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Add to SafariWhen comparing Balsamiq vs Fireworks, the Slant community recommends Balsamiq for most people. In the question“What are the best mockup and wireframing tools for websites?” Balsamiq is ranked 2nd while Fireworks is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Balsamiq is:
All the Balsamiq UI elements are drawn by hand and have a really nice low-fidelity design.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Low-fidelity UI elements
All the Balsamiq UI elements are drawn by hand and have a really nice low-fidelity design.
Pro Clean and easy to use interface
Balsamiq has a very easy to use drag and drop interface that lets you quickly build and adjust your mockups. The UI is centered around low-fidelity wireframes that help focus the reviews on the core layout and functionality instead of getting hung-up on visual design.
Pro Large & extensible UI element library
Balsamiq has a built in library of over 75 built-in user interface components and 187 icons, as well as community generated plug-ins.
Pro Awesome team collaboration features
myBalsamiq has been built with teams in mind and has a variety of featured to support collaborating on the mockups:
Notifications - Real-time notifications to enable you to keep track of team member actions
Revision Control - All mockups have a revision history to enable reverting to previous versions and keeping track of design decisions.
Skype Integration - Easy to use Skype integration to host design reviews.
Access Control - Access controls allow sharing projects with team members as well as allowing external reviewers to leave comments on the designs.
Pro Usability testing features
You can link together pages to create shareable user demos
Pro 30-day trial available
Pro Keyboard shortcuts
You can use common keyboard shortcuts like Shift to select multiple elements or to resize while maintaing proportions, F2 for renaming labels etc.
Pro Can be used for the entire life-cycle of the design
From lo-fidelity wireframe, into clickable prototype and then assemble the images for the final hi-fi build as well.
Pro Layer Sharing
Features such as 'Layer Sharing' allows you to quickly update shared components such as headers across multiple pages. Other mockup tools such as Mockingbird will require you to manually propagate changes across all the pages.
Pro PSD compatible
Open PSD files
Pro Awesome Symbol Libraries
A significant advantage over web-app style mockup tools are the symbol libraries for Fireworks.
From boagworld:
Both symbols, styles and vector shapes can be saved for re-use and collected into useful library resources. In addition Fireworks ships with a common library of useful objects including buttons, browser and application elements for both Mac and Windows look and feel.
http://speckycdn.sdm.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/ui_templates_02.jpg
Cons
Con Stifling innovation
Doing anything that is not directly supported by Balsamiq's conservative component library is next to impossible. User is forced to think within the corset of yesterday's standards.
Con No easy way to quickly play with the product
Con Is being phased out
Adobe is ditching Fireworks. So those nasty bugs will never get fixed.
