| Home : February 12 2013 Computer News : Review: Pencil lets you rough in mockups for mobile apps, websites, and desktop software |
|
Review: Pencil lets you rough in mockups for mobile apps, websites, and desktop software |
February 12, 2013
You may not be a coder or a Web developer, but that doesn't mean you don't know exactly how you want your new application or website to look and feel. Trying to get to that perfect look with just words can be a frustrating experience for both client and developer. A good interface mockup is worth a thousand words, and you don't have to know how to code to create one. In fact, it doesn't even have to cost you anything: Free utility Pencil contains everything you need to create serviceable mockups for websites, desktop applications, and mobile smartphone apps.
If you've ever used a mockup utility, such as free Lumzy or $79 Balsamiq, Pencil's interface will be familiar. The bulk of the screen is taken up by a canvas, and a toolbar lines the left edge of the window. The toolbar is full of widgets you can put on your canvas, neatly divided into categories like Basic Web Elements, Windows XP Widgets, Android ICS, iOS UI Stencils, and more. In Pencil terminology, each category is a collection of "stencils."
Pencil ships with many stencil collections, and its Google code repository contains even more, all freely available. For any given project, you're likely to need only one or two sets of stencils, and Pencil makes it easy to hide stencil sets you don't need. And just like Lumzy and Balsamiq, the sidebar includes a quick-search box letting you instantly filter the list down to just the UI element you need ("button" and so on).
With its ICS stencil set, Pencil can create convincing mockups for Android apps.
To test Pencil, I used its included Android ICS stencil collection to quickly prototype a single screen for a hypothetical Android app showing PCWorld's top stories. I got mixed results: The collection includes beautiful stencils for Android's status bar (the top part of the screen) and navigation bar (the bottom of the screen), but they were the wrong width for my project and there was no way to resize them. Other stencils, such as those used for tabs and list items, could be easily resized. I ended up creating my mockup out of just those stencils, omitting the top and bottom of the screen. Not ideal, but workable.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2027726/review-pencil-lets-you-rough-in-mockups-for-mobile-apps-websites-and-desktop-software.html
|
|
|
|
|
