Custa, in response to your question:

"Also wondering from those that have been using for a while how frequent new versions are and how much they feel community concerns are addressed?"

I started using Axure back in September of 2007.  I noticed that one of the biggest painpoints in Axure came when trying to simulate the expansion and contraction features that are common on most webpages.  I had to create layers upon layers of dynamic panels, which was not only time consuming to create, but also took forever for the page to load.  I used this very Forum to suggest (and if I may be so bold to state that I believe I was the first one I've ever seen who made this specific suggestion) that they add functionality to Move dynamic panels in the next release. 

http://axure.com/cs/forums/thread/2052.aspx

I mentioned how this would add immense value to anyone using Axure to do any web related projects, and would allow us to do pretty much anything.  Much to my surprise and great pleasure, they created exactly this, called it "Move Panel", and it was released not even 5 months later.  And let me tell you, it made my life (and hopefully others) SOOOOO much easier, and it was a free upgrade on top of that.

So I can personally vouch for the fact that they DO pay attention to this forum, and address community concerns.  If you come up with a good idea that helps everyone, without causing additional issues or making the Interface more confusing for others... I'm confident they will incorporate it.  In my opinion, there is no other software out there that is better for creating the prototype/specification combo than Axure, and if they keep taking suggestions from us, there never will be.

 

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Daren

First! Thank you for a very nice application!

I´m very interested in the dynamic panel manager.(And how it is going to work.)

I often find my self i a situation where my coustumers want to have a lot of functionality on one page. Often they want to expand and collapse differnt functionality in a accordion like manner. With the new version i can use mova a dynamic panel to insert functionality where i want. The part where every thing gets messy is when i have to do multiple insertions.

So my suggestion is a new "dynamicpanelaccordion"-widget where i can deside which section or sections should be expanded.

See this example: http://www.stickmanlabs.com/accordion/

/Johan

 

 

 

Hi Johan, there is a sample of one way to create an accordion with dynamic panels in this article:

http://axure.com/cs/blogs/axure/archive/2007/06/29/RIA-_2800_Rich-Internet-Application_2900_-Prototyping.aspx

We will consider an accordion widget for a future release. Thank you.

 

I either use that approach or the new moving panels depending on the situation.

If you have 4 different accordion parts you want to be able to display, you end up with 16 dynamic panelstates to adjust when the client wants to change a word or two. If the application could handle the expanding and collapsing part you would only have 4.

Thanks for considering the suggestion. 

/Johan

I've been using Axure heavily for a while now, and I love it.  However there is definitely room for improvement, especially in the basic manipulation of wireframes:

1. Drag-selecting multiple items always overselects (see image)
   
   I find that I spend much of my time in Axure unselecting things that got accidentally selected - like backgrounds.
   In Visio, when clicking and dragging to select a group of objects, it only selects the objects completely contained by the box I've drawn.  With this method, I can pinpoint with much higher accuracy which items to select.  I can even select items underneath other ones without much effort.
   In Axure, it selects any items touching the box I've drawn with the mouse, which is usually way too many.  At least give me the option to choose how selection behavior works, cause I hate it right now.
   
2. Ability to manage or at least hide dynamic panels
   People have been discussing this already but I'd like to cast my vote.  On highly interactive and layered prototypes, it becomes difficult to work with the stuff on the bottom.
3. Send forward / send backward needs collision detection
   Right now send forward / backward simply increments the z-index by 1.  It should, instead, increment the object in front of or behind other objects that it is touching.  I end up hitting Send Forward / Backward like 50 times to get it behind a specific object.  See Visio for a good implementation of this :)
4. In HTML prototypes, the ability to toggle annotations
   Like "Close Frames", "Toggle Annotations" would allow me to deliver a heavily annotated prototype without having it (a) either covered with yellow sticky note things or (b) having to send two copies of the prototype, one with and one without annotations.

Thanks for everything guys!

Hi Loren, thank you. We've been considering an option for #1 to change selection modes. #2 is in development and targeted for a release early next year. 3 and 4 make a lot of sense too.

More of a bug than a feature request...  I always seem to lose my saved information when I mistakenly uncheck an action in the Case Properties window.  The following methods may correct this:

1) When you uncheck an action and recheck it, that last setting should be remembered.  For example, if "Toggle Visibility for Panel 1, Panel 2, Panel 5". gets unchecked, rechecking it should return those settings.

2) Include OK/Cancel dialog buttons so the user may confirm/cancel their changes.

Also, the sub-windows for Case Properties (like Select Panels) will only allow you to check/uncheck when you select the checkbox whereas the Case Properties window allows you to check/uncheck by selecting the label.  I'd want the latter for all such selections.

Lastly, I wonder if the order of selections (within something like the Select Panels window) by their layer order is appropriate?  For example, if I copy and paste a dynamic panel, it's layer order is at the top.  When I try to find this in the Select Panels window, it's all the way at the bottom.  I don't know the solution, but I wish there was a better way to order these.  Hope this makes sense!

Thank you. Yes, these make sense. We're adding the cancel options on the interactions dialogs in the next update, and will consider the other enhancements for future releases as well.

I was rather suprised to not see the ability to set preferences. Of note:

• I'd prefer to use Grid over Intersections, but the grid lines are too thick and the color is too bold. If I could modify the grid line settings, I'd be much happier.
• It seems many of the suggestions voiced here would be best addressed in a preference screen.

Remember multiple monitor setups. If I pull apart the panes, they do a good job remembering where they were placed, but the main application window always appears in the "OS" window in Full Screen mode, even when I saved the file with it in the second monitor resized. My ideal work environment is to have the panes on my main screen so I can use the entire second screen (larger screen as my main screen is a laptop) for the wireframe pane. Things don't seem so crowded then.

Excellent program, by the way!

I'm a new Axure user myself and I already ran into a need to validate an email address and was surprised that this was not built in already.

I also agree that the conditional logic should be a lot more flexible. I would add "Is Not" which I was also surprised not to find there and built in validation for common types like email, date, and credit card numbers.

 

Stéphane

Hi Stéphane,

Thanks for the request. More built in conditions and added flexibility make sense. For more complex conditions, supplementing with annotations can be helpful to communicate the design.

Hello, can You make this software multilanguage please :-)

We really liked it, i know english that's ok, but my workers doesn't.

I'm asking about including Russian lang pack...

 

If You need any help with that, just let me know - or ask any software reselller you work with in Russia.

 

Thanks and regards, Dimo

I vote for expanded conditional logic as well.  An "is not" selection would have been useful to me when I was building my field validation too.  Really though, I'd like to be able to structure conditional logic based on dynamic panel states (i.e., if dynamic panel state = x, then...).  That would be huge in my opinion.

Dimo:

Hello, can You make this software multilanguage please :-)

 

I heartily second that. Here in Quebec my clients are mostly francophone and documentation would need to be exported in French. I'd love an easy way to change/edit the labels in the "Annotations & Interactions" section or any other header and text in the templates that generate prototypes or specifications. Having those in external files (maybe XML) would be great and would make it easy to "switch" languages.

Hi Stéphane,

Thank you. You currently can customize the annotation labels (Wireframe->Customize Annotation Fields and Views), but not the labels on the interactions. We plan to offer Axure RP in multiple languages.