原型设计工具 Balsamiq Mockups

实际上我本来根本不知道“原型设计工具”这个词，“草图”倒是画过不少。布局，设计草图，以及表达不清楚的时候，画画图回更直观些。但我郁闷的发现——我竟然找不到纸和笔——我退化的真厉害！
而用电脑软件来画么……

1. 我不知道用什么绘图软件
2. 我不会用绘图软件
3. 我懒得去学

其实我是见过别人用“原型设计工具”软件的，只是当时也没怎么留意，过后就忘记叫什么名字了。最重要的一点是那个软件只能运行在windows上。

直到发现 Balsamiq Mockups 才明白原来世界上有这么神奇的软件

看了下官方的演示，理解的特点如下

1. 基于 Flex + Adobe Air，意味着跟平台无关，linux/windows/mac 都可以用
2. 提供了很多控件元素
3. 灵活的配置选项
4. 导出PNG
5. 和 xmind 一样用XML保存数据
6. 耳目一新的手绘风格（我灰常稀饭！）
7. ……

默认不支持中文，要使用中文的话要勾选菜单里的”Use System Font”
这款软件收费挺高,要79美元,但是你可以通以下方法免费获得序列号key

To get a free license key, you can do one of the following:

• If your company bought Mockups for Confluence, JIRA or XWiki, ask your IT admin for your company’s license information and use it FREE of charge.
• If you are a do-gooder of any sort (non-profit, charity, open-source contributor, you get the idea), email Mariah with a short blurb and she’ll send you a license, FREE of charge.
• If you are a blogger / journalist / maven willing to write us up (honest reviews are the most useful to us) email Mariah a short blurb with the link to your blog and she’ll send you a license, FREE of charge, so that you can evaluate Mockups properly.
• If you are willing to demo Mockups to an audience of at least 15 people (at a user group, a conference, a BarCamp), email Mariah your info and she’ll give you two licenses, one for you to keep and one to give away at the event, FREE of charge.
• If you teach a high-school class, email Mariah the name of your school and your class, plus the number of students in your class. Mariah will send you a license for all of them.
• A note to university students and professors: we currently do not offer free licenses to universities, but we’ll be happy to offer you an additional 50% off any orders of 10 or more licenses. Let us know if you’re interested and we’ll set up a discount code for you.

If you don’t fit in any of the five buckets above, you can buy a single-user license of Mockups for Desktop for $79 below.
IMPORTANT: due to the large volume of requests we have been receiving lately, we cannot promise we’ll answer every email. We try our best, but please be understanding if you don’t hear back from us.

Update 2009-05-21
补充一个key

Organization name: leexij@gmail.com
Serial Key: eNrzzU/OLi0odswsqslJTa3IzHJIz03MzNFLzs+tMTQyNrcwsTQyAIEa5xpDAIFxDy8=