UXcamp 2011 – Version 1.1 – iPad App
Antetype is the main sponsor of this year’s UXcamp Europe in Berlin. We will release version 1.1 with new layout features and show a first beta of the native iPad Viewer app.
iPad App
With the new app, you can bring your prototypes to the iPad including full support for interaction, visual design and layout. You can sync Antetype files with iTunes and show them right away on the device. Sign up for the beta on our homepage.
New Layout
The new layout enables you to float objects indepent of the parent container layout. You can now also change the painting order which makes it easier to create overlapping tabs or arrow buttons.
Hope to see you in Berlin!
ANTETYPE at the Silicon Valley Product Camp
Luca Candela, Product Manager at Asterpix, will show how ANTETYPE can improve prototyping in his presentation about the importance of UX at the Silicon Valley Product Camp on April 2nd.
End of ANTETYPE Beta Test
We would like to thank you for beta testing ANTETYPE and providing feedback. With your help, we shaped a product that is now ready for release. During the last 5 months of testing we implemented around 200 features and fixes. The beta test will end on January 31.
The development team is now thrilled to announce that from then on you will be able to download a 30-day trial version and buy ANTETYPE 1.0 for $ 289.00 from our online store.
Although we are convinced that ANTETYPE is the best user interface design and prototyping app available, we are sorry for not implementing all your suggestions to date. But be sure that development won’t stop here and updates will be made available frequently. We have some great features in the pipeline!
Please keep on reporting your feedback on getsatisfaction.com/antetype. We rely on your support!
ANTETYPE Private Beta update 2 Now Available
We fixed many bugs and added some great new features to the Private Beta. Make sure to run the automatic update from the application menu or if you haven’t installed the app yet, register for our newsletter to get a download link.
Now, check out what’s new…
Shared Library Updater
The most important change is a mechanism to update the shared library with new predefined look and feels and widgets. We added a Mac OS X look and feel and new widgets and states, especially for iOS. If you have created new look and feels and widgets and added them to the shared library, they will still exist after the update, because we merge our new shared library with yours. However, changes you made to predefined widgets will be overwritten, because we update them with new versions. The widgets will remain untouched in your project files so you will still be able to use and re-update them to the shared library. But we suggest that if you want to make changes to predefined widgets, it is better to make duplicates and apply your changes. So, if you start ANTETYPE after the update, you will be asked whether to merge the shared library, to simply use the new one or to skip the update. If you choose to merge, your existing library will be backed up in the folder Application Support > Antetype, so you won’t loose anything if you merge.
iPad Mail Example
We added a new examples file that can be opened frome the help menu. It shows how to rebuild the iPad Mail app’s landscape and portrait view using ANTETYPE and its unique layout and visual design features. We also added some simple interactions like switching mail entries and opening fly-out menus.
New Shapes
Now, there is no more need, to create your arrows in Photoshop or simulate circles with rounded corners. In addition to rectangles you can now use native circles and triangles in ANTETYPE. Of course you have the same styling options as with rectangles and you can nest other elements within the new shapes.
Performance Boost
Speed has been greatly improved. Almost everything is faster and snappier: Dragging widgets to the canvas, dynamic layouting, updating widgets and the shared library, etc.
More Features and Fixes
- Editing texts is much easier now. Double-clicking on widgets or cells will always select the text if available, independent of the hierarchy.
- We added a “collapse” property: The element is not visible and does not affect the layout, if set to collapse.
- Selection indication has been improved. Handles are not shown anymore if elements can’t be resized, due to layout constraints.
- We added an option to export vector based PDFs for screens and selected elements.
- We added support for Quick Look and Spotlight
- We added progress dialogs for time consuming operations like opening documents and starting the presentation mode.
- Multiple selection indication of the style inspector has been improved for the gradient, image and slider controls.
- Elements can now be copied and pasted between two documents. The only limitation is that copied widgets have to be in the shared library if they are pasted to another document.
- The keyboard navigation in the style inspector has been fixed.
- The web viewer now loads faster: Only the project look and feel is loaded initially, others are loaded on demand, when they are selected.
- The widget library thumbnail can now be updated manually if the automatic updating does not work correctly.
- No more crashes with the text ruler.
- No more crashes when changing the screen, while text edit mode is still active.
- No more crashes when selecting and deleting a parent and child at one go.
We hope you like the update, keep on testing and provide more feedback on getsatisfaction.com/antetype.
Tim and the ANTETYPE team
ANTETYPE Private Beta Update
An ANTETYPE Private Beta update is available (5034). If you have already downloaded ANTETYPE, just choose “Check for Updates” in the application menu if it does not show up automatically. Otherwise, sign up for the newsletter on hour homepage to get access to the private beta.
Thanks for sending in crash and bug reports. This helps us a lot.
If you have any questions, feedback, feature requests or found a bug, please visit our support site and post it there. We will try to answer as soon as possible.
Changes
- Now checking the system version on start-up, preventing a crash on systems older than 10.6
- No more crashes when moving cells with the arrow keys
- No more crashes when minimizing document windows
- No more crashes with undo in text edit mode
- State selection is now permanent when selecting different cells of the same widget
- Dragging a screen doesn’t cause it to disappear anymore if only one screen exists
- Copying of styles is now more reliable
- Shared library preview images are now shown correctly when creating a new look and feel
- Minor bug fixes
Private Beta Test Started
We started our beta test today and are thrilled to have so many testers on board. If you also want to be an early tester, please register for our newsletter, we will then send you the download link and login details.
We are now eager to get as much feedback as possible to make ANTETYPE the best design and prototyping app around.
ANTETYPE Private Beta Countdown Started!
Wow! We would have never expected such a huge feedback from the community and although there is still a lot of work to do, we want you to get hands on our product and start the private beta test with the subscribers.
The start date is August 30th. We will contact you again with the details on how to download ANTETYPE. So please stay tuned and, if you haven’t already done, tell your friends about us on twitter and facebook.
We also launched our support site on Get Satisfaction where you can start to post feedback and ideas about ANTETYPE. We are really interested in your opinion to improve our product, so don’t hesitate. We hope to hear from you!
So, please sign up for the newsletter to get access to the private beta.
Tim
A goodie to sweeten the wait: ANTETYPE Color Picker
Yes – we are still alive – and working hard on getting ANTETYPE in shape for the private beta that is scheduled to start in August! In the meantime, however, we decided to release a little part of ANTETYPE into the wild: We present you the ANTETYPE Color Picker.
Since choosing and working with colors is an important part of working with ANTETYPE, we decided that the standard Mac OS X color pickers are not sufficient for us. Fortunately Apple provides the possibility to extend the system with custom color pickers and that’s exactly what we have done.
When working with colors in a creative way, the HSB color system is often a much better choice than RGB, since it is modeled after human perception of color rather than technical representation. However, in implementation, RGB or Hex values are usually needed and while switching between different color pickers works it is quite a hassle. So we created a color picker that shows and allows editing of those color systems and representations within one view. Combined with a well-proven visual way of picking a color bast on HSB our color picker brings much-needed ease-of-use to the Apple system color picker.
The color picker is released as Freeware. Currently in beta state it already runs pretty stable and has been in internal use at ERGOSIGN for a while. Feel free to use the comment section on this blog to provide feedback.
Installation:
To install, please copy the AntetypeColorPicker.colorPicker file to the ColorPickers folder within your Library folder.
For now, the ColorPicker is only available for Intel processors and requires Mac OS 10.5+.
Update: Bugfix release 1.0.1 Beta
Getting Ready for the Private Beta!
Now that we showed ANTETYPE for the first time to a bigger audience on the UPA 2010 conference and the UXcamp Europe 2010, we have to nail down the feature set for the private beta release starting in August. As we already have so many great features to design interactive high- and low-fidelity prototypes, the main focus will be on stability, speed and usability to maximize the user experience and make ANTETYPE a tool you don’t want to miss from day one.
After using it in our company ERGOSIGN for quite some time in many projects, we will now have to make sure, that people who never looked at the product before will understand the new concepts and possibilities that make ANTETYPE the best tool for user interface designers.
However, we are aware that there are still some problems to solve, otherwise we could release version 1 right now and wouldn’t start with a private beta test. But there are certainly still some issues even early beta testers will not accept.
We need to make sure that there will be no crashes and no work done with ANTETYPE will get unusable. We are aware that this is ambitious and will probably not be achievable completely but it has to be our goal even for the private beta. Because of our test first development approach, the app is already very stable and we think that we can minimize crashes and other annoying stuff.
Speed is another major issue that has big impact on the user experience. Working with ANTETYPE is already very fast, especially compared with other tools, productivity increases a lot. But there are still some areas, like huge tables or web viewer rendering, that definitely have to be sped up.
Last but not least, ERGOSIGN is a usability company and it stands to reason that we have very high standards in this area. Thanks to our experience and the fact that we are not only the developers, but also the users of our app, we made sure that the user interface is clean, simple and easy to learn. However, when showing the tool at the UPA and the UXcamp it turned out that there are certain areas that may not be obvious at a first glance. Of course, ANTETYPE is a complex application with hundreds of cool features and new users will definitely need some time to become familiar, but we want to make it as easy as possible to get started and intuitively explore all the features.
The next two month will be really busy for us, but we are so thrilled by the positive feedback so far and we can’t wait to give the app to the beta testers. So don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter on our homepage!
Cheers,
Tim
Thank you!
We just came back from this year’s UXcampEurope and we had such a blast. The medium of a barcamp was the perfect setting to openly discuss our plans regarding ANTETYPE and validate its potential. Both in our session on Saturday and in the many followup discussions we gained great and honest feedback that will definitely influence our next steps in development. If you haven’t done already, please use the newsletter sign up on the homepage of this site, you will get mail from us soon regarding the private beta.
Take care,
Sebastian & Tim
