When comparing Proto vs FluidUI, 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 Proto is ranked 9th. 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.
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Pros
Pro It allows you to use JSON animations (such as Lottie)
That's awesome.
Pro Has one of the largest gestural support libraries in the market
Proto supports one of the (if not the) largest gestural support libraries out of all the prototyping tools. With gestures such as:
- Pinchin/out
- Swipes
- Double tap
- Tap
- Hold
- Release
and more...
Pro Native prototype testing
Developers can build prototypes through the browser with Proto, but the testing itself is done on the devices. Proto has released native apps for both iOS and Android that developers to test their designs right on the native device itself.
Pro Easy to use with it's intuitive drag-and-drop interface
Proto is very easy to use even for beginners, or programmers who are not well-versed in Photoshop or Sketch or any other drawing application. With it's easy drag-and-drop interface and with a wide library of commonly used UI elements for Android and iOS, prototyping with Proto is very simple.
Pro Design and prototype all in one tool
Better UX to not switch between multiple tools.
Pro Preview prototypes on the device (e.g. iPhone, Android phone)
Pro User testing / screen recording capabilities
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.
Cons
Con The mobile app for previews doesn't look as good as the preview on the browser
That can be very disappointing. Once you have everything perfect the design becomes different when you open it on your mobile app.
Con Since it opens on browser, it can get very laggy
Once you start using lots of images, vectors and animations you can go into deep trouble.
Con Only a free trial
Other prototyping tools offer free plans to trial as long as one wants, but Proto only offers a trial that while has full functionality has a 15 day time limit.
Con Prototyping can be relatively slow
Proto's animations and interactions are very detailed. As far as prototyping goes Proto is probably the best tool to get as close to the actual app as possible. But this brings the downside that prototyping with Proto becomes quite slow and can take several hours to finish to get everything to work perfectly.