
Pencil – an open-source GUI prototyping tool for all platforms - PleaseHelpMe
https://github.com/evolus/pencil
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jfaucett
Pencil is awesome. It is my goto prototyping and wireframing tool. I honestly
like it better than the other tools with price tags that I've used out there.
Somehow it seems noone knows about this, but its doing for mockups/wireframing
what Blender does for 3D artists - providing a high quality open source tool
that is usable by industry professionals. I hope pencil and their devs get
more recognition / funding.

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v3ss0n
using it and thinking about contributing it for long. The team did really
ambitious work of dumping XUL and rewriting it in Javascript + HTML. I was one
of the first user of new version since they hosted in gitlab , i was
astonished that they did the conversion from XUL within just around a month
and already working since then.

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cmrx64
I've been an occasional user of Pencil for 5 years (almost to the month).
Really glad to see it moving away from XUL.

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zmix
> Really glad to see it moving away from XUL.

Why?

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PleaseHelpMe
You may want to take a look at this [http://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-
changes-firefox-apis-de...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-changes-
firefox-apis-developers-unhappy/)

~~~
zmix
Yes, I know. I am one of those "unhappy developers". I had hoped to find some
reasoning behind OP's joy of getting rid of XUL. In my opinion XUL is what
made Pencil so attractive (native widgets, that can be stuffed with
behaviour), Using XUL and an add-on Pencil could have become a full fledged
GUI designer, using XSLT to export to various formats.

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dflock
Been using this for a while in it's various incarnations - this one is
definitely the best so far.

Very useful tool for UI prototyping.

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scanr
Pencil was my go to free wireframing app for some time. Great to see that they
are updating it.

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lj3
May I ask why you don't use it anymore?

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scanr
I still like it quite a lot but I find sharing content and collaborating is
easier in some of the other apps.

Note: I haven't tried the new version yet, so they may be working on this.

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v3ss0n
New Version have improved a lot in many areas. I find it a lot easier and
distraction free compare to other tools. It get things done easily ( Bootstrap
/ Material mockup UIs are KILLER!)

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vram22
I had used Balsamiq to design the forms/screens for a SaaS project for a
client (collaboratively with them), and it was not bad. IIRC, response was a
little laggy, which might have been because it was built using Adobe AIR (not
sure). (I got a free copy of it from Peldi under their scheme for people who
develop free / open source software projects.)

Has anyone tried Axure (paid product), and if so, how did you find it? Another
client that I did a project for, had claimed it was good, when I told him I
use Balsamiq.

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mbonzo
Hey everyone! Vim Girl here. I've just created a demo of Pencil! If you are
interested in seeing how pencil works I built a simple page:
[https://youtu.be/KTcYMvENb0k](https://youtu.be/KTcYMvENb0k)

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threepipeproblm
Pencil has many higher-res stencils now, but I prefer the old ones that
actually look like Pencil drawings.

I have also given this to clients, to have them draw their own UI concepts (as
a starting position / way of communicating) with good results.

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zitterbewegung
Wow looks better than balsamiq I will try this out at work.

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pjmlp
balsamiq is a fast compiled Flash application, this will be an Electron one,
and is XULRunner one currently.

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buithehoa
What's your point?

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pjmlp
Native versus web app.

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webmaven
Calling a compiled Flash app "native" is a bit of a stretch.

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pjmlp
Flash haters might not be aware, but Flash compiles to native code just like C
does.

Support was added to workaround Steve Jobs hate for it on iOS.

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webmaven
You can compile JS (or pretty much any other language, really) to native code
with sufficient effort. I'm not sure that alone is sufficient.

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brailsafe
Love pencil and started looking to contribute late last year. Unfortunately I
couldn't get it to build properly on MacOS. As a result I couldn't get
anything to run, and with practically no documentation at the time I
eventually moved on. Hopefully the situation has improved over the year. I'll
give it another go soon and see what can be done.

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kraig911
Sketch, Axure, Balsamiq.... and I still go back to Pencil + Illustrator after
all these years.

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vram22
How did you find Axure?

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mattkevan
I use Axure daily, but only after trying pretty much every other wireframing
and prototyping tool first. It always looked too ugly and expensive, the Word
of wireframing.

Having finally got to grips with it, in my experience it blows away everything
else. Nothing else compares in terms of features or workflow.

But it's still ugly and expensive.

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vram22
Interesting, thanks for the reply.

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sametmax
Very instable on Linux unfortunatly.

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buithehoa
Head over to their GitHub page and post your issue. They're pretty responsive.

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sametmax
I prefer to pay for a stable solution than spend my time on improving an
unstable one. Funny, when I was younger it was the contrary.

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v3ss0n
What do you mean by unstable ? The electron version is very smooth on linux.
The XUL version was quite slow. Electron version uses less resources .

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floatboth
Did they really need Electron for this? Why not just make it also available as
a normal web app with a URL?

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wst_
I see a lot of criticism around Electron. I honestly admit I am not a fan of
it - see Slack memory consumption. OTOH I am not experienced enough to be able
to judge the language as a whole. Could anyone not biased list pros and cons
of Electron here? If it is so bad as people say, why more and more Electron
apps pop up here and there?

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mhink
I'm probably a _bit_ biased in favor of Electron, but I feel like I can give a
pretty reasonable rundown of the pros and cons.

 __Pros: __\- Chromium is a mature, _open-source_ project which shows no signs
of going anywhere anytime soon. \- Electron allows web developers to use well-
understood tools (Chromium/v8, Node/v8) to build web applications with
additional, non-Web capabilities in a _predictable_ runtime environment. \-
Browsers are the most consistent (and consistently available) GUI environment
across platforms. \- Some of the bigger value-add capabilities
(filesystem/device access, windowing, native menus) don't necessarily benefit
from native code- the Electron and Node APIs are good enough. \- Electron is
well-documented, free as in beer, and there are a ton of examples and demo
apps.

 __Cons: __\- Memory usage, obviously. Chrome 's biggest selling point was its
ability to share resources among tabs (cutting down on memory requirements)
which goes straight out the window when each app needs its own instance of
Chromium. \- Disk usage, obviously. Each Electron package includes the entire
modified-Chromium binary it was built with. \- Many Electron apps fail to take
advantage of the main/renderer process split, because of the easy access to
Electron APIs inside renderer processes. \- Packaging/building/signing/auto-
updating still have a very poor developer experience, and are not consistent
across platforms. \- It's too easy to open up security holes by opening remote
resources in a renderer process with Node integration on. (Personally, if
there's one thing I'd change about Electron, this is it.)

To tell the truth, I see Electron as a stepping stone for the Javascript
community. It proves that there's great interest in doing cross-platform
native app development under Javascript. Personally, I'm hoping that after
React 16 (with Fiber) launches, we'll see work on a React Native-like
framework which fills the gap currently bridged by Electron.

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glasz
apps made with i-cant-learn-the-proper-language-so-i-just-use-one-thats-not-
made-for-the-job always feel and perform very badly. at least for me.

i mean they call out performance issues right in the first paragraph in the
readme.

terrible world of half-assed pseudo-native applications.

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nkozyra
"Can't learn" is rarely the issue. Supporting two or three separate native
apps is.

For some organizations this is manageable and the right move. For others,
resources need to be allocated otherwise and they take the path of least
resistance.

Most non technical people don't know the difference, aren't checking ram
usage, don't have philosophical opposition to writing desktop apps in a
browser, etc.

If my choice was between writing real native apps and slowing development
versus just getting something done, I'd choose the latter, particularly for a
project like this one. I understand the complaint, but in practice it's often
a developer's quibble.

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jasonkostempski
[http://www.fiftythree.com/pencil](http://www.fiftythree.com/pencil)
[https://www.apple.com/apple-pencil/](https://www.apple.com/apple-pencil/)

Kind of already an established name in the Apple world.

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inyorgroove
I recall using this for some prototype work around fall 2011. Apple's claim to
the word was moot before this application existed.

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buovjaga
Yep, the commit history in the old repo goes back to 2008:
[https://code.google.com/archive/p/evoluspencil/source/defaul...](https://code.google.com/archive/p/evoluspencil/source/default/commits?page=4)

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chris_wot
We really should considering using this in Libreoffice mockups :-)

