For customers using any prior version of GUI Design Studio, simply install the new version and your existing licenses will continue to work.

(1) Project Organisation

Now you can re-organise your projects with ease. In previous versions, we restricted the ability to move and rename design files to ensure that references remained intact and to help with project sharing.

In version 3.4, you can rename files and move them around using drag and drop. GUI Design Studio will track the changes and keep those references working.

New projects will automatically get this functionality but you’ll need to enable this feature for existing projects using the “Project | Enable Move and Rename…” menu command. This is a precaution to ensure that team members synchronise project files first.

(2) Enhanced Team Collaboration

Version 3.4 also brings new collaboration features to allow multiple designers to work on the same project simultaneously using a shared Subversion (SVN) repository. Move and rename are fully supported and changes by different team members to the same file can be merged automatically (in most cases).

For full details on how this works see the Team Collaboration with GUI Design Studio and Subversion section on our main Website.

(3) Image and Component Replacement

Have you ever wanted to change an icon or bitmap image, or replace a design component? Well now there’s a new “File” tab that allows the associated file to be changed. If the replacement component is compatible, such as a duplicated variation, then all navigations from within the component will be maintained.

When files are deleted, we’ve made it easier to work out what’s missing by displaying the filename in the placeholder box and we also now include the placeholders in simulation, printing and image generation where they were previously ignored.

(4) Other Changes

In order to make the simulation of Browser mode more realistic, Back and Forward now restore the view position (scroll bar states) instead of always jumping to the top of the page.
 
To help you edit elements more quickly the F2 key can now be used as a shortcut key to edit text for the selected element. You can still just start typing if you simply want to replace the whole of the text.
 
We’ve also fixed a number of bugs such as making GUI Design Studio use less CPU time on certain machines when idle and transferring project options to distribution files for use in the Viewer.

Download

Download GUI Design Studio version 3.4 now, and let us know how you get on with it.

Happy designing! Feel free to leave a comment…

For customers using any prior version of GUI Design Studio, simply install the new version and your existing licenses will continue to work.

(1) Active Scroll Bars

For all those cases where it’s important for you to demonstrate the entire contents of your edit boxes, lists, tables and trees, you can now work those scroll bars when you run your prototype in the simulator!

By selecting elements first, you can also scroll them within the design editor if you want to and set default scroll positions.

(2) Expand / Contract Tree Nodes

Judging by the number of customer designs we’ve seen where tree node expansion and contraction has been simulated using overlay panels, this is clearly another important feature that sits nicely alongside scrolling.

As before, you can set up the default expansion and contraction of each node within the property editor where you create the nodes. You can now also change these within the design editor itself by selecting the tree element then clicking the expand/contract buttons.

(3) Connect From Tree and List Items

Thanks to all of the requests for this feature, you can now make navigation connections directly from tree nodes and list items instead of having to use navigation overlays.

This is especially important now that trees and lists can be scrolled. Links remain with the correct item after rearranging the content.

For trees, you can expand a node (in the editor), create a link from a child node and then collapse the node again.

All links to hidden items are shown from the nearest location that makes sense. Try it out and I’m sure it will make sense.

(4) Scrolling Regions

With version 3.3, you can now take a large design section and place it within a smaller, scrolling region. Anything from a simple bitmap image to an intricately designed, custom list, or even complex document content can now be represented with ease.

The trick is to place the large section within a component design, resize the component (you might need to change its resize options first) and then check its “Maintain Size” option.

(5) Other minor changes

We’ve fixed a couple of bugs related to infinitely nested, self-referencing component designs that occur in rare circumstances, and added a useful Alt+F4 shortcut key to toggle between normal selection mode and component item selection mode. F4 (or Shift+F4) still toggles between either selection mode and make connection mode.

Download GUI Design Studio version 3.3 now, and let us know how you get on with it.

Happy designing!

For customers using any prior version of GUI Design Studio, simply install the new version and your existing licenses will continue to work.

(1) Project Options

The most visible change is the introduction of new Project Options (from the “Project” menu). These allow you to:

1. Enter descriptive notes for the project as a whole.
2. Specify Visual Style options for viewing/editing and simulation that override the Preference settings and force the Viewer to use them. This is important for controlling the way your designs are presented in the Viewer.
3. Change Simulator background colours, text and text placement.

This last set of Project Options will be welcomed by all those customers who’ve been requesting this for some time. Here’s a few examples:

There are a number of reasons why you might want to change the background colours and text but it’s particularly useful if you want to grab a screenshot of the running simulation. A solid white background with no text, for example, will make it much easier to use the images in other documents, on Web pages or for printing.

(2) Bug Fixes

There are a couple of bug fixes in this release. One removes the limit that was placed on the amount of data that could be pasted into a Table element from the clipboard and the other fixes some serious issues with Simulator scroll bar operations. It also improves the calculations of scroll bars, especially when simulating different screen resolutions.

(3) The Secret New Feature

This actually represents the bulk of changes in the version 3.2 release but we want to keep it under wraps for the moment. It’s a significant feature that we are continually asked about but it’s still just a seedling.

Before we reveal what this feature is and make it generally available, we want to test it with specific customers that asked for it and work with them to develop it to a more useful level. From what I’ve seen it do so far, that hopefully won’t take too long.

Watch this space for further news!

For customers using any prior version of GUI Design Studio, simply install the new version and your existing licenses will continue to work.

If you’ve been using a trial version that has expired, this new version should reset your trial period. If it doesn’t then please let us know and we’ll sort something out for you.

So here’s what’s changed in version 3.1:

(1) Navigation Type Selector
After much demand, we’ve finally put a Navigation Type selector onto the toolbar.

When you connect elements together to define application workflow, GUI Design Studio normally sets the navigation type based on the elements being connected. It gets this right about 80% of the time (or maybe 20% depending on who you ask).

But when you’ve made lots of connections and none of them are of the type you wanted, it can be a little tedious to change them all, though the Format Painter feature introduced in version 3.0 helps a lot here.

So now, you’ll be able to set the type of connection you want to make using the selector. Where connections have to be of a certain type, the selector will be ignored. You can also set it to ‘Automatic’ to let GUI Design Studio decide what type of navigation to create. This basically reverts to the previous behaviour without the selector.

The next two new features should help to navigate around a large design.

(2) Fit Elements to View
The “Fit Elements to View” command does exactly that. The view is changed so that the selected elements are all displayed. If possible, it keeps the current zoom factor. Otherwise, it will zoom out to make sure they’re all made visible.

With no elements selected, the whole design is made to fit within the view.

If you have a numeric keypad on your keyboard, you can use the ‘/’ key as a shortcut. This makes a handy combination with the existing ‘*’ key to set 100% zoom, ‘-’ to zoom out and ‘+’ to zoom in.

Of course, you can still use the Alt key with the left and right mouse buttons to pan and zoom the display. And, if you have one, the middle button will pan directly and the scroll-wheel can be set to zoom (according to preferences).

(3) Follow Connections
If you’ve ever found yourself zooming in and out or panning (scrolling) a large design to see where a connection takes you, or where it’s come from, then you’ll like this new feature.

Just select a connection and use the “Go To Connection Target” (Alt+T) or “Go To Connection Source” (Alt+R) commands to scroll them into view.

(4) Swap Element Positions
The last of the new features in the “Swap Element Positions” command. This started life as a very simple idea to just swap the positions of two selected elements.

However, once we’d implemented that, we realised that it really ought to do a bit more. Although it has other uses, the main reason for its existence is as an ‘element re-arranger’. So that is what it now does. After a fair few iterations, we think we’ve got it about right and it works like magic!

Because this ’small’ feature could be of great importance, there’ll probably be another post soon to look at it in more detail.

(5) Split Toolbar
On the very minor size, we’ve made the toolbar split in two if the application window gets too narrow to fit the whole thing on one line.

While this may not be too exciting for you when you always run GUI Design Studio full screen (as you should), it’s extremely useful for us as we start to create size-restricted video tutorials (yes, we’re finally getting them done!).

From a design perspective, note that the toolbar doesn’t just wrap in the middle. Instead, it splits into two, more appropriately arranged bars. Also, there’s no faffing with having to re-position the bars yourself, as you might with other styles of split toolbars, especially when returning to full screen mode. It automatically pops back onto one line again whenever it can!

(6) Check Box States
Another (seemingly tiny) change is that Check Boxes now have a 3-State option rather than just assuming that all Check Boxes are 3-state (for design flexibilty). The default is unchecked unless the Check Box has already been set to an intermediate check state.

This change might only save you the effort of a click or two when changing Check Box properties, but it will become much more significant when interaction features are fully enabled. Watch this space!

Bug Fixes:
We’ve fixed a couple of small bugs related to the application title bar when closing projects and keeping the Project panel open after creating a new project (ooh, that was an irritating one).

Of more importance, though, a few customers had discovered that dragging a component design onto itself could freeze the application, especially if the design was blank.

While this is not normally something you would want to do, it is quite easy to do by accident, especially if what you really wanted to drag was an image of the same name in the same folder.

If you’ve ever pointed a video camera at a television or screen that’s showing the live feed from the camera, you’ll understand the problem here! Although we had some protection against this, we’d managed to miss a test case. Oops. This has now been fixed but sorry if you got caught by this bug.

That’s about all of the changes for this 3.1 release. Download it now, give it a whirl and be sure to let us know what you think by leaving a comment on this blog or by contacting support.

Happy designing!

With GUI Design Studio version 3.0, you can design and prototype a broad range of applications.

Rich Desktop Applications
In addition to the 40+ common controls included in GUI Design Studio, you can use a variety of other generic elements and add graphic images and icons too.

And with extensive support for tabbed interfaces, modal popups, dialogs and a whole host of other features, you can design almost any application.

Ribbon Bar Applications
Love it or hate it, you can’t ignore the Ribbon Bar interface that Microsoft introduced in Office 2007.

Now you can try out a Ribbon Bar design for your application without having to commit to any particular implementation or toolset.

Then you can evaluate it against a more traditional menus and toolbars design to see what works best for your users. All without coding of course!

Web Applications
There’s a complementary set of elements specifically designed for Web applications that you can use with some of the common controls.

Using components, GUI Design Studio makes it easy to deal with the complex Web sites containing common sections such as navigation menus on multiple pages. It even allows each instance to be customised while retaining a common master.

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)
Modern Web applications are approaching the power of desktop applications.

GUI Design Studio provides for this with its support for components, dynamic panels, rollovers and tabbed interfaces.

Multiple Visual Styles Supported
Whether you’re designing for Windows Vista, XP, NT or the Web, you can change the look of your design with a couple of preference settings. Design in one style and present in another.

And if you need more of a lo-fi wireframe presentation that says “hey, this is just a quick prototype” then you can use Outline styling options or unusual colour schemes. Ever seen XP in orange?

Easy Access To Icons
No application is complete without icons. We’ve included over 150 common icons to get you started but when you need to create your own, you’ve got instant access to Icon Express, our simple to use icon editor.

And if you need a more powerful icon editor, you can configure GUI Design Studio to use your favourite editor instead.

Customer Upgrades
If you’ve already purchased GUI Design Studio licenses then version 3.0 will continue to work with your existing keys and your existing projects will be 100% compatible. Simply download and install version 3.0 over your current version and enjoy the latest features.

Evaluating GUI Design Studio 3.0
If you’ve previously tried version 2.4 or below, then version 3.0 should provide you with a new 30-day free trial period. If, for any reason, it reports that your license has expired then contact our support team and we’ll happily provide you with a new trial license key.

GUI Design Studio version 2.4 is now Vista compatible with changes that include:

• Documentation Generation
• Now you can add rich, formatted descriptions to all of your design elements.



• Generate specification documentation that describes your entire project or just a section of it. Formats include RTF and PDF:

  

  And hyperlinked HTML:

  
   

• Create update documentation that includes only the designs that have changed since the last documentation was generated, saving time and resources.
   
• Built-in spell checker available for UK and US English (with Spanish available on request).
   
• Documentation translation files available for many languages.
   
• Popup Annotations
• Element descriptions appear in a popup tool-tip window within the design editor and, optionally, during prototype simulation.


 

• This helps to convey your design intentions more quickly and easily for faster feedback and clarification of business rules.
   
• Improved File Performance
• Design documents now open and save faster with greatly improved performance across a local area network (LAN) drive.
   
• Loading heavily interlinked designs (such as Web Applications) used to be a bit slow. Not any more! All designs now load quickly and, in some cases, over 100 times faster than in previous versions, making you more productive.
   
• Other Enhancements
• Transparency is now supported in GIF and PNG image files for greater design flexibility and better support for custom elements.


 

• Changes made to a component design are now instantly visible in other designs (in most cases) without having to manually refresh.
   
• Plus lots of other tweaks and bug fixes.
   

As always, we’d love to hear your comments and suggestions so grab yourself a copy of the new version and let us know what you think!

This fixes a couple of Component Override bugs that evaded our testing. We’ve also taken the opportunity to include a couple of extra tweaks:

• Improved detection of Web applications when using components so that the correct Browser mode is started for simulation.
   
• A “Paste from Clipboard” facility for the Table element to allow the table to be more easily filled from existing spreadsheet data.
   

If you’re an existing customer or you’ve already tried a previous version then check your email today for download instructions otherwise please request a trial.

Version 2.3 is a free upgrade for all existing customers. If you’ve purchased licenses then your existing keys will continue to work in this latest version. Otherwise, your 30-day trial of 2.3 will continue as before.

As always, if you need any assistance with the software then we’re here to help. Email us directly or use our web forms at: http://www.carettasoftware.com/support.html

There’s a host of new features in this version, including:

• Enhancements for Web application design
   
• New Web elements: Web Tabs, Web Panels, Web Button, Text Link List, Image Placeholder, Greeked Text
   
• New navigation types: “Replace Top Window” for Web page navigation (and other uses) with “Back” and “Forward” support.
   
• New event triggers for dynamic effects: “Mouse Enter”, “Mouse Leave” and “Mouse Over”.
   
• A new “Browser” mode for the Simulator that features a simple browser bar and other features that better suit Web designs. This mode can be switched on and off.
   
  
• Thumbnail components for a compact visualisation of navigation links.
  
   
• Plus further enhancements to existing elements to make them more adaptable to Web application use.
   
   
• Other enhancements
   
• New component overrides that allow you to use a component design and customise it by changing the properties of any element within it. This greatly enhances the reuse of components.
   
• Increased performance when using graphics and icons on larger projects to eliminate related system resource issues and speed up load time of graphic intensive designs.
   
• Plus various tweaks and bug fixes to other elements and features including the Icon Express icon editor.
   

We love to hear your comments and suggestions so give the new version a whirl and let us know what you think!

In the last post I mentioned the new fonts support in 2.2. You can see from this screenshot that the Typeface picker has a useful history feature that places recent selections near the top.

This also includes active fonts in open documents so that you can easily maintain a consistent look. There’s also a Quick Pick field to grab not only a recent typeface but also the size and attributes too!

I also mentioned the International language support. We put a lot of effort into getting this right and ensuring that our file formats remained completely compatible.

To serve as an example, we’ve created a contact information dialog that’s been translated into Russian and Hebrew.

The Russian version is fairly typical of user interface translation projects where subtle layout changes are required to adjust for the differing text lengths.

The Hebrew version was more of a challenge. Not only were there text size differences but the whole design needed to be flipped horizontally for right-to-left reading.

Fortunately, GUI Design Studio 2.2 includes full mirroring support that correctly reverses frame window caption bars and places scroll bars and combo drop-down arrows, etc. on the left where they belong instead of the right.

You can take a look at the example and download the designs from our International Dialog Gallery Page.

Next time, I’ll have something to say about wireframe mockups.

This new version includes:

• Distribution file creation (see earlier post)
• Main design file selection to save time when simulating changes
• Faster refreshing to make a big difference on complex designs
• Tab Bar element changes for more flexible designs
• Other element enhancements and bug fixes

How to get version 2.1

If you’re new to GUI Design Studio then please use this Trial Request Form to get download instructions for your 30-day free trial.

We are aware that some of our emails are not being delivered due to spam filtering and blocks on our service provider. If you have filled in the Trial Request Form and not received your download instructions then please contact support and we will get them to you as soon as possible.

Already tried it?

If you’ve tried GUI Design Studio before then you should receive new download instructions by email (subject to delivery problems). Or just use the same download link from your original trial request if you still have that.

If your trial has expired then 2.1 should give you a further 30-days to evaluate the new version. On a few systems, this has been reported not to work. If you get a message that your trial has immediately expired then please contact support for further help.

Send us your feedback!

We have a whole bunch of enhancements and new features already planned but we welcome all feedback and suggestions you might have to help us make the product more productive and useful to you.

Feel free to use the feedback form on our main Web site or post comments here.
Enjoy using the software!