch the current library from the drop-down list, you can also regard it as a filter – only list the elements with the current library.  If you choose the “All” library, all elements will be listed no matter which library it belongs to; If you choose the “Default” library, all elements that are not assigned to a library will be listed.  You can click the button with  icon on the customized element to move it to a library.

From V1.50, the border of Text Edit Box element can be hidden, this feature is requested by Ulrich Böttger.  With this new feature, you can make your own customized text input field (with special border).

Another basic event “Right Clicked” is supported in V1.50,  thus you can handle the mouse right click on any element.  For example, you can handle this event and show the context menu on a window element.

We also implemented some enhancements in V1.50:

• Add cut/copy/paste/delete items to edit menu.
• The plot property bar on bottom will become scrollable when window isn’t wide enough.
• Behavior editor toolbar will become scrollable when dialog isn’t wide enough.

And some bugs are fixed:

• Bug_0074: The thumbnail of customized element with single component will be too tall.
• Bug_0079: Text label has extra margin in simulation.
• Bug_0080: Incorrect text margin of Text Edit Box in simulation.
• Bug_0081: PDF export: Generate 2 pages PDF for single page plot.
• Bug_0082: Change the state of non-selectable element will cause JS exception during simulation.