Colin Meeks

Although this site isn’t really geared to reviewing products, a recent new software release did catch my eye. Balsamiq’s Mockup, is a really interesting product, not just because it solves a real need, but also because, as far as I know, it’s the first commercial application that is built using Adobe’s Air platform. Air is a way of leveraging web applications, be they a combination of HTML, Ajax, Flash or Flex, the latter two, also being Adobe products. What’s so neat about Air, is that it is cross platform, allowing the developer to deploy the application to Windows, Mac OSX and Linux, all using a single file.

Whilst Air is relatively new, there’s no shortage of applications available. Twirl and Snitter act as desktop clients for the popular social website Twitter. Similarly the Pownce file exchange website also has a client written in Air. There are also a whole host of other applications that do anything from serving up the latest music videos, to a better way to handle your auctions with the eBay client. Finally there lots of neat utilities and goofy programs, like Shrink-O-Matic a batch image resizer and FotoBooth, a great way of taking snapshots at your PC and automatically uploading them to your Flickr account.

OK, so Balsamiq’s Mockup is indeed an Air application, but as I said before it’s the first commercial Air application I’ve come across. This is the thing that first caught my eye, but the second thing was the application itself. As a programmer, I’ve designed user interfaces for desktop, hand held and web applications. This is usually done with a few quick scribbled sketches. When I’ve need something a little more professional, I’ve thrown together some mockups using the design interface of the compiler I’ve selected for the project, be it VB.NET, Delphi or ASP.NET. The problem with these mockups are that they are either not really of a high enough quality to wave in front of a client, or they are so good, the client sometimes doesn’t consider these as mockups, they think of these as the blueprints for the final project, which can open a huge can of worms later in the project.

Balsamiq’s Mockup, is a system created to design mockups, in a way that’s way better than most scribbled efforts and conceptual enough, that the client doesn’t get hung up on the black and white of the design. I’ve got a few projects that will certainly benefit of this approach, but for this overview, wanted to pick on something that isn’t going to give away any of my ideas. What better way than throwing together a quick mock up of Google’s Gmail web email service. As this is just a quick mock up, I’ve taken a few liberties here and there, but it’s very easy to see that my primitive version is functionally very similar.

There is quite a selection of controls, GUI elements and markup images that you can paste onto the screen. The first hump is getting acquainted with them. When doing the Gmail example, I’d say about half of the time was spent looking for the right element to mimic Gmail’s functionality. The first limitation I found that there was no easy way to replicate the checkbox element. It would have been great to be able to do n lines of text and have a check box appear before each line, this wasn’t possible, so I had to create a new check box for each line of supposed email. It was then that my system began to act a little sluggish. Upon looking at the load on the CPU, the software was taking between 5 and 10% of processor, which seemed a little high. Also high was the among of allocated memory, a whopping 150megabytes. The system I did the majority of testing on, is a little long in the tooth now, but still packs a 2.6 gigahertz processor and 1 gig of ram. Things further complicated, when I exited the software and tried to relaunch, only to find the software icon in the task bar, but the software nowhere to be seen. I ended up right clicking on the icon in the task bar and then selecting restore, I then did the same again, but this time selected maximize and the software again appeared in all its glory. I have a funny feeling this was not a problem with the mock up software, as from this point on, everything ran smoothly and checking the processes again revealed a more healthy 3% of processor usage and 40 megabytes of memory allocated, but I’ve never has this problem before. The only other real niggle I had, was the inability to import an image for use in your mockup. I appreciate that this is all meant to be pretty much conceptual, but there is nothing nicer for a client, than seeing their own logos on a mock up. I’m sure this is something that will be rectified with future releases.

Once my mockup was complete I exported it as a PNG file and once actioned it exported instantly. While I appreciate the simplicity of this approach, I much prefer being asked where I want to save it and also what I want to call it. This also happened when I exported the mock up itself, which is saved in XML format, again here I would have preferred a unique file suffix, like .bmu or something similar, but that really because I have so many different XML file for other things.

The more I play with this software the more I find to like. Placing the page elements and changing their settings is very straightforward. Upon clicking on each element, a separate floating design form appears, allowing you to position and change the things that are available to change. While I like the simplicity of the colouring, i.e. black and white, I would have liked to be able to change the colours of the elements, for the more demanding client. This really is small potatoes,

While I only tested the standalone desktop version of the software, it is also available for various collaborative platforms, including Confluence and Jira, and coming soon for Twiki.

Here’s a five minute video that outlines the features of Balsamiq’s Mockup, produced by Balsamiq themselves.

Conclusion : If you ever create mock ups for software or websites, this is an excellent piece of software, which will save you time and blushes when the client sees your next mockup. At $79 it is reasonably priced and will surely pay for itself in very short time.

OK, so maybe the title of this entry is a bit on the duff side, but all the other alternatives I came up with, were either even worse, or could be misconstrued as offensive. Now that’s laid a shaky foundation, the only way to go is up, right?

Let me first say, reviewing movies is not something that I’m going to be doing a lot here. The only reason I’m doing this, is that sometimes it’s great to be taken aback, when all your expectations are pretty much shattered. The movie in question is “Hairspray”. a remake of the original John Walters, 1988 classic. I’d never seen the original, but I knew it wasn’t my kind of movie, or so I thought. When my wife suggested the recent remake, as a movie to see on our recent date night, I pretty much dismissed it out of hand. When I realised she wasn’t joking, I pretty much had that standard defence, “OK, you can pick the movie this time and I’ll pick it the next”. Usually we compromise and choose movies we both can live with.

We got to the cinema early, to pick up our tickets, with me secretly wishing they were sold-out, which was pretty unlikely, seeing as the movie came out in July. Sitting down to watch the movie, we ended up with a couple of girls behind us, in a pretty much empty screening. Incessant, giggling and kicking the backs of our seats, nearly resulted in me getting up and laying down the law for the rest of the movie. I needn’t have worried, within minutes of the movie, they must have got lost in the movie, because I didn’t have cause for concern for the rest of the movie.

I can’t go on with this review without mentioning newcomer Nikki Blonsky, the previously unknown actress, but undoubted star of the movie. Within moments of appearing, she electrifies the screen with her performance. It’s so abundantly clear that she’s enjoying herself and her confidence exudes from every pore.

Every macho inch of my being, tried hard to hate this film. It wasn’t my kind of film. I don’t like musicals. Camp is definitely not my thing. All of these things and more were constantly bombarding my subconscious, but to no avail. In spite of everything I couldn’t help but like and indeed enjoy this movie. My wife raved, telling me she wanted to get the movie when it came out and also the soundtrack. The soundtrack for me, was what really holds this movie together. The songs are very in keeping with the 1962 setting and are in keeping with the scenes and settings throughout. Not once did I ever think, this song sucks, or is too long.

As well as the relative unknown (not for long) Nikki Blonksy, the film boasts a whole host of stars, including Christopher Walken, Jerry Stiller, Amanda Bynes, Zac Effron and the inimitable john Travolta, looking like, well John Travolta in a drag. I understand John Travlota’s role is in keeping with the original movie, with the part being played then, by professional drag artists Divine, but for me there was something lacking, which I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Amanda Bynes also, while playing the perfect airhead, just didn’t gel with the rest of the cast, but these are really minor quibbles and don’t get in the way of the movie at all.

So why am I writing this? I think mainly to say, don’t let your preconceptions cloud your judgment. Sometimes it’s better to be open minded and be pleasantly surprised by a movie, than to go and watch the same old action / horror / sci-fi brain dead movies.