The Interactive Ideas Blog

Yesterday, ProtoShare 3.6 was released. The update brings with it many highly requested features, and also introduces the new Professional and Standard Plans. Additionally, ProtoShare now supports the Google Chrome browser, for both reviewers and editors. Chrome joins Safari 4 and Firefox 3 & 3.5 as browsers that are approved to work in the ProtoShare editor. As always, ProtoShare reviewers can also use Internet Explorer 7 and 8.

The Standard Plan received several new updates including a new rich text editor, speed and performance improvements, and the ability to store your assets in the palette. This allows images put in the Gallery folder in the Assets Library to appear at the bottom of the palette. You can then drag and drop them onto the page to work more quickly in the wireframe editor.

The Professional Plan, aside from having no more limits on projects and pages, contains all the updates to Standard, plus some highly-requested features.

• HTML Export – Access and run your projects offline, create and store archives, have a starting point for development. Further, because ProtoShare uses HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, your exported site will look and function EXACTLY like your ProtoShare prototype.
• Interactive Grid View component – A true interactive, configurable, sortable dynamic data grid.
• Interactive Tree View component – A hierarchical list of items that are configurable and clickable.

Director of Sales, Josh Chaney, put together this preview video to highlight the features’ benefits to effective, better prototyping. As usual, keep your ideas and feedback coming; we’ll continue to listen and deliver.

What does ProtoShare have in common with YouTube? 37 Signals? The country of Norway? And many other software companies and websites? They have all dropped support for Internet Explorer 6 (IE6). Protoshare 3.5, released on 23 August, is not IE6 compliant; we’ve provided support and assistance during the transition. However, as of today, 15 September 2009, ProtoShare is officially dropping support for IE6. This should come as no surprise to most users as ProtoShare is a sophisticated web-based application, and IE6 simply does not support many of the fundamental features necessary to properly use the tool. And, no, this isn’t an anti-Microsoft thing. Even Microsoft itself is encouraging companies, and individuals, to upgrade. More proof? Do a search on Google  for “IE6″ or “Microsoft IE6″ and you’ll get the AdWords ad (at left), directing users to move to IE8, with the heading of “Ie6 No More.”

As many others have already commented on, developing for IE6 takes a lot of resources to keep up with the old-quirky-non-compliant-innovation-stifling browser that can’t support basics like CSS2. Instead of listing all the reason why we must move past IE6, here are some links to recent stories and posts on the matter.

http://mashable.com/2009/07/16/ie6-must-die/

http://www.bringdownie6.com/bring-down-ie-6.html

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/06/internet.explorer.six/index.html

As usual, ProtoShare continues to support and function in IE7 and IE8 for Review mode, and Firefox and Safari for both Review and Developer mode. Chrome support is still in beta.

UPDATE: (Tuesday, 25 August, 14:12 PDT) ProtoShare upgrade issues were fixed last night, and the tool is performing very well. Thanks for all your feedback and compliments. You can always keep up-to-date with us on Twitter.

(Monday, 24 August, 10:11 PDT) ProtoShare was successfully upgraded to version 3.5 on early Sunday morning. So far, it all looks to have gone well; however, a few customers have reported issues in creating new or archiving projects. The engineers have identified the cause of the issue, and should have a fix published by the end of today. As always, if you have any issues or need assistance, don’t hesitate to contact our customer service team. Thanks.

Original Post:

We’ve been hard at work on the next ProtoShare – Version 3.5 (code name: Hungry Hippo) – that arrives on Sunday, 23 August. The new release has many valuable new features like editor support for the Safari 4 browser, native cut/copy and paste, numerous speed and performance improvements and, most importantly, enhanced ability to use ProtoShare for more stages of your development process and work flow.  Earlier this week, Director of Sales, Josh Chaney gave a preview of ProtoShare 3.5, below are the quick video highlights.

The new feature that significantly increases the tool’s flexibility and value is multiple layouts per page. ProtoShare 3.5 supports multiple wireframes, design comps, and live site views per page.

This support allows you to use ProtoShare throughout all stages of your development process:

• Pull a website(s) into ProtoShare to collaboratively workshop, discuss, reference, or brainstorm ideas and concepts before you start wireframing
• Create and test multiple wireframes and layouts on the same page
• Upload design comps (even add hyperlink regions on top of the artwork and give your reviewers a more interactive experience.)
• Pull in the site while in development to collaboratively make comments, monitor, or compare to the approved prototype and creative

Native cut/copy and paste works like you’d expect: control/command-C to copy, and control/command-V to paste. However, once copied to the clipboard, you can paste the selection anywhere within ProtoShare. Paste it to another page, another template, another project, or even into another account.

The speed improvements and performance enhancements are discussed in the video, and will be detailed in release notes. Take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the new features of ProtoShare 3.5. We think you’ll like what you see, and like it even more when you use it.

Want a quick, easy,  significant (and free) way to speed up the performance of ProtoShare? Download and install FireFox 3.5. Because ProtoShare is a web-based tool that uses JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, your browser is responsible for a lot of the speed and performance you experience when displaying and building pages in ProtoShare. So what’s the difference between the new and old? According to Mozilla, Firefox 3.5 renders JavaScript twice as fast as version 3.0. It also accesses and manipulates the DOM more than twice as fast as Firefox 3. Okay, so lots of stats but what does it mean in the real world? It means a faster, smoother, and better prototyping and collaboration experience in ProtoShare and, for that matter, most likely better performance in all your web-based services.  So give a whirl to the new combination of ProtoShare and Firefox 3.5, and experience the difference of a better browser.

P.S. Full ProtoShare editor support (currently in beta) for Safari 4, also a very high performance browser, is coming soon. Look for it in the next release mid-August. And Chrome to soon follow. As always, keep in mind that ProtoShare reviewers can use most popular browser to review and comment on work.

We have an exciting new proof of concept in ProtoShare: the iPhone Prototype component. As we looked around at the iPhone prototyping market, we saw that there really is no way to pull up an interactive prototype on the iPhone. No way to experience the real interactions on the phone in user experience testing. And then we were talking to our office suite mates who happen to be a group of pretty well known and accomplished iPhone consultants and application developers, Raven Zachery’s Small Society. (Anyone see the new Zipcar app at WWDC last week?) Anyhow, they pointed out that having an interactive prototype natively viewable on the iPhone would be a big help when working with clients. They use wireframes now, but sometimes it’s difficult for customers to get the feel for an app if it’s not on the iPhone.

With that in mind, one of our engineers took a look at ProtoShare, spent a few days developing a concept, and came up with an implementation. Since ProtoShare is an HTML-based web application—not Flash—we can easily produce viewable and navigable wireframes for the iPhone. The component he developed is basically a container in which you build your wireframes, it also makes the prototype look and behave like an iPhone app when viewed through Safari on your iPhone.

Keep in mind that this component is still a proof of concept. However, we wanted to get it out there so people could take a look at it and give us feedback on what would be necessary to make this a useful feature. Do you want this? What do you need for this implementation to really work? What are the absolute necessities? What do you want to see?  Do you want a iPhone application that integrates with ProtoShare? Let us know any and all feedback at in the forum.

Check out the videos below that demo how the component currently works. Some features we’re currently working on:  orientation awareness, better transitions, and easier workflows for building the prototypes. Stay tuned….there’s a lot more to come.

How the ProtoShare iPhone Component Works

An Advanced iPhone Prototype using CSS3