Review: Pencil lets you rough in mockups for mobile apps, websites, and desktop software - howardtheirch

At a Glance

Expert's Valuation

Pros

Free
Simple to use
Features a wide selection of stencils

Cons

Stencils don't always gambling good together
Some stencils can't represent resized
No more documentation; vendor unhelpful

Our Verdict

For the damage (unloose), Pencil offers just value and lets you arrange together an interface mockup with a minimum of flurry.

You may not be a coder or a Web developer, but that doesn't mean you don't know exactly how you deprivation your new diligence or website to look and feel. Trying to get to that perfect look with just wrangle terminate be a frustrating experience for both client and developer. A good interface mockup is worth a k words, and you don't have to jazz how to code to create one. In fact, it doesn't flush have to be you anything: Free utility Pencil contains everything you demand to create serviceable mockups for websites, desktop applications, and movable smartphone apps.

If you've of all time used a mockup utility, such American Samoa free Lumzy or $79 Balsamiq, Pencil's interface will represent familiar. The bulk of the projection screen is taken up by a sail, and a toolbar lines the left-wing edge of the windowpane. The toolbar is full of widgets you can turn in your canvas, neatly disjunct into categories like Basic Web Elements, Windows XP Widgets, Android ICS, iOS UI Stencils, and more. In Pencil language, each category is a collection of "stencils."

Pencil ships with many stencil collections, and its Google inscribe depositary contains even to a greater extent, all freely available. For any acknowledged project, you'rhenium potential to need only one or ii sets of stencils, and Pencil makes it easy to hide stencil sets you don't need. And just like Lumzy and Balsamiq, the sidebar includes a quick-search box letting you forthwith filter the heel down to just the UI element you need ("button" and so forth).

With its ICS stencil set, Pencil put up create disenchanting mockups for Android apps.

To test Pencil, I used its included Android ICS stencil appeal to apace prototype a sole screen for a hypothetical Android app showing PCWorld's top stories. I got mixed results: The collection includes beautiful stencils for Android's condition bar (the top part of the screen) and navigation bar (the bottom of the screen), but they were the wrong breadth for my project and there was no way to resize them. Other stencils, such as those used for tabs and heel items, could be easily resized. I ended up creating my mockup out of just those stencils, omitting the top and lowermost of the screen. Not saint, but workable.

Not every last stencil sets gambol well conjointly: I recovered a great stencil set featuring touchscreen gestures, just all of its elements were black and there was no way to interchange their color. My mockup utilized the glum edition of Android's Holo theme, thus it had a opprobrious background–and negro-connected-undiluted doesn't act. I had the synoptic experience with the "glyphish icons" set, which includes lots of great icons, all done in negroid–so all completely useless for sulky Android mockups.

Information technology's a good thing Pencil is simple to use, because it's undocumented. Its website does contain a wiki, but information technology's for stencil developers, not end-users. The company was hard to reach for compress inquiries and did not response our questions about system requirements. To use Stencil, you just call for to play around with it until you force out make it work. The interface is straightforward, but not without its share of surprises. E.g., you can't draw a excerpt marquee to select multiple elements: The only way to superior several elements is to Ctrl-fall into place each.

Pencil interfaces with a free online clipart service, letting you quickly pull in vector clipart objects into your mockup.

While Pencil isn't idealized, its attractive price tag and comprehensive glyph sets make IT a solid option for getting started with interface innovation and joint your vision for a new website or mobile app.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software program to your system.