"To mock-up the user interface of a website, software or any other product, you'll need some basic UI elements. And this is where wireframing kits and UI design kits come in handy. When you want to create a low-fidelity prototype for your projects, you can use these kits to give your idea a certain shape, keeping it abstract and not losing yourself in details.
In this post, we've prepared an overview of useful web and mobile user interface kits, handy PDFs and resources that you can use in your projects. We've carefully selected the most useful kits and resources to get you going in the early stages of a project."
"A free User Interface Design tool for Web Designers
• Design faster wireframes and create better mockup deliverables in Illustrator.
• Design usable application interface with hundreds of common GUI elements : just drop them from Illustrator Panels or pick them in the library files.
• Customize easily the vectors GUI elements to your own needs : you can easily resize, color or tweak their appearance.
• Benefit from a consistent UI elements library made by a web designer expert in application interface design. "
"One of the first choices a designer makes when creating a website is determining its appropriate dimensions. At a time when desktop resolutions range anywhere from 1024x768px to 2560x1600px, designers are well accustomed to designing for the lowest common denominator. It's not exactly good practice to create a layout at 1200px wide when 20% of your users are browsing on a 1024×768 resolution."
"Planning and communication are two key elements in the development of any successful website or application. And that is exactly what the wireframing process offers: a quick and simple method to plan the layout and a cost-effective, time-saving tool to easily communicate your ideas to others. A wireframe typically has the basic elements of a Web page: header, footer, sidebar, maybe even some generated content, which gives you, your clients and colleagues a simple visually oriented layout that illustrates what the structure of the website will be by the end of the project and that serves as the foundation for any future alterations.
This article focuses on actual wireframing tools and standalone applications, as well as resources that you'll need to build your own wireframe: wireframing kits, browser windows, form elements, grids, Mac OS X elements, mobile elements, which you'll use in any typical graphics editor such as Photoshop or Illustrator. …Or you could use pen and paper."
Are you still using a prototyping software that can only give you static drawing or an image as an output? Are you still sending static mockups or wireframes back and forth via email to get feedback? Did you ever to preview a prototype in the Web browser? So, drop your pencil and start creating real and interactive web and mobile HTML prototypes using Tiggr. Tiggr is Web-based, so there is nothing to install or download (well...it does use Flash player, but you probably already have it). Access it from anywhere.
What is Wireframe? Mockup? Prototype?
Before we get started on comparing and exploring the 3 FREE wireframing and mockup tools - Lumzy, Mockup Builder and Tiggr, we will firstly talk about what a wireframe is, what is a mockup and what is a prototype. Wireframes, mockups, and prototypes are the important things in web design and web development phase. It helps web designers and developers to determine, evaluate, study and clarifies what are the important things to be on the different page types they will be having on their website.
Maqetta is an open source technology initiative at Dojo Foundation that provides WYSIWYG tooling in the cloud for HTML5 (desktop and mobile). Maqetta allows User Experience Designers (UXD) to perform drag/drop assembly of live UI mockups.
One of Maqetta's key design goals is to create developer-ready UI mockups that promote efficient hand-off from designers to developers. The user interfaces created by Maqetta are real-life web applications that can be handed off to developers, who can then transform the application incrementally from UI mockup into final shipping application.