Home > Sketchables > Announcing Sketchables – Rapid Mockup Creation with SketchFlow

Announcing Sketchables – Rapid Mockup Creation with SketchFlow

SketchFlow is a great addition to Blend, but I was missing the ability to create quick mockups of user interfaces. I’m a huge fan of productivity tools such as Balsamiq, and I was sorely missing its ease and speed in SketchFlow.

Meet Sketchables. Sketchables is a simple framework complemented by a set of controls that allow you to quickly create common controls in a matter of seconds. Here’s a screenshot from one of the samples, which was created in just a few minutes:

image

 

…and here’s a complementary recording that shows how the above mockup was created:

 

 

 

Sketchables will be free software, requires Blend 4 RTM and fully supports both WPF and Silverlight SketchFlow projects. Version 1.0 is approaching completion, so I hope I’ll be able to release it as soon as Blend 4 goes live.

Still time for you to slip in some last-minute feature requests though 😉


  1. Stefan
    May 24th, 2010 at 19:04 | #1

    Hi Philipp, thanks for sharing this awesome tool. Still, you mentioned it requires Blend 4 RTM? AFAIK, there’s only Blend 4RC available…? Anyway I look formard to seeing this live. Thanks again.
    Stefan

  2. May 24th, 2010 at 19:12 | #2

    Hi Stefan,

    You are right, there’s currently only the RC available. As this version caused a few design time issues that have been fixed in the internal build, I’ll wait for the RTM before releasing Sketchables. Should be quite soon though 🙂

    Cheers,
    Philipp

  3. Justin
    June 6th, 2010 at 04:38 | #3

    Really looking forward to this – I was even looking for sketchstyles for Visio 2010 but this is even better!

  4. Ozz
    June 7th, 2010 at 16:35 | #4

    Thanks Phil. Looking forward to this!

  5. June 8th, 2010 at 21:43 | #5

    Looks very nice, I’m going to re-tweet this one… 😉

    Please note that your blog is missing re-tweet buttons (and Digg if you take it to the next level).

  6. June 8th, 2010 at 22:43 | #6

    Appreciated, Tom 😉
    (and yes, the buttons would definitely make sense)

  7. June 9th, 2010 at 11:38 | #7

    That does look pretty damned awesome. Best of luck with this project.

    Regards,
    Colin E.

  8. June 10th, 2010 at 08:56 | #8

    Hi Colin,

    Thanks for your kind words! I’ll be totally swamped until next week, but will publish the project by the end of the week. Looking forward to your (and the other Disciples’) feedback 🙂

  9. Brian
    June 11th, 2010 at 00:06 | #9

    Greatly looking forward to this! Good work.

  10. Pete
    June 14th, 2010 at 19:15 | #10

    Really looking forward to checking this out -may I ask what the timeframe is for the Sketchables release?

    Cheers

  11. June 14th, 2010 at 21:20 | #11

    Pete,

    I’m currently working on an emplyer’s site but will return Wednesday and then have time to finalize the first bits. I’m planning to release next Monday, maybe earlier.

  12. Pete
    June 15th, 2010 at 06:12 | #12

    Awesome!! Thank you.

  13. June 16th, 2010 at 13:10 | #13

    Hello Philipp,
    Awesome yes – me too I’ve been hesitant on moving from Balsamiq to Sketchflow because I found it is still too cumbersome for quick mockup. Please let me know if you need testers, I would be happy to help since I could use this great tool right now for current project !! And many thanks for finally (!) giving Sketchflow a useable grid, but one real important thing that is still missing still is: treeview?
    Best Regards, Riix
    Toronto, Ontario

  14. June 16th, 2010 at 16:17 | #14

    Riix,

    I’m afraid you’re gonna have to wait a few days more, but after that, feedback will be greatly appreciated.

    TreeView is pretty high up my list as well, but don’t expect it in June. July, well, that’s another story 😉

  15. Pete
    June 24th, 2010 at 10:08 | #15

    Hello Philipp,
    Is there a download link available yet ?

    Cheers

  16. July 2nd, 2010 at 15:18 | #16

    Philipp:
    Your video preview is so enticing I featured you in an article just published on Simple-Talk.com — see “Creating WPF Prototypes with SketchFlow” (http://www.simple-talk.com/dotnet/.net-tools/creating-wpf-prototypes-with-sketchflow/).

  17. Loren Erickson
    July 2nd, 2010 at 19:26 | #17

    I too have been using Balsamiq, but it’s missing a few key capabilities that make it somewhat cumbersome to use, such as being able to truly componentize elements of a wireframe. Expression 4 is a great design tool in this and other regards and I can hard wait for a download of Sketchables to be available. +1 for the tree view from me as well.

  18. July 3rd, 2010 at 01:21 | #18

    Wow! I’m really looking for this release, been using Balsamiq for a long time and hesitated to use Sketchflow until I saw this 🙂 Great job!

  19. July 8th, 2010 at 16:27 | #19

    Just went through a largish design project with Balsamiq and while I like it, it leaves much to be desired for interactivity. Axure RP is much easier to make “clicky wireframes” although somewhat slower to draw in than Balsamiq. Digging into Sketchflow and really, really looking forward to Sketchables. Any ETA on it yet?

  20. July 11th, 2010 at 05:08 | #20

    So it’s July now, and Blend 4 is live… can I add my humble voice to the chorus asking for Sketchables?

  21. July 11th, 2010 at 23:54 | #21

    Sorry for the delay and being silent – it has been a few horribly busy weeks. Sketchables is progressing well and will be officially released this week. For the impatient, the preview release can be found here:

    http://www.hardcodet.net/uploads/projects/sketchables/sketchables.zip
    Minor issue: If you create a new project, compile immediately after having set the references to the Sketchables’ DLL. Otherwise, you’ll get font issues. If you didn’t and don’t have the Sketch font rendered, just restart Blend and you’re good.

    Cheers
    Philipp

  22. July 12th, 2010 at 12:43 | #22

    Nice! Downloading it now. Great concept, and thanks for your hard work. And I’ve always said, if someone does you a favor, you don’t complain about how they do it. 🙂

  23. July 14th, 2010 at 11:38 | #23

    @Philipp Sumi
    I’ve been watching this for a while with great anticipation Phillip. Just downloaded and installed it.
    It’s brilliant!!!!
    I’ve been on the TAP program for Blend / Sketchflow and it’s one of the best selling features for Blend that I’ve seen
    You are amazing. I agree with the comments on the WPF disciples group – you deserve an MVP. You should get yourself on the BizSpark program to get your MSDN goodies
    I’m doing interaction design for my project and will start using it immediately. I can be ones of your testers

  24. July 14th, 2010 at 12:34 | #24

    Geoff,

    Thanks for your kind words – I’m looking forward to improving the framework 🙂

    Bizspark is a nice idea – I need to look into that. Regarding testing: I’ll keep you up-to-date with future previews in case I don’t post them to the Blend or Disciples board anyway. Happy coding!

  25. July 20th, 2010 at 14:05 | #25

    Hi Philipp,
    I’m using your interim release for interaction design on our project and it’s going really well. Sketchables is really making a big difference in productivity especially the DataGrid.
    I’m not a dev so have just used the binaries, but can you tell me what the “SketchableDataForm” is used for. All of the other Sketchable assets have nice example content, but the SketchableDataForm has none 🙁
    Also is there a way to change the font size of the content of a “sketchable”?
    I’ll look forward to the release version

  26. July 20th, 2010 at 22:45 | #26

    Hi Geoff,

    The DataForm is now obsolete and will be removed in the final build. It basically did what SketchableTable does now.

    Regarding the font size: I will adjust it for some controls (e.g. in order to fit in the data grid), but they are controlled through SketchFlow’s own SketchStyles dictionary (I don’t provide my own in order to support the official one). If you want to globally change fonts, you should go through these styles.

  27. Steve
    July 21st, 2010 at 18:42 | #27

    Hi Philipp,

    This is great stuff and your hard work is appreciated. Just a small bug to report. It appears that the data grid rearranges the rows in it when you scroll (kind of odd). To reproduce, create a data grid with say 20 rows (number them 1 to 20 so you can see the order easily), and then have it sized to show only the first 10 or so. Run time vertical scrolling up and down will start doing some rearranging the order of the rows. For example if you scroll down a couple and back up a couple, the rows re-rendered at the top are different than they were originally. Let me know if you can’t repro. Thanks

  28. July 21st, 2010 at 18:45 | #28

    Steve,

    Thanks a lot for the bug report! This one sounds familiar, I think it’s in the SL data grid, isn’t it? There’s probably not too much I can do about it if it turns out to be the control, but I will definitely look into it.

    Cheers,
    Philipp

  29. Mike
    September 10th, 2010 at 21:49 | #29

    @Philipp Sumi
    Hi Philipp,
    Sketchables are great and very helpful – thanks for releasing.
    Is there a way to change the font size in the data grid?

    Thanks,
    Mike

  30. Will Jones
    September 23rd, 2010 at 20:03 | #30

    Great Job! The only thing I noticed is I can’t seem to change the font size of any of the text in the data grid. If I modify the Text settings under the properties tab for the datagrid control it has no effect on how large the text is or what font its rendered in. The font its rendered in really isn’t that big of a deal, but font size is forcing a scroll bar, when if I could just reduce font size a bit I wouldn’t need one. (Also, the text appears larger in the control than any of the other text on my page so seems a little odd.) Other than this, its much quicker and easier than setting up a data binding.

    Thanks for the good work…
    -Will

  31. sergun
    September 28th, 2010 at 13:03 | #31

    Hi, Philipp,

    I really like sketchables!!!

    But when I export my blend project to MS Word (2007) all columns in all sketchable datagrids are narrowed.. Can you please advise some workaround.

    Regards,
    Sergey.

  32. October 1st, 2010 at 03:40 | #32

    Philipp,
    Is it possible to use Blend sample data with the Sketchables datagrid?

    Thanks,
    Tony

  33. Ramzi
    October 14th, 2010 at 18:55 | #33

    Simple question…. which .dlls do I need to Add to my SketchFlow Project in Expression Blend 4?

    What is the proper way to import your controls?

  34. phen
    May 6th, 2012 at 12:26 | #34

    Ramzi :Simple question…. which .dlls do I need to Add to my SketchFlow Project in Expression Blend 4?
    What is the proper way to import your controls?

  1. June 7th, 2010 at 17:14 | #1
  2. June 8th, 2010 at 17:10 | #2
  3. June 9th, 2010 at 15:54 | #3
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  6. March 4th, 2011 at 16:47 | #6