I think you're giving away too much for free. How about 1 mockup for free, not 5. Or how about you just let me pay you $x for 3 months of usage (which will coincide with Project Y that I'm working on). If you let me do 5 mockups for free there's not much incentive for me to pay.
Review my Startup: jMockups - A Better Way to Web Design
21–30 of 77 posts
Re: Review my Startup: jMockups - A Better Way to Web Design
#22I completely disagree with everyone else, I believe there is a large market for tools like this. Adobe make a lot of money from photoshop and I personally along with most web designers I know are dissatisfied with photoshop and its alternatives, they are are terrible tools for designing websites and applications. I think it needs a lot of polish, your application is designed like a website itself, dont have a footer,…
some very quick details * the canvas size is fixed, cant seem to be able to expand it * the resize handlers are annoying, selections dont "feel" nice, "feeling nice" is important imo * I didnt see how to define gradients * Put a much nicer looking website for a demo than hacker news, maybe the 37 signals front page
Interesting -- the canvas size shouldn't be fixed. There's a grip in the bottom right corner which should allow you to resize it. If it doesn't, let me know.
Can you articulate why the selections don't feel nice?
Gradients are possible and also on the todo list. Designing a clean UX to facilitate their creation is tough though. If only there was a tool I could use to experiment with different designs...
As far as the demo site, I'll change it. But today's HackerNews launch day, so it only seems appropriate.
Re: Review my Startup: jMockups - A Better Way to Web Design
#23I think you're giving away too much for free. How about 1 mockup for free, not 5. Or how about you just let me pay you $x for 3 months of usage (which will coincide with Project Y that I'm working on). If you let me do 5 mockups for free there's not much incentive for me to pay.
The Pro plan will eventually include additional features which the Free plan doesn't have.
Also, since you can share your designs, there's a benefit in letting people create several for free. There's a balance there, but I think 5 is a good fit for light users.
Re: Review my Startup: jMockups - A Better Way to Web Design
#24I played around with this, and I'll tell you where I have problems. It's similar to the thing in AI where if you model a character as cartoonish, people's subconsciouses will fill in the blanks, making the characters appealing -- but if you get 'too close' to actual, then the brain only sees the flaws, and it makes the characters seem creepy. I feel that same thing here, where you're using actual HTML input elements,…
Imagine there being a toggle button on the toolbar that switches your mockup between low and high fidelity. Would that be something you're interested in?
Honestly, I don't know. I mean, I think the market is for people who aren't put off by the high fidelity being somewhat limited still, or who like Balsamiq, but for some reason hate sketch graphics. I dunno.
For me personally, that isn't a selling point.
Re: Review my Startup: jMockups - A Better Way to Web Design
#25Very nice technology. But I think you've chosen the wrong domain. I don't think there's a big (or even small) market in doing "pixel-perfect mockups". We have Photoshop for that, which (frankly) provides better tools than yours. I would take the technology (which looks great) and search for a better field to apply it to.
I found this quote while researching how to do something with Photoshop. Your post made me think of it.
---
Question:
Hey, how do I create a grey rectangle with a black line border, on Photoshop CS4?
Answer:
I would just create two layers, one black, one grey, and then use the select tool to select most of the black one (leaving a border) and then delete it
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=839800
---
I mean isn't that ridiculous?
Re: Review my Startup: jMockups - A Better Way to Web Design
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
some very quick details * the canvas size is fixed, cant seem to be able to expand it * the resize handlers are annoying, selections dont "feel" nice, "feeling nice" is important imo * I didnt see how to define gradients * Put a much nicer looking website for a demo than hacker news, maybe the 37 signals front page
Interesting -- the canvas size shouldn't be fixed. There's a grip in the bottom right corner which should allow you to resize it. If it doesn't, let me know. Can you articulate why the selections don't feel nice? Gradients are possible and also on the todo list. Designing a clean UX to facilitate their creation is tough though. If only there was a tool I could use to experiment with different designs... As far as the…
oh sorry, I didnt notice the canvas resize, I think thats more along the problem I mentioned before, it feels like a website a little much, I expect my "canvas" to be centered and on a darker gray bg, as it would be in gimp / photoshop / inkscape / fireworks etc.
the selection is harder to explain, the canvas can quite busy and its not very easy to know exactly what is selected, the combination with the floating dialog is kinda annoying as well.
but yeh, too busy to give you proper feedback, will email
Re: Review my Startup: jMockups - A Better Way to Web Design
#27Very nice technology. But I think you've chosen the wrong domain. I don't think there's a big (or even small) market in doing "pixel-perfect mockups". We have Photoshop for that, which (frankly) provides better tools than yours. I would take the technology (which looks great) and search for a better field to apply it to.
I found this quote while researching how to do something with Photoshop. Your post made me think of it. --- Question: Hey, how do I create a grey rectangle with a black line border, on Photoshop CS4? Answer: I would just create two layers, one black, one grey, and then use the select tool to select most of the black one (leaving a border) and then delete it http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=839800 ---…
No actually. It is the reason Photoshop is number one. It is an incredibly powerful tool because it doesn't try and tell you how to do things. I personally wouldn't do it that way most of the time, but there is situations where that is the best solution.
Re: Review my Startup: jMockups - A Better Way to Web Design
#28If you’re using Internet Explorer, you need to switch to a different browser
No
Re: Review my Startup: jMockups - A Better Way to Web Design
#29If you’re using Internet Explorer, you need to switch to a different browser No
Internet Explorer (at least through v8) don't support the canvas tag, which jMockups is built on. Most web developers and designers don't use IE, so I don't think I'm giving up too much by not supporting it.
Plus, you can share your mockups with anyone regardless of their browser so it shouldn't be an issue for most of the target audience.
Re: Review my Startup: jMockups - A Better Way to Web Design
#30Oh hey, I have the same webapp.
http://www.recurseapp.com