For customers using version 4.0 of GUI Design Studio, simply install the new version and your existing licenses will continue to work. Be sure to install the correct Professional or Express edition though!

New Element Grouping in v4.1

This has been a long-standing request from users so we’re pleased to introduce element grouping into version 4.1. This will become an essential feature for creating more complex custom elements.

Grouped elements form a unit so that selecting and moving one element within the group will move them all together. Elements within a group can still be individually selected to resize them and change their properties and grouping does not affect parent/child relationships.

First select all of the elements you want to group together, then use the new “Group Elements” command on the right-click context menu (Ctrl+G hotkey):

You can also add elements into an existing group using this command. The “Ungroup Elements” command (Ctrl+Shift+G) will remove all selected elements from their respective groups.

Once grouped, selecting any of the elements within the group will display a dashed group box around all elements in the group and they will move as one for the following operations:

• Drag and drop moving of elements
• Keyboard moving of elements
• Alignment and multiple selection ‘group’ alignment
• Spacing elements evenly
• Swap element positions
• Send to Back / Bring to Front

Other Changes in v4.1

1. When duplicating designs, there is now a prompt to save changes to the original first if it is open in the editor and has been modified.
2. “Web Page Part” elements now only show their design-time border on the design where they actually exist. The border no longer shows up on Components containing the Web Page Part or on exported images.
3. Viewer Preferences changed to remove designer-only options.
4. (Pro edition only) Text substitution has been extended to practically all element text allowing a wider range of effects and realism.
5. (Pro edition only) Conditional Content panels now refresh their content on selection changes within List Boxes and Trees made using the keyboard as well as the mouse. This allows keyboard navigation to be used within a list to change the contents of a panel based on the selected item.

Bug Fixes in v4.1

1. Navigating to Thumbnail Components could ‘catch’ elements within the extended, full bounds of the Component. In some cases, this might result in extra elements appearing unexpectedly in the screen being navigated to. In other cases, involving Conditional Content panels navigating to the Thumbnail, this could set up an infinite navigation loop, resulting in a crash. This bug has now been fixed.
2. Entering design and/or element notes then switching back and forth between design document tabs could result in a crash in some instances. This behaviour does not appear to have been present prior to V4.0 and has now been fixed.
3. Notes fields will now only accept text pasted from the clipboard. Previously, it was tantilisingly possible to paste in images and OLE objects which appeared initially but were not saved or maintained in any way. Maybe this will be allowed in the future.
4. Copying and pasting Thumbnail Components now maintains correct positioning instead of placing them all at the mouse cursor location.
5. Copying and pasting sets of Radio Buttons now correctly maintains their selection group states.
6. Minor drawing fixes made to Vista style Edit Boxes when a custom border colour is chosen to allow it to blend into the background more easily. The auto navigation ‘o’ symbol on buttons also fixed for certain situations.
7. Issues related to scrolling component regions have been fixed.
8. Certain navigations involving multiple Tab Bars being switched in and out, especially using Conditional Content panels (Pro edition only), could result in multiple Tab Bars and panels being active and visible on top of each other at the same time. A fix has been made but it’s possible this may result in new unexpected behaviour, though none has been found yet.
9. (Pro edition only) Conditional expressions now correctly accept sub-variables using dot (‘.’) notation. For example, “MyListBox.index”.
10. (Pro edition only) When editing Project Variables (creating project-level sets of data variables), entering a blank variable value then selecting different variables in the list resulted in unexpected behaviour and crashing in some cases. This has now been fixed.

Version 4 has some fantastic new features in which help you get a working prototype in the hands of your users and engineers even faster.

Extended interaction functionality means your user interfaces can be even more realistic than ever with working with data values, conditional content and business rules driving navigation. Custom Elements and Templates let you and your colleagues share your work on multiple projects with ease.

We have some great new features planned for later in the year that will be available free of charge to v4 license holders.

Now is a great time to take advantage of the powerful prototyping features that GUI Design Studio provides, and if you’re an existing user, we’re sure you’ll want to upgrade.

But here is a little incentive…

If you purchase a new license or upgrade from a fully licensed copy of v3 by 31 March 2010, we’ll give you a 25% discount!

Here are the facts:

If you’ve been keeping up to date with V3 you’ll know that we’ve released some great features in the last 12 months including the huge Calendar element just last month, so keeping up to date makes sense.

To take advantage of this offer, simply visit the buy page and use coupon code V4-2TKAW8 on the order form, and your 25% discount will automatically be applied. But you’ll need to buy before the end of the month to qualify!

The new features are grouped around interactivity and element and design sharing. They enable you to build more realistic and interactive prototypes and to share or reuse individual elements or whole design templates with ease.

New editions

GUI Design Studio is now available in two different editions.

GUI Design Studio Express provides the prototyping functionality that was in v3, but focussed on individuals without the need to share projects and generate specification documentation.

GUI Design Studio Professional builds on v3, adding new interactivity and design sharing features, and is better suited to those working on larger projects, in teams, or on multiple designs.

All projects created in one edition will run in the other, or in the free viewer, except that the enhanced interactivity features in the Professional edition (see below) are not available in the Express edition. You can compare the two editions here.

Prototypes get more interactive (Pro edition only)

As your user interface design develops, everyone involved starts to focus on the details of interactivity. What process does the user need to go through to achieve certain tasks, how many button presses, how much navigation, is it clear and obvious, can they make simple mistakes?

All of these questions, and more, need to be considered in developing and refining a good UI and they cannot be addressed easily in a simple mock-up.

GUI Design Studio v4 introduces a range of new features to enhance the realism of your prototype, allowing you to model UI behaviour that depends upon decisions or input that the user has provided. We’re providing a whole set of flexible tools to make it easy to do this and more.

Simple Variables

Interaction controls depend upon simple variables. You choose a name for your variable in the new Prototype tab of the Properties dialog and that variable is then assigned a value when you run the Prototype and interact with the element.

Most elements can have an associated variable, even Trees and Ribbon Bars, and these variables can be shared among elements.

This variable can control other elements in various ways. For example, you could use it to insert a name that the user has entered into a piece of text, provide a default value, or you could drive a progress bar from other elements.

Variables are also tied into the Storyboard elements, as you can set up values from the new “Set Data” box. This allows you to reset variables in your UI to a particular set of values whilst running the Prototype. You might do this to simulate having different users, to reset the UI to its default value, or to jump to a particular state.

With project-level presets, it becomes even easier to repeatedly test or demonstrate different scenarios.

Handling Radio Buttons

Radio Buttons can be grouped so that they can act in unison.

Keyboard Control

Now that your users can start to interact with the design in a far richer and more realistic way, they are going to want to navigate around it using the keyboard just as they will in the finished user interface.

To do this you can click to gain focus on an element and use the Tab key to navigate around. The Spacebar changes the state of an element and the Enter key will “Close and Accept”, or the Escape key will “Close and Cancel”. Just like the real thing.

Control when to Show or Enable controls using conditions

Not only can you control the value and text in an element, you can also control when an element is enabled and when it is visible. That means that you can make additional controls appear or disappear depending upon which options the user has selected, or make sure that the next logical control is automatically enabled based on the user’s selection.

Conditional navigation in different scenarios

Variables are firmly embedded in Scenarios and Conditional Navigation too. The Condition Box properties now include a “Condition” entry allowing you to control the flow of the user interface with more flexibility and clarity.

For example, you could set up conditional navigation to bring up a warning if the user tries to create a password of less than a particular number of characters, or to ask for confirmation of a destructive action if the user has set an option.

Wherever you need to test a condition or use the value of a variable, you can use a general expression to combine or process the values of your variables. A wide range of Boolean, binary, comparison, arithmetic, trigonometric and text operators and functions are included.

Conditional Content Panels

Conditional Panels (on the Storyboard panel) build on top of these conditions. Using a Conditions box, (like those in navigation scenarios), you can control what content appears within a particular area. In the example below, it controls whether a Log In panel is displayed or a Welcome panel depending upon whether the user has already pressed the “Log In” button.

The User Name also shows up on the Welcome panel when running the prototype, though it doesn’t show in design mode (as above). This example can also be easily extended to validate the User Name and Password.

Advanced Features

Once you’ve mastered the basics of interaction control you’ll be ready to start using the advanced features to prototype the behaviour of your UI in detail.

Text substitutions, for example, allow you to perform complex substitutions where text content, or a variable name and value, can be set from other variables. You can even combine multiple variables to build new ones; we’re calling these “translation variables”.

Whatever your application, we’re confident that you’ll find that these new interaction features make it much easier and quicker to build a more complete UI prototype, and still without writing a single line of code.

Creating and sharing libraries of designs and elements

Custom Elements

Any folder (and its sub-folders) within the Project tree can be made into a Custom Element Folder. The folder icon then changes to indicate its new status.

You can create Custom Element designs within the folder and any existing GUI design that you want to be used as a Custom Element can be dragged into it.

A Custom Element design can be as complex as you like, from a single pre-styled element to an entire form full of controls. You can still edit this design just by double clicking on it, so it’s easy to update and maintain.

When you drag a Custom Element design onto another design, the whole content is copied across as if you’d added the elements individually. At this stage, changes to the original Custom Element will no longer affect the new design.

That means you can then modify it in your design to suit the particular circumstances, changing the style, size and layout, and adding in specific information relevant to its context.

Custom Element Libraries

Custom element folders can be created in any project but they really come into their own when creating library projects full of reusable designs that you can link into your working projects.  These can contain house-styled elements, time-saving common groups of elements or entire design patterns.

Compared to Components…

Custom Elements are different from Components (also known as Masters) which remain linked to the original design. If you change the original Component design, each instance of use in your project will also change.

Although you can use overrides to change certain properties of elements within a Component instance, you can’t change their size or layout. They act as a single unit.

Among other things, Components are good for headers and footers on web pages, reusable panels and common dialogs; areas that you need to be consistent between many designs. They’re also very good for breaking your design into more manageable chunks, often with self-contained behaviour.

In comparison, Custom Elements are good for common patterns in your design that will most likely need to be customised for each use.

What if you want to add a Component to a design as a Custom Element? Well, you could put it into a Custom Element Folder first (perhaps as a copy), but there is no need. You can just hold down the CTRL key as you drag and drop it into your design and it will be added as a Custom Element instead.

Templates (Pro edition only)

Templates are a great way to start a whole project from a consistent pattern. Maybe you always like to have your projects set up with a particular set of pages, or with some standard elements that you always include. You could start with a copy of your last project, but a Template is a neater way to achieve it.

Templates can be inserted into an existing project so they can be used for creating complex, reusable design patterns that are beyond the single design restriction of Custom Elements.

A Template includes all GUI files and their contents, so loading a single template could set up lots of files, ready for you to dive straight into the design work.

Like Custom Elements, Templates are copied when they are loaded, so changing the original Template file will not change the projects that are based upon it. They provide a basis for you to edit and extend.

You can create a Template from your whole project, only the designs in the currently selected folder, or just the current design file. That makes it easy to turn what you’re working on into a Template for reuse in another project.

You can name the Template, categorize it, and choose to attach a representative screenshot to make it easy to find later. The new facility to export images from a running prototype can help here but if you don’t provide a screenshot, one will be generated automatically.

When you create a Template, it becomes available for immediate use within all projects. No library project linking is required.

Templates and Libraries Online

We’re in the process of setting up a new community site to publish and share Templates and Libraries containing reusable Components, Custom Elements and Design Patterns.

We’ve been waiting a long time to do this but with these new features in GUI Design Studio 4.0, it now makes more sense. The links are already in the software and the new site will go live soon. Stay tuned!

Download and Upgrade

You can download a 30-day trial of v4.0 here (either edition) and install it along side any existing version that you might be using.

Upgrading from an earlier version

GUI Design Studio version 4.0 is fully compatible with projects and files created in earlier versions but, of course, if you modify your projects to use the new interactive features of 4.0 Professional (such as Conditional Content Panels) then these will be ignored when re-opened in earlier versions.

If you want to experiment with the 4.0 features before committing to upgrading then it’s best to work from a copy of your project or create a backup first.

Purchasing

If you purchased version 3 on or after 1 December 2009 then we will be sending you a new v4 license key for each license you bought at that time, free of charge.

Otherwise, you can buy new licenses or low cost upgrades here. And look out for our special March promotional discount!

Tell us what you want!

As always, we welcome all your feedback and suggestions so that we can create the tools and features you want to use. We’re already working on prioritizing the current list for the next string of releases!

Please leave a comment to let us know how you get on and what you think of the latest release.

For customers using any prior version of GUI Design Studio, simply install the new version and your existing licenses will continue to work.

Calendar Elements

With so many requests from users, we’ve finally added Calendar elements to the mix. This was essentially the last missing native Windows control and a common feature in a vast number of desktop and Web applications.

So why has it taken so long to appear? Well, that’s a very good question. Right from the start, with the version 1.0 release 5 years ago, we realized that calendar controls were important. But rather than create complex elements for every conceivable situation, the idea then was to provide basic building blocks from which other elements could be assembled.

The very first design samples library contained various calendar controls with different display options. We thought that this would be enough for simple mock-up purposes. Well, clearly, we were wrong! Creating calendar controls from scratch using text boxes and other elements is both tedious and time consuming, especially if you don’t want a design that’s stuck in 2005!

So we’ve pulled out all the stops to bring you a very flexible Calendar element that should suit most purposes. There are 2 variants to get you started: one in the “Lists, Trees and Tables” category that represents your standard Windows month calendar, and one in the “Web” category with some very different styling options.

Now it has to be said that there are a lot of property options for the Calendar. With all of the other elements, we’ve tried to cut back on options and minimize them wherever possible. But there’s an increasing demand for more flexibility and more styling options so that’s what we’ve provided here.

Option overload is an important topic for usability so we’ll be revisiting this in a future post with a collection of Calendar element designs. In the meantime, see what fancy Calendars you can create for yourself.

Other Changes in this 3.6 Release

• The “Window” menu now contains some very handy new commands to “Close All” design windows and to “Close Others” so that you can focus on just the design you’re working on.
• Thumbnail Components now have the same ability as regular Components to be redirected to different design files through their property settings. This can be hugely useful, especially when working on Web applications, when you want to change the target of a link without having to delete the old target then drag and drop the new target and hook it up again.
• There’s a new Preference option to Disable Subversion (SVN) support. GUI Design Studio normally detects folders that are under Subversion control and automatically handles them appropriately. However, all Subversion clients on a particular machine must be based on the same version libraries (version 1.6 in this case), otherwise the working copies will be incompatible. This option is for users who are unable to upgrade their Subversion clients from version 1.5 or earlier.
• There’s another Preference option to disable a change we made in version 3.5 to enhance the File Open/Save dialogs by switching to Thumbnail view for images where appropriate. It’s possible that this feature caused compatibility problems (though we’ve been unable to reproduce or confirm these) so the option is there to turn it off.

Bug Fixes

• Using the right mouse button to cancel a drag and drop operation from the Project file tree, Elements or Icons panel no longer activates the popup context menu.
• Custom Tree Icons (added in version 3.5) are now correctly saved to distribution .gdd files.
• Custom Tree Icons are now maintained properly when the Tree is within a Component and has its properties overridden. Previously, in that situation, the icons would revert to the defaults if the icons were within the project (application and other external icons were okay).
• Some of the automatic connection types were not behaving as intended and reverted to “Modal Popup” instead of the correct type. This has now been fixed.
• There’s also a few other minor fixes related to command keyboard shortcuts and annotation popup text spacing.

Download and Upgrade

Download GUI Design Studio version 3.6 now and install it over your existing version. If you have purchased a license, your existing key will continue to work.

Version 3.6 is fully compatible with projects and files created in earlier versions but certain features, such as the new Calendar elements, will not be recognized by earlier versions of the software so be careful if sharing projects with others who haven’t yet upgraded.

Leave a comment to let us know how you get on and what you think of the latest release. As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions!

For customers using any prior version of GUI Design Studio, simply install the new version and your existing licenses will continue to work.

Tree Icons
Until now, Tree elements have come with just a couple of basic sets of icons and the only way to change individual item icons was to place other icons on top.

That worked well until scrolling and item expansion/contraction functionality was added in version 3.3. After that, you needed to jump through a few hoops with components to get custom tree icons working properly.

Well, we’ve finally given Tree items their own icon property so you can now select them directly and everything works as it should. For convenience, the icon selector also keeps a record of the 10 most recent icons for fast, one-click selection.

Other Changes

• Slider elements now have a “Reverse Range” option that makes them slide from right to left instead of left to right (for Horizontal Sliders). This will become more important in version 4.0 when it’s released. Vertical Sliders now default to upwards unless reversed and this may have a minor impact on some existing designs.
• Based on customer requests, the context menu on the Project panel file tree has been expanded and re-arranged to make it even more useful.
• When you connect screens in GUI Design Studio, you’re really building a true application prototype. We want to emphasize this more so, as a rather subtle but pervasive change, all references to “Simulation” are being phased out and replaced with references to “Prototypes”. This will be most apparent with the disappearance of the “Simulator” menu which has been renamed to “Run”.
• We realized that a few of the newer keyboard shortcuts were conflicting with the main menu so we’ve changed them as follows:
  • Go to connection source: Alt+R -> Ctrl+R
  • Go to connection target: Alt+T -> Ctrl+T
  • Swap selected elements: Alt+S -> Ctrl+W

Bug Fixes

• The Notes panel now behaves correctly when the Design/Activity Bar is floating rather than docked to the side of the main window. Now you can make full use of the design screen by placing the panels out of the way on a second monitor. Thanks to all those that reported this bug.
• Redundant checking of the SVN repository has been removed to improve performance in certain circumstances when using team collaboration features.
• Changes to project and folder links are now saved correctly. In V3.4 this became intermittent depending on whether other changes were triggering the project save or not.
• Property editor buttons have been made taller, where necessary, to ensure that shortcut key indicators (underlines) are visible on all supported platforms.

Download and Upgrade

Download GUI Design Studio version 3.5 now and install it over your existing version. If you have purchased a license, your existing key will continue to work.

Version 3.5 is fully compatible with projects and files created in earlier versions but certain features, such as Tree item icons, will not be recognized by earlier versions of the software so be careful if sharing projects with others.

Finally, do let us know how you get on. As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions!

For customers using any prior version of GUI Design Studio, simply install the new version and your existing licenses will continue to work.

(1) Project Organisation

Now you can re-organise your projects with ease. In previous versions, we restricted the ability to move and rename design files to ensure that references remained intact and to help with project sharing.

In version 3.4, you can rename files and move them around using drag and drop. GUI Design Studio will track the changes and keep those references working.

New projects will automatically get this functionality but you’ll need to enable this feature for existing projects using the “Project | Enable Move and Rename…” menu command. This is a precaution to ensure that team members synchronise project files first.

(2) Enhanced Team Collaboration

Version 3.4 also brings new collaboration features to allow multiple designers to work on the same project simultaneously using a shared Subversion (SVN) repository. Move and rename are fully supported and changes by different team members to the same file can be merged automatically (in most cases).

For full details on how this works see the Team Collaboration with GUI Design Studio and Subversion section on our main Website.

(3) Image and Component Replacement

Have you ever wanted to change an icon or bitmap image, or replace a design component? Well now there’s a new “File” tab that allows the associated file to be changed. If the replacement component is compatible, such as a duplicated variation, then all navigations from within the component will be maintained.

When files are deleted, we’ve made it easier to work out what’s missing by displaying the filename in the placeholder box and we also now include the placeholders in simulation, printing and image generation where they were previously ignored.

(4) Other Changes

In order to make the simulation of Browser mode more realistic, Back and Forward now restore the view position (scroll bar states) instead of always jumping to the top of the page.
 
To help you edit elements more quickly the F2 key can now be used as a shortcut key to edit text for the selected element. You can still just start typing if you simply want to replace the whole of the text.
 
We’ve also fixed a number of bugs such as making GUI Design Studio use less CPU time on certain machines when idle and transferring project options to distribution files for use in the Viewer.

Download

Download GUI Design Studio version 3.4 now, and let us know how you get on with it.

Happy designing! Feel free to leave a comment…

For customers using any prior version of GUI Design Studio, simply install the new version and your existing licenses will continue to work.

(1) Active Scroll Bars

For all those cases where it’s important for you to demonstrate the entire contents of your edit boxes, lists, tables and trees, you can now work those scroll bars when you run your prototype!

By selecting elements first, you can also scroll them within the design editor if you want to and set default scroll positions.

(2) Expand / Contract Tree Nodes

Judging by the number of customer designs we’ve seen where tree node expansion and contraction has been simulated using overlay panels, this is clearly another important feature that sits nicely alongside scrolling.

As before, you can set up the default expansion and contraction of each node within the property editor where you create the nodes. You can now also change these within the design editor itself by selecting the tree element then clicking the expand/contract buttons.

(3) Connect From Tree and List Items

Thanks to all of the requests for this feature, you can now make navigation connections directly from tree nodes and list items instead of having to use navigation overlays.

This is especially important now that trees and lists can be scrolled. Links remain with the correct item after rearranging the content.

For trees, you can expand a node (in the editor), create a link from a child node and then collapse the node again.

All links to hidden items are shown from the nearest location that makes sense. Try it out and I’m sure it will make sense.

(4) Scrolling Regions

With version 3.3, you can now take a large design section and place it within a smaller, scrolling region. Anything from a simple bitmap image to an intricately designed, custom list, or even complex document content can now be represented with ease.

The trick is to place the large section within a component design, resize the component (you might need to change its resize options first) and then check its “Maintain Size” option.

(5) Other minor changes

We’ve fixed a couple of bugs related to infinitely nested, self-referencing component designs that occur in rare circumstances, and added a useful Alt+F4 shortcut key to toggle between normal selection mode and component item selection mode. F4 (or Shift+F4) still toggles between either selection mode and make connection mode.

Download GUI Design Studio version 3.3 now, and let us know how you get on with it.

Happy designing!

For customers using any prior version of GUI Design Studio, simply install the new version and your existing licenses will continue to work.

(1) Project Options

The most visible change is the introduction of new Project Options (from the “Project” menu). These allow you to:

1. Enter descriptive notes for the project as a whole.
2. Specify Visual Style options for viewing/editing and simulation that override the Preference settings and force the Viewer to use them. This is important for controlling the way your designs are presented in the Viewer.
3. Change Simulator background colours, text and text placement.

This last set of Project Options will be welcomed by all those customers who’ve been requesting this for some time. Here’s a few examples:

There are a number of reasons why you might want to change the background colours and text but it’s particularly useful if you want to grab a screenshot of the running simulation. A solid white background with no text, for example, will make it much easier to use the images in other documents, on Web pages or for printing.

(2) Bug Fixes

There are a couple of bug fixes in this release. One removes the limit that was placed on the amount of data that could be pasted into a Table element from the clipboard and the other fixes some serious issues with Simulator scroll bar operations. It also improves the calculations of scroll bars, especially when simulating different screen resolutions.

(3) The Secret New Feature

This actually represents the bulk of changes in the version 3.2 release but we want to keep it under wraps for the moment. It’s a significant feature that we are continually asked about but it’s still just a seedling.

Before we reveal what this feature is and make it generally available, we want to test it with specific customers that asked for it and work with them to develop it to a more useful level. From what I’ve seen it do so far, that hopefully won’t take too long.

Watch this space for further news!

For customers using any prior version of GUI Design Studio, simply install the new version and your existing licenses will continue to work.

If you’ve been using a trial version that has expired, this new version should reset your trial period. If it doesn’t then please let us know and we’ll sort something out for you.

So here’s what’s changed in version 3.1:

(1) Navigation Type Selector
After much demand, we’ve finally put a Navigation Type selector onto the toolbar.

When you connect elements together to define application workflow, GUI Design Studio normally sets the navigation type based on the elements being connected. It gets this right about 80% of the time (or maybe 20% depending on who you ask).

But when you’ve made lots of connections and none of them are of the type you wanted, it can be a little tedious to change them all, though the Format Painter feature introduced in version 3.0 helps a lot here.

So now, you’ll be able to set the type of connection you want to make using the selector. Where connections have to be of a certain type, the selector will be ignored. You can also set it to ‘Automatic’ to let GUI Design Studio decide what type of navigation to create. This basically reverts to the previous behaviour without the selector.

The next two new features should help to navigate around a large design.

(2) Fit Elements to View
The “Fit Elements to View” command does exactly that. The view is changed so that the selected elements are all displayed. If possible, it keeps the current zoom factor. Otherwise, it will zoom out to make sure they’re all made visible.

With no elements selected, the whole design is made to fit within the view.

If you have a numeric keypad on your keyboard, you can use the ‘/’ key as a shortcut. This makes a handy combination with the existing ‘*’ key to set 100% zoom, ‘-’ to zoom out and ‘+’ to zoom in.

Of course, you can still use the Alt key with the left and right mouse buttons to pan and zoom the display. And, if you have one, the middle button will pan directly and the scroll-wheel can be set to zoom (according to preferences).

(3) Follow Connections
If you’ve ever found yourself zooming in and out or panning (scrolling) a large design to see where a connection takes you, or where it’s come from, then you’ll like this new feature.

Just select a connection and use the “Go To Connection Target” (Alt+T) or “Go To Connection Source” (Alt+R) commands to scroll them into view.

(4) Swap Element Positions
The last of the new features in the “Swap Element Positions” command. This started life as a very simple idea to just swap the positions of two selected elements.

However, once we’d implemented that, we realised that it really ought to do a bit more. Although it has other uses, the main reason for its existence is as an ‘element re-arranger’. So that is what it now does. After a fair few iterations, we think we’ve got it about right and it works like magic!

Because this ’small’ feature could be of great importance, there’ll probably be another post soon to look at it in more detail.

(5) Split Toolbar
On the very minor size, we’ve made the toolbar split in two if the application window gets too narrow to fit the whole thing on one line.

While this may not be too exciting for you when you always run GUI Design Studio full screen (as you should), it’s extremely useful for us as we start to create size-restricted video tutorials (yes, we’re finally getting them done!).

From a design perspective, note that the toolbar doesn’t just wrap in the middle. Instead, it splits into two, more appropriately arranged bars. Also, there’s no faffing with having to re-position the bars yourself, as you might with other styles of split toolbars, especially when returning to full screen mode. It automatically pops back onto one line again whenever it can!

(6) Check Box States
Another (seemingly tiny) change is that Check Boxes now have a 3-State option rather than just assuming that all Check Boxes are 3-state (for design flexibilty). The default is unchecked unless the Check Box has already been set to an intermediate check state.

This change might only save you the effort of a click or two when changing Check Box properties, but it will become much more significant when interaction features are fully enabled. Watch this space!

Bug Fixes:
We’ve fixed a couple of small bugs related to the application title bar when closing projects and keeping the Project panel open after creating a new project (ooh, that was an irritating one).

Of more importance, though, a few customers had discovered that dragging a component design onto itself could freeze the application, especially if the design was blank.

While this is not normally something you would want to do, it is quite easy to do by accident, especially if what you really wanted to drag was an image of the same name in the same folder.

If you’ve ever pointed a video camera at a television or screen that’s showing the live feed from the camera, you’ll understand the problem here! Although we had some protection against this, we’d managed to miss a test case. Oops. This has now been fixed but sorry if you got caught by this bug.

That’s about all of the changes for this 3.1 release. Download it now, give it a whirl and be sure to let us know what you think by leaving a comment on this blog or by contacting support.

Happy designing!

With GUI Design Studio version 3.0, you can design and prototype a broad range of applications.

Rich Desktop Applications
In addition to the 40+ common controls included in GUI Design Studio, you can use a variety of other generic elements and add graphic images and icons too.

And with extensive support for tabbed interfaces, modal popups, dialogs and a whole host of other features, you can design almost any application.

Ribbon Bar Applications
Love it or hate it, you can’t ignore the Ribbon Bar interface that Microsoft introduced in Office 2007.

Now you can try out a Ribbon Bar design for your application without having to commit to any particular implementation or toolset.

Then you can evaluate it against a more traditional menus and toolbars design to see what works best for your users. All without coding of course!

Web Applications
There’s a complementary set of elements specifically designed for Web applications that you can use with some of the common controls.

Using components, GUI Design Studio makes it easy to deal with the complex Web sites containing common sections such as navigation menus on multiple pages. It even allows each instance to be customised while retaining a common master.

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)
Modern Web applications are approaching the power of desktop applications.

GUI Design Studio provides for this with its support for components, dynamic panels, rollovers and tabbed interfaces.

Multiple Visual Styles Supported
Whether you’re designing for Windows Vista, XP, NT or the Web, you can change the look of your design with a couple of preference settings. Design in one style and present in another.

And if you need more of a lo-fi wireframe presentation that says “hey, this is just a quick prototype” then you can use Outline styling options or unusual colour schemes. Ever seen XP in orange?

Easy Access To Icons
No application is complete without icons. We’ve included over 150 common icons to get you started but when you need to create your own, you’ve got instant access to Icon Express, our simple to use icon editor.

And if you need a more powerful icon editor, you can configure GUI Design Studio to use your favourite editor instead.

Customer Upgrades
If you’ve already purchased GUI Design Studio licenses then version 3.0 will continue to work with your existing keys and your existing projects will be 100% compatible. Simply download and install version 3.0 over your current version and enjoy the latest features.

Evaluating GUI Design Studio 3.0
If you’ve previously tried version 2.4 or below, then version 3.0 should provide you with a new 30-day free trial period. If, for any reason, it reports that your license has expired then contact our support team and we’ll happily provide you with a new trial license key.