I'm searching for a User Interface Design tool to visualize a possible GUI in a documentation. I must not generate code. I know that Microsoft Visio provides a functionality. But are there any alternatives?
Which software do you use for visualizing a GUI?
Thank you in advance.
Best regards from Switzerland
Thomas
PS. Another well-known tool is The Pencil Project.
Thank you for all your replies!!
I'm very fascinated from Balsamiq Mockups! But finally I'm going to use The Pencil Project.
An awesome and easy one is balsamiq: http://www.balsamiq.com/
I also quite like Axure.
The "must not" seems odd... if you use an IDE designer to throw some controls down, but don't use the code, is that sufficient?
Or use "blend" - that generates xaml, which is just layout - no code.
Give a look to Firefox Pencil Extension, is a basic tool for GUI prototyping and simple sketching....
Take a look at the tools mentioned in the answers to this question:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/517324/prototyping-tools-for-non-programmers-expression
I'd still recommend Balsamiq Mockups. The resulting GUI mockups look like sketches, making it a great tool for communicating the idea that this is not the final GUI, but merely a visualization of GUI concepts.
You may want to have a look at Joel's article The Iceberg Secret, Revealed, as well as the articles discussion.
I don't know wether this is relevant to yout task, but since reading it I definitely prefer to use handdrawns sketches of a UI if I want to present it to a customer. (A 'Pencil Project' in the true sense of the meaning ;-)