Balsamiq Mockups in XPages

I write most of my technical blogs to document solutions of problems I have encountered in "real" applications. The popular XAgents post is no exception here. Then I was investigating how to make Confluence plug-ins work in XPages. The specific plug-in I had in mind was Balsamiq Mockups, the tool that has proven invaluable for any screen design, both here on the blog as well as in countless customer discussions. Once I figured the XAgent it was rather easy:

If you want to embed Balsamiq Mockups in your own XPages application, reach out to Peldi or Valerie and buy the Balsamiq Plug-in for Confluence.
Update: To make it very clear: Using the Confluence plug-in in XPages is not covered by the Balsamiq license for Confluence, so you need to individually negotiate with Peldi and clearly indicate that you want to run that in XPages. You also, for the time being, need to promise not go go back for support for any challenge that can't be verified in a Confluence installation.
Update 2: Peldi and I are talking an there will be a solution. Stay tuned

Posted by Stephan H Wissel on 02 November 2011 | Comments (9) | categories: XPages

posted by Peldi on Thursday 03 November 2011 AD:
To readers of this blog. This integration is not for sale and we don't have current plans to make it so. Purchasing the Confluence plugin and installing it on anything other than Atlassian Confluence is a violation of our EULA.

Stephan, nice technical work, but maybe emailing me first would have been more sensible?

posted by Tony Lee on Thursday 03 November 2011 AD:
Maybe not a valid license combo but still nice to know it will work.

posted by Stephen Hood on Thursday 03 November 2011 AD:
Stephen you may be interested in Wireframesketcher

{ Link }

Comes as an Eclipse plug-in or standalone.

Has open XML formats and an SDK using the Eclipse license for building additional tools around their format. { Link }

"Starting with this version, WireframeSketcher comes with source code for model and SWT spy plug-ins. The source is distributed under Eclipse Public License v1.0 so you are free to use it in any way you wish.

My primary goal with this is to simplify the task of creating tools around WireframeSketcher. You can create internal tools for your company, or, and this is my hope, you can create general purpose tools to be used by WireframeSketcher’s community.

I’d like to get your feedback on this. If there is enough interest, I will consider releasing the source code for other parts of WireframeSketcher. I’ll still keep some of my “secret sauce” secret but it’s a start."

About a year ago I started testing out these products. Started trying out Balsamiq and ended up using Wireframesketcher at the end of the day. The project ultimately never went ahead but personally preferred the latter over the former.

posted by mark myers on Thursday 03 November 2011 AD:
@Peldi indeed! him emailing you first would have been sensible, more sensible than sayyyy, putting people off your product by sounding like a lawyer on a public blog when someone has just opened up a new market for your product

posted by Peldi on Thursday 03 November 2011 AD:
Hi all, sorry if my comment sounded too harsh last night, I was just really surprised. I'm sure Stephan and I will figure out a way to make this happen in a way that doesn't force anyone to break our license agreement. :)

Stay tuned!

posted by Stephen Hood on Thursday 03 November 2011 AD:
@5

It was more his interest in extending the tools I thought would be an interesting adjunct to an Xpages context. Integrating jars and surfacing them via custom controls, xpages etc could allow a level of granularity/integration a Balsamiq/Confluence plug-in wouldn't.

The Balsamiq integration is nice but it doesn't "sell" Xpages as a must have piece in the equation. Realize that wasn't your intent in getting this working but something to think about.

posted by Stephan H. Wissel on Thursday 03 November 2011 AD:

@Peldi: thx for reaching out
@Stephen: looked at it, but missing the browser access - invaluable for "User driven design". The libraries look strikingly similar. If one of them would be Apple and the other Samsung there would be a lawsuit
@Mark: Neither Peldi not I a native English speakers, so something must have gotten lost in translation. Reality is much more amicable. Peldi is a great guy and we are talking

posted by Ravi on Saturday 08 December 2012 AD:
Stephen, Is there any update on this? Can you give us the steps to integrate this solution.

posted by Stephan H. Wissel on Monday 10 December 2012 AD:
@Ravi: I suggest you try https://www.mybalsamiq.com/. It saves you the headache of setting up servers and firewalls etc. But you can negotiate an individual license with Peldi first, then I can release details. It is not for public consumption at this point in time.