I’ve been waiting for an Eclipse-based wireframing/mockup tool for a while now, and it’s finally here :) and at $75, i think it’s a reasonable price to pay for such a useful plugin, although still a little highly priced.

WireframeSketcher is an Eclipse plugin which offers a similar feature-set to Balsamiq Mockups, although personally i prefer WireframeSketcher. Firstly, it plugs right in to my current workflow in Eclipse – that already wins it many points in my book! Aside from that, the plugin feels a lot more stable than Balsamiq and offers a few interesting features, such as:

  • Wiki syntax formatting on all supported controls
  • Screens vs Masters vs Storyboards
    • A Screen is a view that you can build
    • A Master is a reusable component that can be used in Screens
    • A Storyboard is made up of a collection of Screens
  • Well thought-out presentation mode allowing you to jump between screens

All in all, i like the way it’s structured; i like that you can create separate files for logically separate areas of your whole application mockup and bring them together in a storyboard. I’ve used it on a couple practical examples that i was planning to do, and it feels comfortable and usable.

If you’re developing your a Java application with SWT, there’s also a neat plugin to export your wireframes as SWT code :)

Maybe an MXML export feature is on the cards too! That would certainly be wonderful…