When comparing FluidUI vs Animation Desk, the Slant community recommends FluidUI for most people. In the question“What are the best tools for prototyping mobile interactions/animations?” FluidUI is ranked 6th while Animation Desk is ranked 19th. The most important reason people chose FluidUI is:
The learning curve is relatively low compared to other software that supports animations/transitions. Both building the wireframes and designing the interactions is all drop and drag.
Specs
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Pros
Pro User friendly
The learning curve is relatively low compared to other software that supports animations/transitions. Both building the wireframes and designing the interactions is all drop and drag.
Pro Tools for team collaboration
Work with your team on a design. Connect on live video calls and chat or add comments.
Pro Supports realistic gestures & transitions
You can simulate all the typical iOS gestures such as tap, double tap, swipe & long hold. These gestures then can trigger animated transitions such as sliding, fading, pop in, & flip. This enables you to create very realistic interactable demos of your app. Checkout the demo page for some examples.
Pro Awesome version control
Every action you or your team takes automatically creates a revision you can easily revert to.
Pro Provides UI assets from all the versions of iOS
The UI library is huge and very high quality. All the UI required to design iO7 apps is included as well as iOS 6 and basic wireframing elements. For example in iOS7 it provides:
- Backgrounds
- Navigation & status bars
- Layouts (list pickers, maps, keyboards, scroll etc)
- Controls
- Typography
- Icons
Pro Fast
Using the app is feels very snappy.
Pro Free forever for a single project & 10 screens
They have a very reasonable free tier with the paid versions starting at $12/month.
Pro Lets you test on an iPhone as well as in the browser
You can preview your designs live in the browser as well as send them to a mobile device to better simulate the UX.
Pro Makes it easy to plan out the app workflow
Fluid isn't just about wireframing static screens. You can plan out all the user flows and then define the transitions between them. This is really handy for planning out the entire user workflow.
Pro Quick sketch
Great for light sketches, and some drafting for your animation.
Pro Free to use
Some features may require purchases but the app free as is, and works fine.
Pro Works on different platforms
It supports almost every major platforms, so working on iOS, Android, and Windows devices is not a problem.
Pro Photoshop compatible
Supports PSD file import/export, can export your draft to Photoshop easily for further works.
Cons
Con Android version is not as extensive as the iOS version
Some of the options that are present in the iOS version of Animation Desk Cloud aren't integrated in the Android application. For example, features such frame labeling isn't available.