Rapidly prototype GUI's

Question

G'Day,

I am looking to prototype a windows based GUI. Ideally I would like:

• Be able create new GUI's and change existing ones quickly
• The resulting "thing" to be self contained
• Have the ability to include limited data where necessary ie. When showing a grid including the headers and perhaps a few rows of data for the grid.
• Allow clickable hotspots that either allow a new screen to be shown or perhaps an explanation hint.

I have been using Visio 2003 for this kind of thing and then producing a PDF. However it has some disadvantages:

• Including data for grids is not possible
• You cannot include hotspots to allow changing of tabs within the workbook. eg Click on a button and it opens a different tab.

If possible a free / open source application would be preferable but a low priced commercial application would also be good.

All pointers and suggestions greatly appreciated.Rapid

Answer 1

Balsamiq Mockups is the best I can find.

http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups/confluence

It's $149 but I don't know how much cheap is for you

Answer 2

the new Microsoft SketchFlow is a package designed for this purpose. Creating flow's from sketches, adding GUI's to show the client some basic interaction ideas, etc.

You can send the 'sketches' as an EXE to them so they can comment and annotate, but you can also put it on the web, and even export it to regular interaction design style Word docs.

Adding fake data to some GUI elements like datagrids is also possible.

Answer 3

This is hardly an answer, but WPF allows you to specify a GUI as an xml file (XAML). I've never used WPF though, and whenever I learn something new about it, it makes we want to shun away even more.

If I was in your predicament, I'd probably write a VB or C# app that parsed an xml or other human-readable file and generated a faux GUI on the spot.