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Maqetta Preview 1

Preview 1 release notes

The Preview 1 release includes many features, including a visual page editor (including simultaneous visual and source editing), a theme editor and web-based review and commenting.

The following items list those features in Maqetta Preview 1 that are recent additions to the code base:

• Web-based review and commenting. Maqetta now includes a "New Review" command on the "New" menu that allows an author to launch a team review of a UI mockup. The New Review command presents a short wizard that allows the author to pick the files that need to be reviewed and pick the list of reviewers (via email addresses). Upon clicking "Publish", the reviewers receive an email invitation that contains a URL. Upon clicking on the URL, the reviewers will be taken to a web page where they can view the mockup and provide feedback using forum-style text comments or on-screen annotations (rectangles, ovals, arrows and text).
• Initial mobile authoring features. There have been recent code additions to allow for authoring mobile user interfaces. The features in the Preview 1 release represent an initial and only partial delivery of mobile authoring features. Lots of enhancements in this area are planned for the future. With the Preview 1 release, users can construct mobile user interfaces within the context of a life-size device silhouette. Silhouettes are available for a handful of devices. A small collection of dojox.mobile widgets from Dojo 1.5 are available on the widget palette. In a subsequent release, Maqetta will upgrade to Dojo 1.6 and support the rich mobile widget library that is under development at Dojo.
• Custom themes by cloning one of the existing themes. With Preview 1, there is a New Theme... command that allows you to clone one of the themes that ships standard with the product, such as "claro" and "sketch". You can then use the theme editor to do style modifications on your newly created theme. The "Open Claro Theme Editor" command has been changed to "Open Theme Editor", and it now prompts you to choose a theme to open in the theme editor. The "claro" and "sketch" themes are now designed to be read-only themes. These theme management features are recent additions and we recognize that this feature area is not yet complete.
• Initial support for DataGrid. Maqetta Preview 1 includes limited support for the Dojo DataGrid widget. With this release, support is limited to text data entered manually (via multiple lines of comma-separated data for the cells in a particlar row) or linked to a simple JSON file containing simple row/column textual data. Note: Future releases will enhance DataGrid support in major ways.
• Download/deploy workspace (or selected files) to developer tools. With Preview 1, there are two new download icons on the Files palette that allow the author to create a ZIP file out of his entire workspace or from selected files. One goal with this feature is to enable a smooth workflow between Maqetta in the cloud and Eclipse-based developer tools. The feature includes options to move the location of JavaScript libraries (e.g., dojo) to alternate locations in case the authors directory structure is different than the development team's directory structure.The feature also allows the author to choose whether or not to include JavaScript libraries in the ZIP. (Including the libraries is needed to create a self-sufficient runnable application image, but if deploying to development tools, the JavaScript libraries might already be in the developer tool workspace.)
• Support for IFRAME and IMG elements. Maqetta Preview 1 now includes support for the HTML <iframe> and <img> elements. The <iframe> widget can be used to modularize development of a UI mockup such that sections of the mockup can be stored in external files.
• Manage locations of (and relocate) JavaScript libraries. With Preview 1, there is a new manage libraries icon on the Files palette that allows users to control where JavaScript libraries such as Dojo should be located, either at a particular location within their cloud workspace, or located externally (e.g., on a CDN).
• UI changes to Properties palette, including easier management of CSS classes
  • The Properties palette has been rewritten to use a new slide-in/slide-out approach (with slide-in animations on Chrome, Safari and Firefox4). There are now 3 levels. The top-most (initial) level shows buttons that list the sub-sections (e.g., Common, Events, Layout, etc.). After clicking on a button, the 2nd level sub-section (e.g., Layout properties) slides in. For CSS properties, there is a 3rd level that shows CSS details for a single property (e.g., 'width' or 'height').
  • For easier management of CSS classes (and promoting best practices in using CSS), various aspects of the Properties palette have changed. Maqetta has moved the 'class' attribute to the top of the Properties palette's where it is always visible (and therefore always editable). Also, the CSS details view shows not only all of the CSS style rules that apply to the given property on the current widget, the CSS detail view also shows "proposed new style rules". By selecting the radio button for one of these "proposed new style rules" and then changing the property value, Maqetta will automatically create a new style rule in the app.css file that contains the new property value.
  • The Maqetta team believes they are converging on nice approaches for visual styling of widgets and HTML elements, but we expect some additional minor improvements in the near future.
• On-screen widget data entry improvements With Preview 1, we cleaned up the UI for widget data entry, where for most widgets we use a TooltipDialog widget (a "pointy popup") that is located just under the top-left of the widget. The data entry popup now includes OK and Cancel buttons, thereby allowing a user to cancel changes (which wasn't possible in 0.7). The data entry popup include a "?" icon which brings up some short help text that explains the formatting rules for that particular widget. In 0.7, there was a hard-to-understand "HTML markup or plain text" popup that was incomprehensible to many users. With Preview 1, we hide that choice from users except when it is absolutely necessary, and when it does appear, it is less incomprehensible and has defaults that usually do the right thing.
• Major performance fixes to source editor. Most of these performance issues with the source editor in prior releases have been addressed in Preview 1.

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