Great find!

Since listening to this podcast I’ve checked out HotGloo. Seems a bit pricey to me for what you get, however it’s definitely the most polished of the wireframing web apps I’ve seen.

One that I’ve taken to recently and purchased is called ‘Mockflow’. It’s a combo online and Adobe AIR application that runs on your desktop. There are a few UI quirks but overall very solid.

My favorite aspect of MockFlow, that I haven’t seen on any others is the ability to submit components from your wireframe into their ‘MockStore’ for others to use free of charge. When you really get down to it, it’s quite possible that someone has mocked up that little item that you need – say a video player or modal window. The MockStore let’s me grab the component, and use it as is or modify it to my heart’s content.

The service also has tons of templates for mobile apps, software, different browsers and devices. It has great export options as well, including HTML and PDF – huge when working with clients.

My biggest grip about the service is that there’s no way to show a certain interaction with an element – a JavaScript popup for example. There’s also no way to link a mockup element to anything other than an internal page.

However, they seem to be fairly quick with updates, so… finger’s crossed!

Yeah there are quite a few tools out there for fireframing. Almost any generic diagramming tool can be used for it!

I’m actually hearing quite a bit that people wireframe internally, but don’t really show them to their client which is the total opposite of what I thought!

Thanks Brian!

Another one I have used is http://creately.com/

I usually just sketch the wire frame for myself. I tried some wire framing with customers before but they just didn’t get it. We use JSF which is component based so we wire frame using the actual components that will be used in the application so the user gets to see the actual design. This would be much like wire framing with html. Like you mentioned though it does have its cons because the users get sidetracked by little things like fonts, etc…

ProtoShare is strictly web-based, but can be exported to HTML and is great if you need to share prototypes with remote teams or clients.

If you’ve tried the application, we are always open to feedback, so feel free to contact me if you have comments or questions.

Best of luck in your wireframing activities!

Cheers,
Andrea
@ProtoShare

But the cool thing is the company and how it’s run. If you have a look at their blog it has some great detail about their financials and how they started etc etc. Here’s an example of how open they are on their blog – http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2010/01/03/a-look-back-at-2009/

It’s a really useful tool, built by an inspiring man and company.