Well it’s been a while but I can tell you, there was no time left for us to put our feet up and relax, well almost no time. We have updated HotGloo a couple of times during the last weeks. Some updates improved speed and stability of the app, other updates were quite huge ones like our image library update, the label element or the icon family we’ve added. But there is much more to come I can tell. A lot of you guys asked about versioning and since it’s not only a big relief for you, from a user point of view, to decide wheter to go back to version X.0 or not, it would also save us support time, digging out lines of code. The other big thing will be custom element sharing. And by sharing we don’t mean sharing within an account only, but also sharing your custom elements with other HotGlooers.

We’ve got some other interesting things happening here at HotGloo. Whilst Hannes is constantly working on technical improvements and keeping an eye on our server uptime, I was diving into writing articles about our lessons learned so far. First article on how to market a WebApp is featured in the current issue of WEAVE Magazine (unfortunaltly only available in german). So if you are interested in interactive media, design and marketing I deeply recommend checking it out. Next exciting thing, and I was really honoured when I received the invitation I can tell you, is that I will speak at this years RIA World Conference in Munich, November 10th. Looking forward to see some familiar faces there.

Last thing to announce for today is that we are compiling a HotGloo survey to get insights on: which features are being used most and which features are simply rotting away. Reason we do this is to get an idea where you are struggling and if there is the need to describe some features in detail. The outcome should be some sort of light manual, you will be able to download for free. The manual will introduce HotGloos most important features, provide tutorials, tips and tricks and some other goodies. We are really looking forward to this because it means so much to us to provide the best service available.

#HotUpdate 15 brings a wide range of fresh icons to HotGloo – 285 to be precise. You’ll find the updated icons within the symbol element. Thanks to our friends at Webalys, who allowed us to use their iconset for wireframing purposes. Together with our recently updated image library, the new iconset will open up a whole new range of oppertunities to improve your wireframes and prototypes.

For more info on Webalys icon and interface design check out their website.

Enjoy!

With HotGloo’s fully improved image library. Yes this is one long awaited update. To be precise it’s #HotUpdate No. 14. What it’s all about. We have taken the image library and improved the UX big time.

1. Now you can paste your images with a double click directly from the image ilbrary on to the stage or simply drag and drop them there.
2. Further you can now choose wheter you want to use your imgages solely for the current project only or you want to share them globally on over your account.
3. Gloos. Gloos are like stickers you can attach to your wireframes. We’ve started to put some in there but will provide much more soon. You will find a whole range of Gloos from various genres like Social Media, E-Commerce, Payment, AppStore etc. Pls note that Gloos are owned by there respective entity and must be used for wireframes only.

We are back with a new update. This time it’s the label element. Tired of using the rich text element, and deleting all the text if all you need is one word or a short sentence? Now the label element will do this job. Use it also within custom elements as a placeholder for displaying page or project names in review mode. All you need to to is type #page or #project into the label element.

 


 
We are also updating the FAQs/Help section, adding a lot of pictures for a better user experience and traceability. As always feel free to comment, give feedback, request a tutorial or tell us about your feature ideas!

After one week on the road, various complications we had to battle with and a persistent cold that is haunting me since Dublin, I finally found some time to look back on the past events we’ve visited: FOWA in Dublin and FOWD in London.

 
Thursday, 13th May

Since Hannes, Michi and Volker didn’t have the time to do both conferences, we decided that I should go to Dublin on my own. Michi would then join me in Dublin for the weekend and we would meet the others on Monday afternoon in London. So I started my trip on the 13th May from Bratislava. Since I live in Vienna this is the nearest airport that offers a fairly moderate price for a flight to Dublin. But Ryanair can you hear me? This was my last flight with you. Half an hour delay and overflowed toilets just some examples of what you are going to witness when it comes to low-cost airlines.

 

Future Of Web Apps

Friday, 14th May

The Future of Web Apps conference was taking place at the O’Reilly Hall on the UCD campus in Dublin on 14th May. The crowd there was rather small (approx. 150 attendees and very quiet) but the speakers were really great. Most of all I enjoyed the talks of Raffi Krikorian about location based services in combination with Twitter, Simon Wardley with his slightly scientific presentation on Cloud Computing and Alex Hunter, marketing guru and former brand ninja who was talking about how to market your web app.

 
Sunday, 16th May

Since our flight to London on Monday morning was cancelled due to the Dublin airport closure we had to rush to get the ferry from Dublin to Holyhead and then continuing on the bus all the way to London. It turned out to become a 12 hour nightmare ride, in uncomfortable tiny seats but we expected this and therefore we prepared for this by drinking as much as we could during the 4 hour ferry ride to catch at least some sleep on the coach.

 

Future of Web Design

Monday, 17th May

Unfortunately sleeping cycles weren’t as deep as we had thought so we arrived in London pretty tired on Monday morning. After checking in at our Hotel in Islington and after a hot shower and a short power nap we headed down to the Brewery said hello to the Carsonified crew and were eager to set up our booth. In afternoon we welcomed the rest of the HotGloo team and headed out for traditional Fish & Chips and also a couple of pints.

 
Tuesday, 18th May

Tuesday was the start of FOWD so we tried to be there early putting the final touch on our booth and setting up our three private demo laptops so people would have the chance to give HotGloo a try. All four of us were busy answering questions and introducing visitors to our service. The feedback and interest was phenomenal. We were asked specific questions about certain features as well as how our service would work for absolute newbies. We were given so many insights on how people are using wireframing software, about their likes and dislikes about feauture requests, that we finally put together a list which we will discuss in the coming days and where we can build upon.

Before doing his presentation “Smart Tips for Wireframing” Brad Haynes, Creative Director of Paramoreredd walked by and said hi. So we were giving Brad a short crashcourse on HotGloo and hopefully we made a lasting impression on him.

 
A hard working day … had suddenly come to an Gin & Tonic end.

 
Wednesday, 19th May

Wednesday was slightly quieter since there weren’t so many new faces turning up. Thanks to Patrick from the Opera Booth we managed to organize a LCD screen. We set the screen up in the back of the booth and displayed the HotGloo promo video in an infinite loop and this immediately attracted people walking by, stopping and diving into wireframing.

We also had the opportunity to present and demo HotGloo in two University Sessions. You can watch the video of the demo session here. Many thanks to all of you who participated in those sessions. We received really profound feedback, which will flow into our thoughts on future improvements.

 
Props out to great people we’ve met on our trip: the Ubilabs crew: Martin, Christian & Michael. FOWD speaker Brad Haynes of Paramoreredd. Also greetings to our booth neighbours Hammerkit Mark and Anu – whishing you all the best for your app! And of course to all the nice people at the Opera booth who helped us out organizing our LCD monitor for day2.

Many thanks @ Ryan, Will, Keir and Lorraine and the rest of Carsonified for organizing such a great event and taking good care of us. We really appreciate – until next time … and now back to the future of wireframing.

 
Click here for the FOWA slideshow.

Click here for the FOWD slideshow.

Yes we survived our 12hour lasting bustrip to hell and finally arrived at London. Straight up to the Brewery, where the Future Of Web Design conference will be going on tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. We’ve managed to set up our booth, hooked up our laptops and surprisingly all our equipment has survived the rough trip yeahhh! So if you are attending FOWD make sure to drop by our booth in the sponsors hall, say hi, grab some free stuff and compete in our wireframing contest …this is going to be awesome!

Exciting things happened during the last weeks. We’ve come up with serveral updates including modular navigation bars and multi language support throughout the editor. But the biggest news at the moment is that we will come up with new paid plans soon.

Prices will not change, cause we think HotGloo is very reasonable priced regarding its offers.

What’s new?

• 30-day Free Trial on all Paid Plans (only applicable for first time sign ups).
• Sokoban will transform into the Team Plan and basically remain the same. Except, we got rid of active and archive slots. From now on there will only be projects, but you will be able to archive finished projects for free!
• Single Plan (designed for freelancers).
  For just $7 a month you will receive 1 project and 5 users.
• Enterprise Plan (for large teams and businesses).
  Unlimited projects and unlimited users for $48/month. The perfect joice for larger teams, agencies and corporations.

We will transform all Sokoban plans into Team Plans within 30 days – same price, same configuration, same performance! For all Free Plan holders we will send a special upgrade offer during the next weeks.

Matt uploaded the 3rd installment of his simple shopping site HotGloo tutorial series. This one focuses on how to setup a simple login control. Hope it’s useful to you! Please comment, like it on Facebook or leave us a message what you want to see featured in the future!

Watch this and other videos directly on our Vimeo Channel

Officially announced HotGloo pro Matt broadcasts his second tutorial of the Webshop Tuts Trilogy this week. Part2 is all about the cart. How to display the cart and how you can manage to add and remove items. Hope it’s useful! Matt also asked me to tell you that he is desperately seeking for feedback and further ideas which features you wanna see covered in the future. So come on Glooers!

Watch this and other videos directly on our Vimeo Channel

We have made a new update yesterday. I know some of you couldn’t wait for this one the smart navigation bar . Now you can choose within the properties panel, wether your navigation bar should genereate itself automatically from the sitemap, or if you want the create your individual navigation bar manually. Name and rename your tabs, link them to certain pages in the sitemap, change the order of appearance and define your very own hierarchy!

 
We have also updated the systemfont which offers now multi language support throughout the whole editor (except notes but we will update them too in the near future).
Hope you enjoy the new update and please let us know what you think about it!