ForeUI is an easy-to-use UI prototyping tool, designed to create mockup / wireframe / prototypes for any application or website you have in mind.

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How to Make Your ForeUI Plot Smaller?

The design/development of ForeUI V3.0 is just started, and I have some time to write something.  I plan to write a series of articles to introduce some advanced tricks of ForeUI usage, which will be very useful for all ForeUI users.

Today’s topic is: how to make your ForeUI plot smaller?  The “plot” here means both the saved .4ui file and the exported DHTML simulation files.  The benefits to make plot smaller is obvious:  smaller plot can be loaded/saved faster for editing, and smaller simulation files can be launched quickly in your (and reviewers’) web browser.  Here are some tricks to minimize your plot size:

Use Master Page to Avoid Duplication

Usually there will be some common parts between pages in your plot.  Although you could duplicate elements or even the entire page to make every page have the common parts, you are encouraged to move the common parts to a master page, which can be shared by other pages.

This trick is frequently used for pages that have the same header, footer or side bar.  For example, all pages in your plot has the same header, footer and side bar.  So you can place them in a page, and all other pages use this page as the master page.  Thus you can just manage the center content on other pages, the figure below shows the details.

What if some pages have different side bars, while they have the same header and footer?  In this case you can use this master hierachy:

There are 3 pages are used as master pages.  Master Page 1 is shared by Master Page 2 and 3, while Master Page 2 is shared by two pages (Page 4 and 5) and Master Page 3 is shared by another two pages (Page 6 and Page 7).  This hierarchy should meet the requirements for most web site/app prototyping.

By using master pages, you can avoid duplicating content in the plot, and significantly reduce your plot size.

Optimise Image Usage

Experiments show that using images is the best way to enlarge your plot.  So if you wish your plot become smaller, make sure your plot only includes the images that are necessary.  It seems superfluous words, who would like to include unnecessary images in the plot?  But sometimes you may do this unconsciously, consider this case:  you add an Image Box element and specify an external image file for it, after a while you delete that Image Box and forget it.  But the image is still stay in the Image Dock, and will be saved to plot file even it is not referenced anymore.  If you did this a lot, your plot will be quite big, although most of the images in Image Dock are not used actually.

Shouldn’t ForeUI just take care of this situation and optimize it automatically?  I can’t agree more, so we will have it in V3.0, but we still have to do the optimization manually before 3.0 is out.  How to know if an image is referenced then?  You can click on the image in Image Dock, then you will see a pop-up menu like this:

You can see how many elements are referencing this image.  If an image is not used by any element (used by 0 elements), you can just click the  button to remove it safely.  Remarks: you will need to update to V2.802+ to have the correct image reference number (fixed Bug_0309).

Besides removing the unused images, you can also merge the duplicated images in Image Dock, which will also reduce your plot size.  Again ForeUI V3 will provide this feature, but we need to do it manually for now.  For example, say you have two images (img0 and img1) in Image Dock, they are duplicated and any of them are used by other elements, how could you merge them?

You can choose one image to keep, and click the button for another image to change all references to the one will be kept.  For example, you like to keep img0 (merge img1 to img0), you can click the button for img1, then you will see this window:

After you click the “Ok” button, all references to img1 will be changed to img0.  So nobody is using img1 now, and you can safely remove img1.

By removing unused images and merging duplicated images, your plot will become much smaller.  You don’t have to do this kind of optimization all the time, but you’d better do it once before exporting the plot to DHTML.

Use Text Box to Replace Big Rectangle

Rectangle is a very frequently used element in prototyping.  However when you want to add a big Rectangle into your plot (e.g. make it as background), you can consider using a Text Box (with border shown, background filled) instead.

Why?  Because the Rectangle element will be converted to an image file when you export the plot to DHTML, bigger Rectangle will generate bigger image file.  While the Text Box will be converted to just a snippet of HTML code, its size will not change when you enlarge the element.  So if you need a big rectangle, consider using a Text Box with border and background first, as long as you don’t need the radius corner feature provided by Rectangle element.

If your plot has many big rectangles and you replace them to Text Box elements, your exported DHTML files will become much smaller.

Conclusion

In this article I introduced three approaches to reduce your plot’s size.  It is not just about saving the space in your hard drive, it can also significantly reduce the DHTML files generated by ForeUI.  If you upload the DHTML files to the Internet for people to review, smaller file size is bandwidth and time saver.  I would suggest all ForeUI users to try using this approaches, and create small and powerful prototypes.

ForeUI V2.80: Many Useful Updates

Dear friends, it has been a while since last update, and this time it is a big one.  This update includes a new language support and many new features and enhancements, with 5 bugs fixed.  This version should be the last one that provides new features before version 3.0 is released (should be Q4 or year 2011).  We may still release some minor updates before v3.0 for bug fixing purpose.

Brazilian Portuguese Language

Now you can choose “Brazilian Portuguese” from the languages list.  Thank Francis Benito Odisi for the translation!

New System Properties, Enhanced “Go to Page” Action and Page Navigator

The page navigator element has been requested many times.  We have planed to integrate the page navigation into simulation framework in 3.0, meanwhile we provide this temporary solution before 3.0 is out.  We added two system properties (Available_Page_Indices and Available_Page_Titles) and enhanced the “Go to Page” action to adapt the solution.  Now the “Go to Page” action can accept property as its parameter:

Finally we created a very useful custom element: Page Navigator.

We create the Page Navigator element with Rectangle, Button, Text Box and Table elements.  You can place it anywhere in your plot, and it will automatically dock itself to the edge of the page.  It provides the buttons for you to switch to previous/next page, and a pop-up list to choose the target page to go.  You can place Page Navigator element on every page, but it is recommended to place it in a master page, thus other pages can share the same element.

If you want to change the docking location of the Page Navigator, you can change the value of “TextBox_HorDock” or “TextBox_VertDock” element.

The Page Navigator element can be downloaded via the “Resource Sharing” button on left bottom corner, or this URL:  http://www.foreui.net/node/94

More Properties and Actions for Accordion

We added the “Recent Expanded Section” and “Recent Collapsed Section” properties for Accordion element.  It is suggested by pohldoug, thank pohldoug for the great idea!

Also we implemented two new actions for Accordion: “Expand Section” and “Collapse Section”.  Thus we can control the accordion with actions.

 

Better Behavior of Element Dragging from Category

We enhanced the behavior of element creation (dragging from element category on left).  Now you can directly drag element into container if you have right mouse button or the CTRL key pressed.  Also the grid snap or object snap will take effect when you drag element into page (although those auxiliary lines are not painted, for performance consideration).

“Set Tree Node Value” Action for Tree

This new action for Tree element can dynamically change the content of any tree node.  Both the row index and the value support properties:

Download Printable User Manual

Now the paid user can download the printable PDF user manual from the “Help” menu.

The downloaded manual has the same content with our online document:  http://www.ForeUI.com/doc/

Other Enhancements:

  • Moving/resizing elements in scrollable container become easier.
  • Auto complete font selector.
  • Hold Shift key and start dragging, will force to enter the drag selecting mode.
  • Avoid exporting CSS alpha filters in DHTML if element’s opacity is 100%.

Fixed Bugs:

  • Bug_0302: Scrollable Container can not accept any element again if all embedded elements are removed or extracted.
  • Bug_0303: Define “Set Global Property” action to set an in-existent property, then define that property in “Global Property” window.  The action will not update when externally rename that property.
  • Bug_0304: Could not embed element into container that overlaps on a bigger container.
  • Bug_0305: The property in “row” or “column” field of “Set Table Cell Value” action is not updated when the property is renamed.
  • Bug_0306: Can not drag custom element from category to working area in Mac OS (V2.70+).

New Documentation Online!

Hello everyone, recently we were working on the new documentation of ForeUI, and now it is online!  The new documentation has much more content than then previous document.  It includes about 200 pages and have all features introduced, and you will find the full reference for all elements, events, flow controls, actions and properties.  You could also make good use of the keyword index and full text searching tool.

We will keep improving the documentation.  If you have any comment or suggestion on it, please feel free to contact us.

ForeUI V2.77: French and Spanish Language Support

Dear friends, we just released ForeUI V2.77 this morning.  This version includes the support for two more languages, two enhancements on usability, and two bugs fixings.

French and Spanish Support

In the new version you can select French or Spanish language in the settings window.

The French translation is made by Monaury Cecile, and the Spanish translation is made by Ernesto E. Bravo Cardoso.  They are all volunteer contributors and we really appreciate their great work.  Thank you Monaury Cecile!  Thank you Ernesto E. Bravo Cardoso!

Hold Control Key to Drag

Many Mac users are using one-key magic mouse, so they could not RIGHT drag element into container.  We accept Eric’s suggestion and make this enhancement: you can press the Control key on keyboard to simulate a right drag.

Keep Element’s Position when Newly Embedded

In previous versions, if you embed an element into an empty container, no matter at what position you embed it, the embedded element will be moved to the left-top cornor.  Some may say this annoying behavior should be a bug.  Anyway it is improved (or fixed) now: the newly embedded element will stay where it was.

Fixed Bugs:

  • Bug_0300: Table’s initial selection offsets one row in simulation (since V2.72).
  • Bug_0301: Image dock’s scrollable area does not match its content.  Thank Mark’s report for this problem.

ForeUI V2.75: More Facilities for Accordion

Hi everyone,  I am glad to announce that ForeUI V2.75 is released today!   This update is focus on enhancing the Accordion element, some enhancements to improve usability is made, and 3 bugs are fixed.

New Action and Properties for Accordion

We took the suggestion from Ben and add a new action named “Set Section Title”, which can change the Accordion’s section title dynamically.  A new array property named “Section Titles” is available and now we can get the title text from certain section.  An “Index of First Expanded Section” property is added to facilitate getting the current section for Accordion in “single expansion” mode.  Below is an example to make use of all these new action and properties, you can also run its DHTML version in browser:

Some Enhancements on Usability

Now the tab for current editing plot will show the “x” button (close button) without mouse hovering, and you can close the current plot from the “File” menu.  Thank David Mabelle’s suggestions for these via email.

We added a new option in the settings window, under the “Edit” tab, to turn on/off the instructional tooltips in ForeUI.  What is instructional tooltip?  It is the floating message as show below, which prompt the possible manipulation.

However it became kind of annoying to experienced users, so we provide the option to turn it off.  Thank David Kjos’s suggestion for this.

Fixed Bugs:

  • Bug_0297: When List/Menu/MenuBar/Tabs/VerticalTabs/Tree/ComboBox has no selected row, its “selectedIndex” property value should be 0 instead of -1 in simulation.
  • Bug_0298: MenuBar with “Element Clicked” event handler meets error in simulation if “Selection Changed” event is not handled.
  • Bug_0299: Embedded ComboBox has no selectedText property value until explicitly select an item.