Page 1 of 1

GUi mockups?

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2014 9:11 pm
by Dewdman42
Just curious what some of you are using to mockup wxWidgets based apps. Doing it directly in wxCrafter seems a bit unweildy as it enforces rules about what can be contained in what, etc..and doesn't easily provide a way to just draw elements on a screen during the GUI design phase. wxCrafter is great for actually creating the working GUI of course. But for mocking up GUI ideas, seems a bit cumbersome. Just wondering what GUI mockup tools some of you have used to think through the GUI design before coming into wxCrafter or CodeLite in general to create wxWidget apps.

Re: GUi mockups?

Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2014 1:24 am
by Gibbon1
I'll probably be pelted with rotten fruit and banned from codelite forever but,

If I had to mock up a GUI real fast, as in just muck with layout, buttons, and text I'd swallow my ego and use the free version of Visual Studio + C#/.net.

Okay I lie, I use C#/.net to write really schlocky production test and configuration tools because it just works and it isn't Java.
I use codelite for my embedded stuff because my doctor was unwilling to prescribe enough Xanax for me to use Eclipse on daily bases without going mad.

Re: GUi mockups?

Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2014 3:01 am
by Dewdman42
yea I could use Xcode too I suppose (I'm on mac), though its kinda complicated to figure out when I'm not normally going to develop with that. But their GUI builder is a little bit more drag and drop-ish I think. At that point I think I'd rather just become more of a wxCrafter guru and do it there. Sometimes in wxCrafter you drop a panel or control and it doesn't show up on the little screen until you add things to it or set a min size or something like that, and no handles to drag things around intuitively. Or maybe I'm missing something?

But on the other hand, if I do it in wxCrafter, then it will already be ready when I have it designed and I can start plopping in real code. Plus you can preview it there without compile or code and get a general idea of the layout.

But really I'm looking for something to just try different layouts to see how it might look without having to bother with all the programming aspects during that phase.

One tool I found is called "pencil", http://pencil.evolus.vn. its pretty nice, but doesn't have quite all gui elements that are available under wxWidgets, though its possible for me or anyone to add anything we want to it, I'm not sure what's involved in that.