Gui Prototyping Tools

Here is an alphabetical list of tools helping with drawing screen mock-ups.

Adobe FireWorks CS4 Adobe Flash Catalyst (former Thermo) AutoIt Axure Balsamiq Mockups Creately DesignerVista? Denim EasyPrototype? FlairBuilder? FluidIA ForeUI GUI Design Studio, by Carreta Software Hot Gloo - The Online Wireframe Application Himalia Guilder: JavaFx? Justinmind Prototyper JustProto? Lucid Spec Mockflow MockupScreens Napkin Look & Feel Petra, by Cleverlance Pencil ProtoShare? ScreenArchitect Serena Prototype Composer Simulify - convey your idea Smart Draw Visio stencils WireframeSketcher?
Use VB for the demo. I think MS has some "crippled" versions for free. VB may suck in many ways, but for throwing a GUI up quick, it is hard to beat.

- Try to populate tables with data in VB. You just have to be programmer to do this. My point is that you want the tool that non-programmers can use alike. - IgorJese

Microsoft needs something in-between MS-Access and VB such that one can have data-driven RAD but also more program-control over the GUI that MS-Access makes difficult.

[I've built some large applications in Access (100+ tables, 500+ forms, 500+ reports), and hated it. I never wanted to touch it again. Over the past few days, I've been implementing a small (less than ten tables, a few forms, and one report) but crucial application in Access, and I'm reminded that Access is, in fact, a brilliant idea. I'd argue that what's needed is not something between Access and VB, but simply Access done right -- especially for large projects. Its problems suggest to me that the Access development team at MicroSoft never use it to build and support real applications. If they did, it would be much, much better than it is, and yet it wouldn't have to be dramatically different from what it is now. Of course, over the years there have been a large number of commercial 4GLs built for this purpose, but their expense, awkwardness, and significant limitations (Oracle Forms, anyone?) suggest their developers are no more inclined to eat their own dog food than Microsoft's Access developers.]

If they "fixed it", it may cut into the sales of their other tools, such as VB.net and/or SQL-Server. MS does not want to compete with them self. I once encountered a Microsoft bug report that said to reduce corruption in Access caused by too many simultaneous users, "upgrade" to MS-SQL-Server.

I've been doing simple prototyping in html before, to get a view of the application structure. How about combining this with ScalableVectorGraphics, now when mainstream FireFox supports this? Are there good tools to help with something like this? Or maybe even MozillaXul, does anyone have any experience on that? -- ClaesWallin

Kudos to the WikiGnome that sortificated the list! Thanksifications for ya' from mental Texas.

You're welcome.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I gave up on these things years ago; just for fun I peeked this page when it showed up on RecentChanges and wow, changed my life. In my very first session with ForeUI I produced a working mockup of the terribly complicated app I'm designing! --BenTremblay

EditText of this page (last edited February 8, 2010)
FindPage by searching (or browse LikePages or take a VisualTour)