Finding some nice wireframing software

Whenever I’m about to do a mid-size or large project I prefer using some type of wireframing and/or prototyping software. I like wireframes a lot because they take just a fraction of time to do compared to full designs. Wireframes are also easy to talk about with clients and fellow workers without them making fuss about design elements. Most people do understand that wireframes are not the finished product because they’re so simple. That usually makes it easier for all involved parts to focus on things like usability, functionality and basic layout.

At work I have been using Axure RP Pro which is a very fast and competent wireframing and prototyping software. One of Axure’s strengths is that you can add basic functionality like links between pages and some behavior functionality to make your wireframes a bit interactive. Axure then allows you to export your wireframes to HTML documents which you and your clients can go wild interacting with. There’s drawback to Axure though. The price tag. It costs $589 for a single user license. $589 is not that much money, but considering the price of a program that I use a lot more than Axure, Adobe Photoshop CS3 (which costs $649), Axure suddenly appear as very expensive.

So if I want to get this kind of software to use in private projects, what are the alternatives? I’ve heard that some people like using Microsoft Office Visio, which you can get for $259.95 to $559.95. Still too much money for me, especially considering the fact that I’ve never used Visio. I’ve also seen some people using Powerpoint for this purpose, although I’m not really flattered by it (in fact, Powerpoint is one of the applications I dislike the most). I’ve also been searching the open source market without success, until today, when I found Pencil.

Pencil is available for free, both as a 388kB Firefox plugin and as a standalone application (both available for download @ http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/Downloads.html). Compared to Axure, Pencil is a quite simple application, lacking all the interaction features of the first of the two. For wireframing Pencil is working excellent though. It has all the shapes/widgets that I need and they are easily added to the wireframe via drag-and-drop. By right-clicking on a shape you bring up a menu where you can edit shape properties and access shape specific functionality.

One feature that I’m missing though, is the possibility to show a background grid. Maybe that will be featured in a coming version. Anyway, it’s not a big deal – just create a grid in your favourite graphic editing software (or get my 10 × 10 grid) and load it as a “Bitmap Image” in Pencil. Right-click on your grid image and choose “Locked” and it won’t be selectable and thus stay in place even if mistakenly clicked and dragged.

One thing that also took me a little while to figure out was how to create rectangle shapes without rounded corners. To do it, select the shape and drag the topmost yellow box to the left as illustrated below:

Overall I’m really satisfied with Pencil, and I will probably stick to it until I find any better software.