import and export of sets

We've added a cool feature allowing sets to be uploaded or exported from within iplotz. If you click on my Library there are 2 buttons for importing and exporting sets:

Use the plus sign to upload single graphics to the library, then you can export all of them to a zip file on your hard disk. Send them to someone else, and they can then import that zip file or any zip file with graphics in jpg, png, gif or swf format. The system will unpack them all and display them as you can see here. I have a zip file full of iphone components, so it's useful to play with interfaces for that, but you can use anything.

One other little update, and that's for the inspector palette - I wasn't quite happy with it, didn't like the fading out we had before, and it got in the way if we left it there, so now when you minimize it hides itself in the top right corner. You can either click on the icon there to bring it back or simply double click on any component.

new features uploaded

We've seen a spike in traffic today, since ReadWriteWeb's review came out. Thanks for that!

We added some new features overnight:

• masters - now you can have your navigation elements appear on every page, and only have to change them once. masters are applied using the master tool on the top control bar
  
• text editing - change size, justification, and formatting of a whole text block.
• callout component (called number tag for now) - change color and number, so you can draw attention to multiple parts of a design for annotation.
• default font - we are now using comic sans. No licensing problems, is unicode, and clearer on designs. Not a favorite of some designers I know, but we have limited options right now.

We will have another update tonight for importing multiple images from a zip file, and exporting images to a zip file for sharing with others. 

enjoy!

showing clickable areas on a wireframe

HIghlighting clickable areas, as mentioned in the wireframing magazine blog, is something that is easy to do with iplotz. Although in the Preview mode, if the the mouse is passed over a clickable area, it highlights by turning darker grey, the user may not know it is there, so I create a semi transparent box area over the clickable areas to guide the user. Works well.

beta test server

If anyone is interested in checking upcoming changes, feel free to register or login at iplotz.com/staging - things may be buggy on there, as this is where I test stuff to make sure it works, and also where we try out new features for feedback.

changes coming

We've decided to change the font to comics sans for sketch look, and verdana when we add the switch to native look feature. This is so we have no licensing issues in the future. Too much hassle trying to figure out costs of embedded fonts for both the online version and the upcoming desktop app. This also has the added advantage of making the application smaller.

On our staging server, I'm testing some new features about to go live in the next few days:

- master pages
- rollover icons on the sitemap wireframe names to duplicate, rename and delete pages.
- callout number component
- text font changed to Comic Sans
- can now change text size, color, formatting
- page background color change.
- can minimize the comments box in Preview
- initials show on left panel of the comments creator
- export all images in MyLibrary as zip file for sharing.
- zip import of multiple images

There are still a couple of dozen other tasks still to work on, but these are the ones I wanted to do first. We are also almost finished with language localization strings etc, so if anyone out there wants to translate into their language, I can send the file. However, we will handle the french, spanish, german, dutch, italian and russian ourselves.

cheers!

pricing

Decided to lower the pricing for iplotz to $99 a year for the hosted version and $75 for the download app. I think long term most people will want to collaborate with others online, but create ideas and mockups offline when traveling for instance. We'll see how that goes.
We've sent out a Press release today, and emailed our user database at vtc.com, so we should have a flood of new customers soon. Lots more feedback I hope...always like new ideas coming my way. I know what I wanted to use in the software, but there are always novel ways of using iplotz that I never thought of...

ideas for the near future

Had some feedback over the last couple of days..and here's a list of the most important features we will be implementing asap:

- templates (splitting the left sitemap into 2 tabs)
- wireframe page duplication
- direct text entry onto layout
- size change of text box components
- direct URL invitation to a public wireframe page with no sign in.

There are a few other things as well, cosmetic changes but those are the main things. Oh and tonight, wait for some peace and quite and make 4 movies for the home screen, and pack before flying off to San Francisco tomorrow morning (ugh, 14 hour flight). Macworld here i come!

iplotz launched!

On January 1, 2009 after 6 months of development, we finally launched iplotz. We haven't told everyone about it just yet, as we don't want the whole system to get overwhelmed too much..:-) I shall be at Macworld on the VTC stand next to Apple, showing it off and getting more feedback. We should be able to make changes, fix bugs, add features fairly quickly.

I already have a list of new features I want added, and we will be adding a wishlist / voting feature on the website so I can get an idea of what everyone would like.

Hope you like it - and I look forward to the feedback...good or bad!!