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I don't know if such a thing exists, but suppose you're at a meeting with a client and you're designing gui screens together. Is there some program out there that makes it easy to just draw a picture of the winforms screen, and maybe append little notes to the picture? I don't want to use the designer for such a thing. Hopefully if it's really good, then my clients could design the screens for me.

Anyone know of such a tool?

-Isaac

Isaac Bolinger
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4 Answers4

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I've found Pencil to be really nice and easy to use. It can run standalone or on Firefox. It's free, open source and light weight!

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Ranhiru Jude Cooray
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    Open source / free .. this is a great little tool, thanks for the answer! Should have more up-votes tbh! – peteski Oct 23 '13 at 13:38
  • Unfortunately, Pencil hasn't been updated for awhile and isn't working in Windows 7 or Firefox (28.0) :( Looks like a cool tool though which may still work on Linux and Mac. – dustinrwh May 28 '15 at 20:59
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    The developement seems to have been picked up by someone else on git hub https://github.com/prikhi/pencil – Ioan Loosley Feb 25 '16 at 09:17
  • It's updated as of 2017 now, though download was exceptionally slow. – Richard Griffiths May 22 '19 at 10:19
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this is a fantastic tool for doing this :- http://balsamiq.com/products/mockups

there's also a plugin to convert to winforms, however, I think its better to just mock it up using this tool, then design using the mockups as a guideline

Keith Nicholas
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  • thanks a lot. Soon we're going to be running into some screens where they're going to want a lot of input and control over whats going on. – Isaac Bolinger Oct 20 '11 at 03:24
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There are many such tools: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/156937/balsamiq-mockups-alternative-for-building-wireframes

And for the difference between IDEs and specialized mockup tools check this: Whats the best way to create interactive application prototypes?

Community
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IgorJ
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There are tools for this, but then again the current generation of IDEs like Visual Studio are just as fast to mock up a design as would be a graphics tool.

If you insist on a non-IDE software, try Microsoft Visio. It comes with some built in stencils for the "core" windows controls (a little dated with traditional menus, toolbars, etc.. no ribbon UI or even Vista UI) but you can also download more stencils online and create your own stencils for frequently used pieces of work. One area Visio excels at is the ability to add annotations, notes, arrows and symbols to your drawing.

Many developers take a hybrid approach by taking a screenshot of your UI from your development application and pasting it into Visio. Now you can decorate the screenshot with all the little annotations and explanations while you discuss it. (This is also a good technique for documenting your UI).

BenSwayne
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  • I don't want to use the designer, some crucial controls like the datagridview are not easy to mock in there. And it can be really slow... and it can be easy to autogenerate code while you're working with it. This is not a nice thing when you're in front of clients. – Isaac Bolinger Oct 20 '11 at 03:23
  • I'll look into visio again. I didn't realize you could do that with it. – Isaac Bolinger Oct 20 '11 at 03:23
  • IDEs are not just as fast; you can't print/export the GUI; non-programmers can't use them, etc etc – IgorJ Jun 18 '13 at 22:38