You wanted honest and factual critisism (you ask for this on your website), so you got it, I’m afraid! I am overall very positive about Balsamiq Mockups and I’d like to encourage anyone reading my review to check back (the Balsamiq website) regularly for updates. It’s early days, and I hope to see Mockups move to a move powerful “designer” over time.

One other thing I missed from my review was the ability to “clip” and anchor controls to each other. For example, if I could anchor an annotation arrow to a button and then move the button I would like the arrow to expand/contract to keep it’s anchor point with the button. Visio does this and it’s great.

Also some stencils for basic architecture (database, computer, user, router, phone, PDA, clouds) would go a long way to improving the scope of the Mockup from just “screens”/GUI to systems analysis. Then you’ll get a whole new crowd considering it too.

Best,

Mike

I have made a point about your requests for a simple free-hand drawing tool, better chart customization, control coloring (some already support it) and more right-click support.

As for performance tuning, it’s something I need to spend more time on. AIR is not the snappiest, but I’m sure some of the blame should go to my code. Like you said, both are 1.x products, so not very mature…I’m working on it!

Thanks again for the review and the great feedback!
Peldi

I’ve just taken a brief look at WireframeSketcher. It honestly looks good, although I don’t use Eclipse. I don’t use Java much these days, but it’s worth remembering.

My main drive about Java is that this would have been an option for multi-platform deployment for Balsamiq. Adobe Air is ok, but just doesn’t hit the mark.

Even better (from my point of view) would be if Balsamiq used Visio and released Visio mockup templates/stencils. That would solve everything, and there’s a big market out there for Visio templates/stencils…