ForeUI Product Blog

Archive for the ‘Feature’ Category

Hello dear friends, ForeUI V2.42 is out today!  This version focus on simplifying the way to share custom element library internally, and has 6 bugs fixed.

Export/Import the .fcl File

Actually the .fcl file is a ZIP archives that contains one or more custom elements (.fce files).  When you submit your custom element library into our community site, your library will be packed into an .fcl file, which can be downloaded and extracted into a new category.  However we realize some companies need to share their libraries internally, so we accept the suggestion from Ari and Mark, and provide some facilities for this. As you can see we have added some new items in the popup menu for the button in “Custom Elements” category.  They are:

• Load Elements from .fcl file…: Pick an .fcl file and then load all its elements into the “Custom Elements” category.
• Load Elements from Directory…: Specify a directory and then load all elements inside into the “Custom Elements” category.
• Clear Listed Elements: Remove all elements that listed in the “Custom Elements” category, will not delete the .fce files for them.
• Export Listed Elements as .fcl File…: Export all elements that are currently listed in the “Custom Elements” category.

So the .fcl file becomes the reuseable file for internal library sharing, you can share it with your colleagues or friends via email, USB Disk etc.  Also the .fcl file can be loaded to any element category you created, the figure below shows how:

Resize Scrollable Container in Simulation

This is a small feature requested by purplebluegreen.  Now you can change the size of scrollable container during the simulation.  This may be quite useful when creating  interactive prototype.

Fixed Bugs:

6 bugs are fixed in this version.

• Bug_0230: Can not export plot to images with command line if the plot contains element group. (V2.40 only) (Tim reported via email, Thanks)
• Bug_0231: Use arrow keys to move embedded element, the wrapper group is not updated as well.
• Bug_0232: Copy element and paste into different pages in the same plot, the location of element should not be changed. (Thank Ari for reporting)
• Bug_0233: Embedded element may be positioned incorrectly at the first time that launch the simulation.
• Bug_0234: Embed two or more ComboBox elements into Tabs container and then run simulation, only the first ComboBox has correct position.  (Thank Ed for reporting via email)
• Bug_0235: Embed ComboBox element into Scrollable Container, the ComboBox’s popup should be displayed over the container.

Hello everyone, after one month holiday, we release V2.40 today.  This release includes some important new features and enhancements to ease the container usage, 7 bug fixings are also included.

Easier Container Usage

We have implemented some useful new features for Group container, including:

1. Allow moving member within element group.
2. Allow adding member to existing element group.
3. Allow extracting member from existing element group.

Also we have made two related enhancements:

• Auto grouping multi-selected elements before embedding into non-group container.
• Can embed element into nested container.

All these together provide a much better experience on container usage.  You can embed multiple elements into container a time; you can embed more element into a container even it has embedded element already; you can extract any embedded element from its container; you can move or resize the embedded element…  The animation below shows the example of container usage, which has become much more flexible.

Element Path Links

If you use container a lot in your plot, sometimes you may feel difficult to select a specific container or embedded element.  From this version you can find the “Element Path Links” in the floating tool pane if you select an embedded element or a non-empty container element.  These links can help you to quickly select the container, the sibling or child element for current selected element.

Fixed Bugs:

• Bug_0223: “Manage Categories” window (not pinned) will be hidden time by time if floating tool pane is translucent.  (Thank Mark for reporting)
• Bug_0224: Multiple instances of custom element may have duplicated ids for embedded element.
• Bug_0225: Element is not valid after being embedded into ScrollableContainer, until moving the container a bit.
• Bug_0226: Copy a Tabs (or Vertical Tabs) element that contains image elements, then paste it to another plot, the images are not migrated to the plot.
• Bug_0227: Can not click to switch tab in edit area for Tabs or Vertical Tabs if they are embedded.
• Bug_0228: Element chooser: select an embedded element, then select a non-embedded element, the embedded element should be unselected.
• Bug_0229: Newly created, unsaved plot can not use the display controller to show/hide elements.

Dear friends, since we will start our summer holidays from next Monday, we decide to release this version today.  The most interesting feature is to allow using Tabs or Vertical Tabs element as a container, which is reqested many times.

Enhanced Tabs & Vertical Tabs

Prior to this version, we need to define quite complex logic to show / hide content according to the current selected tab.  Now we can use tabs much easier.  Just like other containers, you can press right mouse key to drag an element into the Tabs or Vertical Tabs.  Each tab can accept an element, if you want to embed multiple elements into a tab, just group them together before embedding.  What’s more, you can directly click on the tab to select it.

Also you can specify the padding of the container (supported by Tabs, Vertical Tabs and Scrollable Container):

List Embedded Elements in Selector

If you are working on a complex mockup, you may feel hard to pick an embedded element from nested containers.  From this version, the embedded elements are listed in the Element Selector window.  Thus you can pick any embedded element from the element tree:

As you can see the text color of  embeded elements are blue.  You can click on the item and select/unselect the element.  Some embedded elements are gray and not selectable, that’s because it is hidden by its container.  For example, an element in the non-current tab are hidden by the Tabs container, it will become selectable once its owner tab become the current tab of the Tabs container.

Action to Set Spinner Value

It is a small feature, a new action that can set the value of Spinner element in simulation.

Bug Fixings:

• Bug_0221: Clicking the “ok” button to close inline editor for any element, hotkeys can not work for this plot. (Thanks Tim, Jason.Gaudette and Craig for reporting)
• Bug_0222: Copy and paste any element, then right click the empty area of the plot, the context menu for page is now shown.  (Thanks Tim for reporting)

Hello everyone, ForeUI V2.35 is available now   This new version makes the Spinner (or say: stepper) element interactive, which allow you to specify its value in simulation.  Also this version introduces some new hotkeys to accelerate the manipulation.  7 bugs are fixed.

Interactive Spinner (Stepper)

This element existed from the first version of ForeUI, but it was not interactive until now.  You can enter all allowed values of the spinner (one row one value), and specify the current value in editing mode.  Then you can really interact with the spinner in simulation, you can click the small up and down buttons to change its value, you can also retrieve its current value via the “value” property of the element.

You will find a new property for the current value of the spinner:

New Hotkeys

From this version ForeUI supports the hotkeys below:

• Ctrl+W (Command+W in Mac OS): Close the current editing plot.
• Ctrl+I (Command+I in Mac OS): Show/hide image dock.
• Ctrl+L (Command+L in Mac OS): Show/hide display controller.
• Ctrl+E (Command+E in Mac OS): Show/hide element selector.
• Ctrl+G (Command+G in Mac OS): Show/hide global property manager.
• Enter or F2:  Start editing the selected element.

New ComboBox Property

Like the spinner, the ComboBox element supports the “selectedText” property now.

Fixed Bugs:

• Bug_0214: Some hotkeys (PageUp, PageDown, Left/Right/Up/Down etc.) do not work if any element editor is opened in another plot tab. (Thank Tim for the reporting)
• Bug_0215: Table Editor: the highlighted table cell should not accept newly input content without double clicking the cell (JRE 6 only).
• Bug_0216: Dragging LineChart, BarChart or PieChart element to the editing area, no semi-transparent preview is displayed.
• Bug_0217: Table element is not using “Comic Sans MS” as the default font in “Hand Drawing” UI theme.  (Reported by Jota Eme)
• Bug_0218: Wrong page titles in Slid Show when using excluded folders. (Thank Jota Eme for the reporting)
• Bug_0219: Error happens when selecting the last item and then remove the item. (exist in list, tree, menu, menu bar and tabs)
• Bug_0220: Should allow specifying icon of Vertical Tabs in the floating tool pane.

Hi everyone, new version again   This release bring us a new “Scrollable Container” element which can make things scrollable.  Also there are more new features and enhancement, please read on.

Scrollable Container

ForeUI provides the scrollbar element from the first version, however the scrollbar is not interactive and you could not really scroll content.  From V1.90 the table element supports content scrolling, and the table can be used as a container from V2.22, thus you can use the table element as a scrollable container, however the table element does not support vertical scrolling yet.  So we implement a new scrollable container element in this version, which allow you to make any element scrollable.

Just like the table element, you can hold the right key and drag element into the scrollable container.  Please remark that only one element can be embedded into the scrollable container, if you want to make complex content scrollable, you can group the content together and then add the group into the container.

Rounded Corners for Rectangle

The rectangle element supports rounded corner from V1.45.  From this new version, you can show/hide each rounded corner of the rectangle, like this:

It seems like a small feature but it is really useful, as you can create more new shapes now:

New Example Plot: Fwitter

From this version we include a new example plot named “Fwitter”.  It is a complex, high-fidelity prototype which simulate the UI and behavior of Twitter.  You can sign up, sign in, browse, search or even “post” new content.  This example is so big that will take some time for loading if you like to preview it online.  So it is recommanded to download and run it locally, you can find it in the community site.  This example is also included in the latest install package.

Other Enhancements:

• Holding right mouse key to drag elements can ignore the snapping system.
• Pressing the region out side of the plot can clear the current selection.

Fixed Bugs:

• Bug_0206: Can not select group member if the position of group is locked.
• Bug_0207: Select an embedded element and move mouse over its border, the cursor should change to suggest resizing.
• Bug_0208: Can not select embedded element if the zoom ratio is not 100%.
• Bug_0209: Dragging embedded element should not move the container element.
• Bug_0210: Vertical aligned text label element with mutirow content has wrong layout in editing mode.
• Bug_0211: Pressing the “Auto Sizing” button for text label element, the size should be calculated according to current element width.
• Bug_0212: Custom element with 45×45 size takes 100×100 space in the element categories.
• Bug_0213: Set text with contains continuous spaces to Text Label in simulation, only one space will take effect.

Dear friends, today we release ForeUI V2.30 as we scheduled.  This version bring us a better resource view from community site and a new text editor for TextBox editor.  Some useful enhancements and bug fixings are included.

Enhanced Resource View

In previous versions, the resource view in the community window can list only 3 resources a time, that’s far from enough.   Now we have redesigned the resource view and it can list more resources in a page.   What’s more, the new resource view provides more interesting features:

1. Run Simulation: you can preview the plot or custom element with just a single click.  The simulation will be generated on server side and you can run the simulation in your web browser.
2. Vote Up Resource: if you like a resource, please vote it up.  It is a new mechanism to encourage people to share their resource.
3. Leave Comment: it exists in previous versions, but now it is better: you can leave comment without opening browser, all things can be done in ForeUI!
4. Statistic Numbers: the number of downloads, votes and comments will be shown after the action link.
5. Sort Resources: you can sort resource by time, downloads, votes or comments.

Also you can launch these features from web browser (visit http://www.ForeUI.net/):

New Editor for TextBox

This feature is suggested by Jeremy Kerr.  The new editor allows you to explicitly change the width of the editor (and the TextBox), the text content will be wrapped automatically.   Comparing with the old editor, this one can handle big paragraphs copy & paste much better.

If you drag the resizer of the right to change editor size, the editing TextBox will also be resized after  the editing.

Embedded Element Selection Arithmetic

Now selecting element in container (group or table) become easier.  We change the arithmetic to make sure every element can be selected even they are overlapped.  The animation is an example for embedded element selection:  The 4 text labels are overlapped and they are packed into a group, clicking the center area can select any one of them.

Other Enhancements:

• Content editing has higher priority than member selection when double clicking member in group.
• Allow adding batch of .fce files into “Custom Element” category a time.
• When export DHTML to non-empty directory, explicitly ask whether to clean up before exporting. Will only clean up the “images”, “scripts” and “styles” folders with confirmation.   (as discussed in forum)

Fixed Bugs:

• Bug_0142: Table element can not layout “incomplete” row properly in simulation. (Mentioned here and here)
• Bug_0200: Line element with thickness > 1 will be trimmed in simulation.
• Bug_0201: The sub menu width of Multilevel Menu is not properly calculated if default font is set to “Verdana”.   (Thank Ulrich for reporting)
• Bug_0202: When copy and paste nodes in behavior editor, the newly pasted node is collapsed by default. (regression in V2.27, thank Hervé Séger and Ulrich for reporting)
• Bug_0203: Text editor does not reflect the bold or italic style of the editing text element.

Hello everyone, today’s new version will include a brand new “Multilevel Menu” element, I bet you will like it

Multilevel Menu Element

The inspiration to add this element is from Ulrich’s thread about 2 months ago.  I know he is making a lot of clickable wireframes with ForeUI.  He said creating a multilevel menu in (older version of) ForeUI was quite complex, since you have to show/hide the sub menus by yourself, and the simulated menu is not so “real” since you must click the parent menu item to expand its sub menu…  All these are solved with the new “Multilevel Menu” element!  Now creating a multilevel menu is extremely easy: just drag the element into your plot and edit its content in this format:

Main Menu Item 1

Main Menu Item 2

• Sub Menu Item 1
• Sub Menu Item 2

Main Menu Item 3

This will generate the two-levels menu automatically, the sub menu will be bound to the second item in the main menu.  What’s more, you can click the menu item to select/unselect it, or expand/collapse the sub menu, or drag an icon from image dock to a menu item…all these can happen in the editing mode!

The more interesting thing happens when you run the simulation: the multilevel menu element will work like a real menu, and the sub menu will be expanded when you move your mouse over its parent menu item.

When you choose an item from the multilevel menu, the “Selection Changed” event will be triggered, you can handle this event can check its selection identification, which will be a string like “a.b.c”.  Here is an example:

In the example above, the case “1″ means user selected the first item in the level-1 menu;  Case “4.3.2″ means user selected the second item in the level-3 menu, which binds to the third item in a level-2 menu, and that level-2 menu binds to the fourth item in the level-1 menu.  Please pay attention to the quote marks for each case, as the identification is not a number but a string.

Button Margin

This feature is requested by Kenneth Young via email.  In previous versions, all button elements will have a 15 pixels margin, that value kind of big if you want to make a small button.  Now we provide the option to tweak this value for button element.

Other Enhancements:

• Do not auto expand tree nodes in the pages management window. (Requested by Hervé Séger via email)
• When manipulating the behavior tree, only expand the nodes that are modified.

Fixed Bugs:

• Bug_0196: Duplicate page with table that contains multiple embedded elements, some embedded elements may dispear. (Re-fixed, thank Kenneth Young for the reporting)
• Bug_0197: Table edit: clear content for all cells and press ok, the application may hang.
• Bug_0198: Can not change the state of TextBox with action during the simulation. (Thank Ulrich for the reporting)

Hello everyone,  it is another biweekly update today.  The new V2.25 version has some improvements on new table editor, provides smarter zooming and proxy settings and  includes some bug fixings.

Table Editor Improvements

In previous version, the table editor can only insert new row or column before the current one.  Now we’ve made the improvement, you can append new row or column after the current one.  The figure below shows the details:

Also we’ve made an enhancement on table resizing:  only the columns with “auto” width will be scaled during the table resizing.  That means you can fix certain columns’ width during the resizing.  The columns with “auto” width will allocate their actual width from the remained space.  If more than one column has “auto” width, they will allocate their widths according to their content.  So you can add some space characters into table cell to increase its acutal width.

Another enhancement is to auto enlarge table cell (and table) if the table cell is not big enough to hold the newly embedded element.  This feature will be activated after you hold right key to drag an element into the table.  If you want to use this feature, please make sure to turn on the “Auto resize eement after editing its content” option in the settings window.

Smart Focusing after Zoom In/Out

In previous version, after zooming in or out, the view will scroll back to top left corner.  If you are editing something on the bottom right corner, you will have to scroll back after zooming.  Now the zooming become smarter:  it will try to restore the center region you were working at; If you have selected some element, it will try to put them in the center of the view.

Proxy Settings

This feature is requested by Kfir Dadosh.  Sometimes ForeUI needs to get data from internet (update checking, download resource etc), so the proxy settings are needed in some cases.  Now you can find the proxy options via menu “Advanced->Settings->Misc Tab”:

Other Enhancements:

• When try to export DHTML to existed directory, clean the directory first (requested by Hervé Séger via email).
• Add “Extract from Container” option in context menu for embedded element (requested by Ulrich).

Fixed Bugs:

• Bug_0188: Table cell with comma will be splited into two cells.   (Thank Ulrich for reporting)
• Bug_0189: “Element Clicked” event is not triggered when clicking the table row.   (Regression in V2.22, thank Kenneth Young for reporting)
• Bug_0190: Do nothing in table editor and press ok button, the table is marked as “modified” (while actually it is not).
• Bug_0191: Table element may contain broken reference to deleted element, which cause error in DHTML generation.
• Bug_0192: Rename embedded element will make it dispear from the container.
• Bug_0193: Hand drawing theme should respect the background color of button element.  (Thank John Giddings for reporting)
• Bug_0194: The action indicator (red flag) on Table element is not clickable (regression in V2.22)
• Bug_0195: Should not resize table after editing if “auto resizing option” is off, or preferred size is not bigger than current size.
• Bug_0196: Duplicate page with table that contains multiple embedded elements, some embedded elements may dispear (Kenneth Young reported via email).

Hello everyone, tomorrow is the one-year birthday of ForeUI!  So today’s release (V2.22) must be a big one

Although the version number is not increased so much, this version is really a major milestone.  From this version, a brand new “Container” concept is introduced into ForeUI, that means we can embed element into another one.  

Container for Nesting

Table Element becomes container now, you can press right key to drag another element into the table cell.

The embedded elements really belong to the container table, if you set the table scrollable and run the simulation, the embedded elements will be scrolled together:

The embedded elements are still selectable, so you can still tweak the elements even if they are embedded into the table cell. 

You can also extract the embedded element from the container by clicking the  button in the floating tool pane. 

Element Group can also work as a container, you can select the member in group and adjust its properties without ungrouping the Group.  That’s really convenient

Brand New Table Editor

This version also bring us a brand new table editor, which allows you to specify the table row height and column width.

You can drag the header to resize the column or row, you can also double click the header to toggle the sizing policy.  The default sizing policy of column width is “auto”, which means allocate the size according to the content.  The default sizing policy of row height is ”fixed”, which will use the default table row height.

In the editor you can also add/remove any row or column.  You can hold the Ctrl key to select multiple cells and manipulate them.

What’s more, you can also specify the cell alignment respectively.  If no cell alignment is specified here, the default table alignment will be used.

Fixed Bugs:

• Bug_0185: Line element can not be rendered correctly in IE if the element width or height less than 20.  (Thank pohldoug for reporting)
• Bug_0186: Should not hide the text editor when clicking its semitransparent border.
• Bug_0187: In Mac OS, press CMD+R to launch simulation. When return to the application, the element selecting is not working properly.

Edit on 2010-04-28:

We have released an unoffical update V2.23 for bug fixing purpose.  Details here: http://getsatisfaction.com/easynth/topics/unofficial_release_v2_23_for_bug_fixings

Hi everybody, it is Monday again    This time we bring you the zoom in/out feature, which will help you a lot when you want to tweak the details of the wireframe or preview the whole design.   The V2.20 also contains some enhancements and bug fixings (see below).

Zoom In / Out

This feature is requested by Jeffrey Werner about 6 month ago, and we also received similar requests from other channels (email, twitter etc.).  Now you can choose the zooming scale from the list at the bottom right corner, you can also input any percentage value for zooming:

 It is also possible to change the current zooming scale from the menu:

As you can see in the popup menu, you can use hotkeys to change the scale as well:

• Ctrl =: Zoom In (Cmd = in Mac OS)
• Ctrl -: Zoom Out (Cmd – in Mac OS)
• Ctrl 1: Zoom to 100% (Cmd 1 in Mac OS)
• Ctrl 2: Zoom to 200% (Cmd 2 in Mac OS)
• Ctrl 3: Zoom to 300% (Cmd 3 in Mac OS)
• Ctrl 4: Zoom to 400% (Cmd 4 in Mac OS)
• Ctrl 5: Zoom to 50% (Cmd 5 in Mac OS)

Smartly Update Custom Event Name

This is quite useful enhancement.  When you duplicate an element with some custom event handlers defined, if the custom event name contains the id of the element, the id part will be replaced with new id automatically.

This is quite useful if you need an element has its exclusive custom event:  just use the element id as prefix of the custom event name.  You can pack such an element into custom element, thus it can always handle its own event, no matter how many instances are created.

Here is an example.  It is an interactive slider element (you can download it from the community).  It has its exclusive custom event “TextBox_Slider_AdjustPos”, which starts with the element id “TextBox_Slider”.  So you can create as many instances of it as you want and they will not interfere each other.

Text Editor Placement

In previous versions, the text editor for editing text element is not allowed to exceed the bounds of the plot.  That’s not reasonable and inconvenient.  Now we improve it a little bit and don’t restrict the text editor placement so tough:

Other Enhancements:

• Ajust the text positioning for all text elements.
• Do not bring the progress window to top when exporting in progress.  (Thank Remco Douma’s suggestion)
• Show warning message when trying to load a plot created by higher version.  (Thank Tim’s suggestion)

Fixed Bugs:

• Bug_0180: Set the date of Calendar element to the last day of the month, all buttons after the date will be filled incorrectly.
• Bug_0181: Arrow Line element is not rendered properly in simulation.  (Thank Jeremy Kerr for reporting)
• Bug_0182: TextBox with initial invisible state can not really become visible via “Change Visibility” action.
• Bug_0183: Add custom element to user-defined element category and restart the software, the category will be lost.  (Thank pohldoug for reporting)
• Bug_0184: “Set Global Cursor” action does not work for Rectangle and some other elements since V2.17.   (Thank Jeremy Kerr for reporting)