So after working on a few new projects recently I realised I needed tools faster and smarter than the ones I was using for pre-site work. In the 1990's used to start a site using Adobe Illustrator for wireframing and all the intense layout work to then present to the customer for approval and changes. I then moved to doing it in Photoshop and finally in recent years have switched to Fireworks and even tried Omnigraffle Pro. All these methods work but there are a few reasons why they slow me down. Firstly, I get distracted by design and end up trying to do the whole look and feel of the design at the wire framing phase. Secondly, working with fully rasterised layers just feels slow. Finally, my Illustrator wireframes especially, whilst awesome, were crap to edit.

Enter Balsamiq Mockups. After working for a while on a recent site with a team I realised it would help to bang out quick page layouts for people to look at before I spend my precious coffee drinking time at the CSS and design coalface. So the recycling team at www.jagajum.co.nz can now receive modification ideas without me being away from my day job for too long.

This software isn't just for webbies as it is also perfect for other business mockup applications you may need to work with. Brilliantly designed using Adobe AIR it is all drag and drop and very intuitive. So if you are a layout-a-phobe or you think it is a part of the project development chain that you would rather skip then this might bring you back around.

Check it out, have a play and if you have thoughts, always keen to hear them

http://www.balsamiq.com