10 Excellent Tools for Creating Web Design Wireframes
When starting a new web design project, it’s always a good idea to begin with a wireframe. The purpose of a wireframe is to communicate the layout of a page without getting caught up in color and design elements. Wireframes can be a big time saver as they help all parties involved come to an agreement on placement of major page elements such as headers, content areas, navigation menus, and footers. The key is to get the layout nailed down so major layout changes won’t take place once detailed design elements are in place.
There are several different routes that a designer can take for creating wireframes, and there are even applications designed specifically for this. For this article, we’ve rounded up 10 excellent tools for creating wireframes.
MockFlow
MockFlow allows you to design and collaborate (in real-time) user interface mockups for your software and websites. It comes with numerous built-in components & icons.
Axure
Axure enables application designers to create wireframes, flow diagrams, prototypes, and specifications for applications and web sites. It lets you use ready-made widgets including buttons, form fields, shapes, and dynamic elements that you can edit and format in a familiar environment. Or you can create your own custom widget libraries.
Balsamiq Mockups
Using Balsamiq Mockups feels like you are drawing, but it’s digital, so you can tweak and rearrange controls easily, and the end result is much cleaner. With 75 pre-built controls to choose from, you can design anything from a super-simple dialog box to a full-fledged application, from a simple website to a Rich Internet Application.
Pencil Project
The Pencil Project is a free addon for Firefox. Some key features include: built-in stencils, multi-page document support, and multiple export options.
HotGloo
HotGloo is completely web based with lots of features that let’s you drag and drop and scale items easily. It also has support for realtime collaboration.
Mockingbird
Mockingbird is another web app with a focus on collaboration. It allows you to link multiple mockups together and preview them interactively to get a feel for the flow of your application.
Cacoo
Cacoo is an online drawing tool that allows you to create a variety of diagrams such as site maps, wire frames, UML and network charts.
ProtoShare
ProtoShare is an easy-to-use, Web-based prototyping tool with a focus on collaboration. Team members can review work and provide timely feedback, ideas, and suggestions on clickable wireframes or creative content.
iPlotz
iPlotz allows you to rapidly create clickable, navigable mockups and wireframes for prototyping websites and software applications.
OmniGraffle
OmniGraffle is an app for Mac OS that gives you plenty of tools to create amazing wireframes and mockups, but it’s also great for creating all kinds of charts and diagrams as well.
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53 comments
Oles
March 30, 2010Very useful post
Cristian Pascu
March 30, 2010Hey, you forgot FlairBuilder!
yintop
March 30, 2010Look this!
ebta
March 30, 2010Thank you
really helpful to design web
Derek
March 30, 2010Thanks for posting will check some of these out!
ictians
March 30, 2010We have used axure, its a good and fast. Have to try others as well. Its really useful before you start the project to finalize things.
Peter Severin
March 30, 2010Also take a look at WireframeSketcher wireframe and mockup tool. It’s a plugin for Eclipse that also works with Aptana, Flash Builder, Zend Studio and other Eclipse-based IDEs: http://wireframesketcher.com
Hillary H.
March 30, 2010Cacoo looks really helpful, I am going to have to check it out. Thanks!
Jordan Walker
March 30, 2010These will come in handy when designing the spec for an interface.
Adam | Toronto Web Developer
March 30, 2010I’ve always loved MockFlow. It’s such a great tool when you need to get your design across to the clients without spending hours upon hours coding it into html.
Excellent resources for those finicky clients.
moabi
March 30, 2010Cacoo is definitly nice…
thx 4 the post…
Uncleserb
March 30, 2010Cheers for the article; have been using iPlotz for the past year and it has proven to be valuable. However, it’s always useful to keep an eye out for other such tools!
Thx!
Andrea at ProtoShare
March 30, 2010Henry,
Thanks for including us in your list of wireframing and prototyping tools! Being able to evolve simple, clickable wireframes to more interactive prototypes allows our customers to simulate a rich website experience prior to writing code.
We are open to feedback, so feel free to contact me with comments or questions.
Cheers,
Andrea
@ProtoShare
Jennifer
March 30, 2010I love hotgloo, but $14/month is too pricey for a web app. Mockflow looks like a great alternative at only $4.91/month – seems to have all the features plus a desktop app.
Lena Tailor
March 30, 2010Great collection. Just i’ve been looking for. Thanks
Diego
March 30, 2010Why is Excel overlooked as a Wireframing tool? I use it ALL the time and with great success.
You zoom it out, make cells be squares and by merging and splitting cells you get a pretty qucik wireframeing tool.
Alex
November 18, 2011That’s what I used to do. Now that I’ve tried Balsamiq I will never go back.
BebopDesigner
March 30, 2010Wow! these are amazing and handy. Thanks for sharing
Andrew
March 30, 2010We use Mockflow at my agency and couldn’t be happier. The user permissions for sharing are second to none. Completely worth the premo signup.
Paul M
March 30, 2010Nice article… I’ve also been looking into wireframing tools recently and complied a feature matrix (along with my thoughts) here:
http://www.paulmiddlege.com/2010/03/online-wireframing-tools-comparison-and-whats-missing/
Jason (@urbanjester)
March 30, 2010Great collection! Thanks for sharing! I’m personally fond of axure and balsamiq. Haven’t been able to drop visio for omnigraffe
Justin Carroll
March 30, 2010OmniGraffle is pro. Any ideas on a free Mac app for wire-framing?
YoYurec
March 30, 2010Good collection! Tnx!
Alex Flueras
March 31, 2010Great list. I use HotGloo and it is fine.
Matt
March 31, 2010Nice roundup. I’m in love with Balsamiq.
Antoine
March 31, 2010nice list, i do not use one of them but maybe i’ll try some
Antonio
March 31, 2010Great collection.
Would like to add JustInMind
http://www.justinmind.com
Best Regards!
Antonio
Eric Caldwell
March 31, 2010A great one not mentioned here is Gliffy http://www.gliffy.com
DFowler
March 31, 2010Great article and info. However, I would like to see a little more. I don’t have time to explore all 10 right now. Which two or three would you recommend without consideration for budget?
Adam Hermsdorfer
March 31, 2010I got a chuckle out of the excel for wireframing comment! I’ve been using HotGloo and really like it. This is a very good list and I do look forward to testing out the other tools. Balsamiq and Cacoo look pretty sweet.
NYC
April 1, 2010I just find having a sketchbook doing my wireframe diagram and then translating to photoshop.
Chris (Web Designer in Fredericton Canada)
April 2, 2010Very cool! I’ve not used wireframes much in the past but I’ve been meaning to get more structured, these are wonderful.
Cathy Mason
April 4, 2010Very helpful!
Thank you!
Matthew Heidenreich
April 7, 2010wow, outstanding roundup! Thanks for this.
Meera
April 7, 2010Great list! Balsamiq is pretty cool and very light weight too
Azmi Uzun
April 30, 2010I like ForeUI, it is simple and easy to use.
http://www.foreui.com/
suncat100
May 21, 2010Also try http://gridpapr.com – Create and share your wireframe online
Sumeet Chawla
May 24, 2010Excellent collection. Thank you for the compiling this list ^_^
punkymunky
May 27, 2010I’d always used Illustrator for simply roughing out the content of a page. It was particularly easy to transition the wireframe into a high fidelity mockup.
I’m currently working on a large corp intranet and I’ve found Fireworks invaluable. I’m able to produce template masterpages and multiple content pages. there are some great addons for quickly creating dummy text and datagrids. I can create button links and export the whole thing as an interactive pdf or even HTML. There’s a great tutorial on Lynda detailing this and a lot more.
Scott
June 8, 2010maybe not the cheapest solution, but Coreldraw is extreemly handy for wireframing. It has the same features as illustrator but a studentlicense is very affordable. It takes some time to get started but than it has everything you could wish and more. grids, you can build your own templates that you can place as paper, rescale or transform. grafics in vector(that can be used straight in your final design)
export to flash SWF. I use Corel for about 10-15 years as a wireframetool. making a design, copy the result, create a new page, restyle that, over and over. This way of working makes that you can look back at the proces the same way you would do with a scrapbook. Corels drag en drop workspace and import and export works like a dream. I’ve been an illustrator/designer for a long time, workt for different companies and different tools. Corel is a very good tool. I do not work for Corel
Todd S Jones
August 16, 2010Great list thanks. I just used Powerpoint. Goodbye Powerpoint!
Brett Widmann
December 21, 2010These are perfect! Thanks for sharing. These will come in handy.
Ajay
June 5, 2011I was looking for a Wireframe designer and found this post. I’ve been using MS visio for various diagram but it doesn’t seem to have the capability of Wireframe.
Unfortunately Pencil is not available for FF 4+.
I’ll try others and lets see which one I like.
Chaman
August 10, 2011Great list. We use Creately – (http://creately.com) for wireframes and everything else that goes with it. Flowcharts, UML, etc. Helps keep things in sync.
Andriy Khavruchenko
October 29, 2011Don’t forget http://framebox.org – really simple and fast online wireframing
Tanara
November 3, 2011Great resource, thanks so much! Do any of the above incorporate a pattern library?
Nawaz
February 1, 2012Awesome article on creating web design wireframes!
Thank you very much!
alex
February 6, 2012I was using Balasmiq earlier going to try others tools from your list. Thanks for your post.
Caroline
February 8, 2012Great list, Henry!
I’ve been using Apple Keynote (or PowerPoint – depending on my customer) +Keynotopia (http://keynotopia.com/) to prototype iPad and iPhone apps and I highly recommend it!
Kasteler
April 16, 2012Just downloaded Pencil and love it. Thanks!
Ayush
September 19, 2012Other lightweight Wireframing tool is http://www.mocknow.com
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[...] to nail down the placement of major layout elements early on in a project. There are a number of wireframing applications out there, but a lot of user interface designers like to start out on paper with sketches of what [...]