Top Four Wireframe Tools That Web Designers Should Be Using
When it comes to web design, wireframes are an essential building block of a quality end product. Why? Because they are how designers begin to map out how your site will look – its layout, navigation, content areas and menus.
Think of the wireframe like your site’s skeleton – the bones over which the skin of typefaces and animations will be stretched. Producing a solid structure at the wireframe stage will ensure that everything else flows as it should – making your project more streamlined and efficient.
What is a Wireframe?
A wireframe is pretty basic at first. It will use simple shapes to “block out” various elements of your site’s pages, making clear locations, orientations and dimensions of each aspect. You and your designer will be able to agree on this layout before all the really important work of fleshing it out.
In other words, wireframing is an essential part of any design process – not a nice-to-have bonus. That means that every designer needs tools at their fingertips that make the most of wire framing. A software that enables robust laying-out of a site at this critical formative stage.
Good news: we have a shortlist of the four best ones.
- UXPin
UXPin offers incredible speed while putting together wireframes by dragging and dropping your customizations. The software also presents updated libraries for Foundation, Bootstrap, Android, and iOS. Your wireframes will be promptly transformed into high-quality mock-ups. This software is a one-stop shop for easy, but fully-functioned, wireframing.
- Moqups
Moqups software is developed to simplify the team process of developing wireframes. It allows a number of designers to collaborate on a single project, preparing site maps, storyboards, and flowcharts. If your wireframing stage has more than one person working on it – and more than a few moving parts – Moqup can be a great way to keep track.
- Axure
Axure enables you to include specific functionality with the layout of your website, and presents an interactive design. This wireframe software offers various widgets and sitemaps, meaning you can take the bare-bones basics of a wireframe and add some extras. This is particularly useful if the site you’re working on has some spritz essentials; it helps understand and situate them within the structure from day one.
- Fluid UI
Fluid UI is unusually ecumenical: it comprises sixteen built-in libraries for Android, Windows, iOS and other operating systems, and pages can be developed by dragging the elements from these libraries. This means that designers have access to a range of options across the major platforms, meaning that their future-proof wireframe – and thus the ensuing website – is cross-compatible from the very off.
Don’t neglect wireframes – they are too important to skip. And these are the top four wireframe tools that designers should be using.
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