

Mockingbird goes 1.0, introduces real-time collaboration using OT and Node - boucher
http://blog.gomockingbird.com/10-and-real-time-collaboration

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zach
Used it, presented a site to a client with it, love it. The level of detail on
design elements is nice, so things can get blocked out without the
distractions of too-polished design (i.e. hundreds of icons, custom images).

Really appreciated and heavily used the grid update from a few months ago --
well implemented with the minimum amount of UI, like the rest of the app.

Highly recommended.

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dotBen
As a (freelance) product manager type person, I spend a fair amount of my time
designing wireframes...

I LOVE Balsamiq (another wireframing option), Peldi (balsamiq founder) is a
really nice guy and one of my companies even hosts some of their website...
but I've moved over to using Mockingbird for my own work. It's that good.

If you need to design wireframes, I encourage you to try Mockingbird.

~~~
rrhyne
I've never used balsamiq as I've always been happy with Mockingbird. They've
been really responsive over the only support issue I had as well.

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saikat
Hey guys, Saikat from Mockingbird here - I'd be happy to answer any questions
you might have about our operation transformation framework or about our
launch.

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millions
You keep doing great work with Mockingbird! However, a few things keep me in
Omnigraffle for now - the biggest issues I have is the lack of free drawing
tools and/or a much larger library of components, icons etc. I would also put
the ability to create interactivity within a page high on my wishlist -
Omnigraffle does this (albeit crudely) with the ability to hide/show layers.

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boucher
What ways would you envision for interactivity in addition to separate pages?

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millions
Realistically: The ability to show or hide objects on a page. This would make
creating things like tooltips, lightboxes, dialogues etc. a lot easier.

Ideally: I would like components to match their actual behaviour more closely,
e.g. a tab container would actually contain views in the respective tabs that
would be shown or hidden depending on the tab selected. I know this is no easy
feat - I have yet to find a wireframing tool that lets you infuse
interactivity as easily as one would like to, and I have been through a lot of
them.

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rakkhi
Really love Mockingbird, really made it easy for me to mockup what I wanted
for my startup app. Especially using offshore developers a picture really is a
1000 words. Looking forward to trying the new features

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patrickaljord
Link to the live collaboration demo:
<https://gomockingbird.com/mockingbird/demo.html>

edit: updated link to saikat's suggestion

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saikat
There are actually multiple demos going on. If you go to
<https://gomockingbird.com/mockingbird/demo.html> it will put you on one of
the projects via ghetto load balancing (read: redirect to one of the demo
projects at random).

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pluies
I used Mockingbird's beta in the beginning of the year for a project with 5
other colleagues, and it is pretty a pretty awesome web app. Hats off to you
two!

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ajessup
Nice work! Are these guys thinking about open sourcing the OT components? A
couple of us are starting up an npm module to allow generic OT using node.

<http://github.com/ajessup/pluto>
[http://www.dontstopthesignal.com/2010/05/design-goals-for-
pl...](http://www.dontstopthesignal.com/2010/05/design-goals-for-pluto-open-
source-ot.html)

~~~
saikat
Hey -- sorry, but we aren't planning on open sourcing our OT framework yet. I
would be more than happy to talk to you about about it though (my e-mail's in
my HN profile).

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hippo33
Congrats, Saikat and Sheena! This is very cool.

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djm
I used Mockingbird a while ago (& loved it) but since then I had forgotten all
about it.

I got the email notification about these upgrades this morning and it was
poorly written. You might want to re-visit the text and look it over. I've
deleted it now so can't quote you specifics but I remember seeing lines
advising that services would be available until Jan 2010 etc.

It would have also helped having a line at the top simply stating what
Mockingbird is for those of us who may have forgotten.

(great product though; I'll be trying it again now I've been reminded it
exists)

~~~
sheena
Thanks for the feedback. The date mixup was a typo that somehow escaped our
notice despite several re-readings, but good point about reminding users what
the service is. That you yourself think about your product daily is no reason
to entertain the fond hope that users sign up and then immediately frame a
screenshot of your site on their desk to gaze at lovingly, just waiting for
the next moment they can throw you a pageview.

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sudonim
Congratulations. The realtime collaboration is pretty slick. For us it's less
of a collaborative process and more I make the stuff and then send it for
review. Im looking forward to what myBalsamiq.com will offer.

The pain points in wireframing software are:

* organizing projects / groups of similar wireframes

* keeping track of versions

* allowing anyone on your team to get access to / update the latest file.

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xtacy
The centre canvas where things are dragged/dropped or drawn is pretty cool.
Did you guys create one yourself or is there a plugin that's available?

~~~
sheena
The whole app is written in Cappuccino. To be more precise, that canvas is a
custom CPView. :)

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sachinag
Pony request: change the size of the canvas. On my 13" MBP at 1280x800, there
are highly-fucking-irritating scrollbars for the canvas. This fucks me up a
lot. I'd love to be able to resize the canvas or "zoom out" so this didn't
happen. I don't actually need 960px to play with to design for a 960px wide
site.

Give me this tiny horse and I'll abandon Balsamiq. Thanks!

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boucher
You can resize by dragging the handles at the bottom, right, and bottom-right
edges. You can also use the chrome/safari full page zoom option to zoom out,
the application keeps working fine (though there are a few slight rendering
errors).

~~~
sachinag
HFS, I never knew about Chrome's full page option. Congrats, you won my
business.

Note: this is exactly like how 25% of AOL's support tickets involved issues
with Windows. Remember, your users are always dumber than you are.

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dnmurphy
HOw does the collaboration work? Is this part opf thre capuccino framework, on
your web site you mention google wave.

