Win a free license for FlairBuilder, wireframing and prototyping tool

The importance of wireframing and prototyping in designing process is more than significant. These tools enable you to explore different ideas and test them before proceeding with next stages in the process. FlairBuilder, a tool for wireframing and prototyping can ease the job of creating interactive, testable prototypes. You have the chance to win a free license of FlairBuilder, thanks to its creator, Cristian Pascu.

Important note: the giveaway is closed.

A quick introduction to the tool

It is a prototyping tool that helps you create interactive and testable wireframes and prototypes with ease. With more than 50 available elements you will have more than needed to easily create wireframes. But the real power of FlairBuilder is in interactivity. You can define custom events for some of the elements and quickly create interactive, testable prototype.

Creating a project structure is very easy which will enable you to stay organized even with very complex prototypes. You can easily change between sketch and line art mode at any point of time which give you the ability to emphasize the fidelity of wireframes. Once you are finished, you can just switch to preview mode and test your prototypes. No compilation, no browsers.

I recommend you the check out coming soon page and see some nice features that will make this tool even more powerful in the future.

There is more to say about FlairBuilder but I will suggest you to download the trial version and explore its features.

The contest and how to participate

I am giving away two licenses for FlairBuilder to readers who leave the comment at the end of this post and share their experiences with wireframing and prototyping. If you don't have any experience, that is just fine - it is the right time to learn about it. You can also tweet about this contest.

Two winners will be selected randomly with help from random.org and announced on Monday, March 8th 2010 12:00PM (GMT +1).

Good luck!

Update: The winners are

Congratulations to the winners, and I hope we will hear their impressions soon :) Thanks everyone for participating and leaving valuale comments. It was really great to see different stories regarding wireframing and prototyping process.

More articles in Blog archive or elsewhere

Jon 05 Mar 2010 #

I need all the UI help I can get. I'm a coder, not a designer ;)

Diego Malatesta 05 Mar 2010 #

Well I told you in a mail about the straight lines and the inspiration you gave me

I'm starting to draw a bit, even for some projects at work where wireframing isn't really needed anymore, just to exercise.

It's fun! I'm really fascinated with wireframes, I think they look beautiful on their own, better if hand drawn.

Cristian Pascu 05 Mar 2010 #

Hello everyone,

This is Cristian, the developer of FlairBuilder. I'm not running for the contest, I just wanted to wish you all good luck and say that I look forward to giving away a couple of licenses. I also am very interesting in knowing your thoughts about wireframing/prototyping, low vs. high fidelity and all.

And last, but not least, thank you Janko for your awesome blog and opportunity to give away stuff for free.

Cheers,
Cristian

Janko 05 Mar 2010 #

Hey Cristian, thank you for the great tool!

Colin Dean 05 Mar 2010 #

I'm always interested in learning new ways to improve my prototyping presentation. I typically do my prototyping with GIMP or just do it in HTML 'cause I sometimes don't really know exactly what I want and like to play around with how things look in a more programmatic way.

Abdelhadi Touil 05 Mar 2010 #

I'd like to have such tool because it will helps me to make nice websites. I'm just beginner but I hope have it
Thanks and good luck.

Eduardo Ortega 05 Mar 2010 #

Paper and pencil tools have always been my favorite. In recent years I go to the board and post it. I finally employment Expression Design with Control Templates and frames that I built. I also use Sketch-Flow.

Steve 05 Mar 2010 #

This is exactly what I've been looking for!

I've tried so many things in the past:
  - pencil and paper (impossible to make large revisions without redrawing everything)
  - Visio (not meant for web applications)
  - Powerpoint (can't easily design beyond basic shapes)
  - a simple website mockup (too much work/too easy to get distracted with the details)
  - image editor + layers (no interaction with the design)

Steve

Enrico 05 Mar 2010 #

Getting closer to UI design but still not that convinced.
Would be cool to give it a try with a good software though.

Nicolas Pascual 05 Mar 2010 #

i'm joining to the contest!
Thanks Janko & Cristian for this oportunity to try the application.

Like other visitor says, i am a developer, and design process gets very complicated or slowy for me.
I hope that i can get my prototypes more quickly with FlairBuilder.

Dino Rastoder 05 Mar 2010 #

hi,
I like very much idea of prototyping because it helps me to talk with designers. I'm web developer and in my company we start using prototyping. We use paper for now but I think that good software is necessary. FlairBuilder seem to be nice tool, it has nice list of features.

Göran 05 Mar 2010 #

This is my comment!

phoeb 06 Mar 2010 #

this is cool, me want
Having a nice prototyping tool for both application and web ui design would be something

OndroNR 06 Mar 2010 #

Not using wireframes yet but I would like to try them

Tribak 06 Mar 2010 #

I'm actually using Balsamiq Mockups and I like to know what is new in FlairBuilder

John 06 Mar 2010 #

Thanks for sharing, I have a trouble to integrate the layer, maybe I'm just a new and not familiar....

Brian Boatright 06 Mar 2010 #

I've tried Flairbuilder and Balsamiq and settled on Flairbuilder after quick run through both. Flairbuilder will also import Balsamiq projects.

So far I've just built one mockup of our user group site which needed an update. It has one masterpage and 6 subpages and a reusable navigation menu. It was pretty quick and easy to do especially when you figure out a few of the tricks shown in the example mockup. You can make masterpages and a new feature as of this week is iPhone projects and related widgets. Check out the blog post on the new iPhone project features www.flairbuilder.com/.../

Torsten 06 Mar 2010 #

that seems to be a very helpful tool!
by now, we do all wireframing by hand or with illustrator.
i'm curious to try flairbuilder.
thanks for this giveaway.

torsten

Troels 06 Mar 2010 #

A truly amazing tool that could change the way I work. I want it.

Andrew Perry 06 Mar 2010 #

Way back years ago, I never used to do mockups, but used to take the "just dive in and start coding" approach. I guess it's obvious to those with design training that this is generally a bad idea, and these days I resist the temptation to code a UI before I have at least a simple mockup - I'm much happier with the results as a consequence

I've gone from using pencil and paper, to using Inkscape, to using Mockingbird (mostly for Android applications .. it's not ideally suited, but it works). FlairBuilder looks like a logical next step, if I ever find myself doing lots more UI design. I'm hoping someone comes up with some standard Android widgets for prototyping, similar to the in-built iPhone offerings.

Oskari Grönroos 06 Mar 2010 #

I have so far found wireframing clumsy and timeconsuming with the tools I currently have and therefore frankly not worth the time. However, maybe a specialized tool like this would definitely come in handy and would start me wireframing more. Count me in for the competition!

Marko Randjelovic 06 Mar 2010 #

Cool contest, Janko.

I don't really have any experience with prototyping although I am leaning towards the approach. Getting a cool tool to do that might be the final push needed to get me into it.

Omaha Homes 06 Mar 2010 #

Nice contest.

I'm a designer and looking forward to win this contest and take away the FlairBuilder.

I have not worked on prototyping so far but after reading your review, I just want to work on this platform.

webbografico 06 Mar 2010 #

I used a wireframe on my last project for the first time in my life and I think it'll change my way of work. You loose 2/3 hours of wok time before opening photoshop and gain a lot more hours by knowing where to put things on the mockup and you can be really more productive in your workflow. I will use it every time from now on. I currently use a pencil and a piece of paper (with a 960.gs grid wireframe printed on it) and i'm really interested in using an app for doing that so I thank you for this giveaway...

cheers

georg 06 Mar 2010 #

very interesting concept. I'll give it a try. thanks. cheers

Johann 06 Mar 2010 #

I've used Balsamiq Mockups a lot in the past. For me, it's even faster than drawing ideas on paper.
The mockups were then given to users to discuss.
Working with mockups makes it really easy to get quick feedback and ideas from users who might not have enough time for a full usability test.

Nic Rosental 06 Mar 2010 #

I just did a 5 minute trial and I'm definitely pleased with it; I've been looking for wireframing tool and FB is certainly a contender. I wouldn't mind a freebie either.

Silviya 06 Mar 2010 #

So far I've been using mainly pen and paper...and Balsamiq Trial a couple of times. Would like to try something else, coz pen and paper is not the best way at all.

JohnS 06 Mar 2010 #

This is a great looking product. The trial is impressive. I will definitely find a way to work it into a future project, providing I win a free license that is!

Core Studios 06 Mar 2010 #

I'm joining too. It's time to learn about wireframing
Good luck

Susan 06 Mar 2010 #

Recently I've been framing and prototyping in HTML because of some extremely rapid development.

Having completed those contracts and going back to breathing occasionally, I did the download. Loved it. Would like to own it, but since I'm looking for my next contract...

Thanks for the chance.

Dhruv 06 Mar 2010 #

I'm a UI/UX designer based in arizona, and I've been using Axure RP Pro for over couple years now and cant stop praising its usefulness. However, while designing wireframes and prototypes, I do feel there's something missing, and Firstbuilder also has some cool features like creating a folder structure etc, which may help developers undersand the flow of module based components etc also. I'd love to give it a try and give my honest review as I always give my opinion on Axure on my tweets. I'd like to see if this application compares with the flexibility of Axure RP Pro

Thanks,
Dhruv

Andrei 06 Mar 2010 #

Wow, this is a very interesting application. I'd definitely want to give it a try. ;)
I usually do my website mock-ups on paper and then when I'm happy with the design, I transfer it to Photoshop. Then, while I work on it, I also develop the basic HTML structure in parallel.

Sid 06 Mar 2010 #

I usually find it easiest to just sketch quickly by hand. Tried some online tools but haven't stuck to any so far.

Andrew 06 Mar 2010 #

Don't have much experience with this type of stuff. But I would love to be able to prototype before completely updating the coding, etc. I am a visual thinker, so I usually conceptualize in my head first, but that can only go so far! At times I think something will look a certain way, or work out first, until I see it up and running and have to rework it all on the fly because it's already been published live haha. Oh well best of luck to everyone!

DJ 06 Mar 2010 #

I am a designer and through this contest i learned about this program and i am going to install it and try it.
Hope i win.
:o)

Dibyendu 06 Mar 2010 #

Tutorial City 07 Mar 2010 #

I usually use a blank A4 paper to start my sketchs. I don't make it perfect, but put the main ideas in it, and then I go to Photoshop. ;)

webmasterdubai 07 Mar 2010 #

today is the last and lucky day as number 7, i hope i will get this give away from janko

Federico 07 Mar 2010 #

I will very much like to learn how to use this wireframing tool. I hope i can win the contest.

Visualpro 07 Mar 2010 #

I use pen and paper to do my sketches and wireframes. They are just for me and I do not show them to anyone (especially not my clients). When I code a prototype (gray box method) directly in the browser for user interaction/ textflow etc.

I'm not sure why I want to change this workflow with a step in between, especially if I can use my prototype to code the final site. But hey I'm always willing to learn something new and check new possibilities.

Jochen 07 Mar 2010 #

Hey, thanks for this great oportunity! I do gladly participate.

I'm a designer so I can mock everything up in photoshop pretty easy – but: I'd allways recommend to do wireframing. Often enough in thas stage one recognizes some quirks in the ui, especially when you're dealing with something more complex.

Matias 07 Mar 2010 #

I tried omnigrafle and moqups, or something like this..
But Adobe air run not so fresh in mac.

Will like to test this one too...
Thanks

paul Rostorp 07 Mar 2010 #

I'm in, I'd really like to win this, looks awesome.

thanks,

Andy 07 Mar 2010 #

I'm still learning the web design process.  I have experience in Electrical Engineering and spend my free time researching Web 2.0 technology, marketing, and aesthetics.

I have been using Word for my web layout specs, as this was the most accessible tool. The layouts have to be approved by the execs before they end up in the hands of a programmer.  I need to speed up the layout process so that programming can begin.

Word can prove to be a little obtuse and I spend too much time moving simple elements around and creating seperate files for each page.  Word also makes it hard to visual how the page will actually look in a browser.  I would love to have a tool like FlairBuilder to increase efficiency and enhance collaboration.  Plus, I'd like to use a real web design tool rather than a word processor.

Navierstokes 07 Mar 2010 #

I have developed prototypes/mockups in Illustrator, Gimp and HTML, all methods seem to have different advantages but I am yet to find a workflow that really suites my needs.

I have found that people generally mistake the prototypes for full blown applications - therefore wireframing appeals to me.

As other users have noted, widget sets for alternate UI paradigms (e.g touch focused rather than WIMP) is of great interest - especially for widgets that harness features of the devices that do not have a direct correlation when running the prototype on a desktop PC i.e multitouch based controls.

Henrik Stenbæk 07 Mar 2010 #

At my work we make wireframes instead of writing requirement specifications. We (actually not me but the user experience expert) use a program named Axure for this process. One very important feature, at least for me as a web-developer, is that Axure is able to produce a Word document with an overview of the site including lists of interactions and screenshots. It’s easier for me as a developer to check a list of interactions rather than to need to find hidden features by clicking thought the whole prototype (hidden features = mouse over tool tips, right click menus etc.)

In my hobby programming projects I original used PowerPoint for wire framing but lately I have moved to using Visio (in two cases I have downloaded Axture and created the wireframes within the trail period – oops..) But I surely consider FlairBuilder as a candidate for my future prototyping as the pricing is more reasonable for a hobby programmer.

One of FlairBuilder forces, as I see it, is that it is not able to export to HTML. I have a couple of times experienced that non-technical customers had difficulty understanding that we needed more time to make the actual version of the site: the prototype they saw in their browser worked fine after all and they could navigate around, fill out forms and everything

One thing I’m missing after using FlairBuilder a few days: I spend much time finding the components I want to use in my prototype. Maybe I should just get used to using the search function ... perhaps it would be nice to have a possibility to filter so you only see the last used components or components already used in the current project - on the other hand: I have not yet looked in vain for a component - which is more than I'm used to

Mateo 07 Mar 2010 #

I am new to web and UI design and found you through Smashing Magazine. I am working on learning Wireframing right now and found the vector tools you posted very helpful in learning how to lay out a project easily without any coding.

Ramesh Soni 08 Mar 2010 #

I haven't used any wire-framing tool yet but I would like to use one..

Nebbercracker 08 Mar 2010 #

I need a tool to do better wireframing. Pick me please

sergey 08 Mar 2010 #

My usual wireframing takes place on a piece of paper with a pencil

Sig 08 Mar 2010 #

prototyping is a key step on my development cycle. I love to show my clients as early as possible how the final product will look like.

Jakub 08 Mar 2010 #

It's high time to get serious with wireframing ;)

Ffredrik 08 Mar 2010 #

It's time for me to drop the pencil and start using a sophisticated
tool.

mhd zaher ghaibeh 08 Mar 2010 #

hi :
well i use the normal papers to do my prototyping and wireframing since i found many tools but most of them is much more complected.
any way i might change my mind

thanks ...

Basti 08 Mar 2010 #

Starting my first website project next week, would be perfect timing. Right now i'm planing on using pancil and paper

David Boyer 08 Mar 2010 #

I don't do enough prototyping / wireframing for my projects due to lack of time and tools. Looking at this program though I could see it being very useful for me and help make the time issue irrelevant.

Ashit 08 Mar 2010 #

Awesome source for learning UI / UX stuff...

Meilin Wong 08 Mar 2010 #

I've tried the free version of Flairbuilder and loved it... but the limit of 7 pages made me want the full version. Unfortunately I can't buy it for the moment, so it would be great to win

Art 08 Mar 2010 #

I just started using Flairbuilder - nice tool. Compared to Foreui, the interface seems cleaner and performance a bit faster, and the event handling is more sophisticated (e.g. selecting a row in a datagrid is an event). I look forward to the HTML support and a larger number of components!

terry 08 Mar 2010 #

We're evaluating Flairbuilder and ForeUI now...Wait next comments.

reclamebureau meppel 11 Mar 2010 #

Wireframing is sometimes underestimated. I believe it's very important. I don't use any specific tools for it. Most of the times just paper and pencil.

emmanuel buah 17 Mar 2010 #

I just started using FlairBuilder and so far, it's lived up to my expectation. I have been using Pencil (http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/Home.html) and I still use it. Its great and has many export features but I personally think depending on the project and client, your prototyping tool will vary. I hope FlairBuilder can build a community around the tool to contribute component and tips to foster the use of the tool. Thanks for spreading the good news.

Xabi 05 Apr 2010 #

I've been ussing iPlotz for a few months, but I really like this new "kid in town", even better than balsamiq.

Nice tool!

Net Age | Web Design 12 May 2010 #

It is a pity that the contest is closed, but I have gone over to sign up for the free trial. 15 days is ample time to see if I like something or not, but from the review and general response I feel that FlairBuilder might just becoming a permanent fixture on my computer.

This is just so much better than sketching things for clients, and will also kickstart the design process, with the designers being handed the final template and then working from that, rather than hand drawn sketches.

Alin 27 May 2010 #

Another great tool which can be used for prototyping is PerfectForms (http://www.perfectforms.com).