Napkee: From Mockups to Reality
We've been very clear in the past with our enjoyment and use of Balsamiq Mockups. It's a fantastic product that has helped us out greatly with our day-to-day wireframe needs. It wasn't long ago that we were followed on Twitter by a user named Napkee. We check out all of our followers to see if we should follow them back (or block those that look like spammers).
Napkee, as it turns out, is a new Micro-ISV, building a sister product to Balsamiq Mockups. With Mockups having an open format that readily allows developers to manipulate the resulting files, Enrico Berti has built a wonderful product that allows designers and developers to export these mockups to web development code.
From a user experience point of view, Napkee is even easier to use that Balsamiq Mockups. Simply import your Balsamiq files, select the file you want to work with first, and your done. Then you can export the results if you like. It's really that simple. Napkee automatically parses your Balsamiq files to spit out a nicely done scaffold of HTML, CSS and JavaScript hooks (It also supports exportation to Flex).
Yes, I said "scaffold." Don't expect Napkee to produce a fully functional web site for you. But what it does do is produce a nice scaffold of HTML and CSS that takes a lot of the pain out of structuring your HTML elements. With Napkee, you can focus on your design elements and make minor tweaks to the layout to address any general concerns.
Napkee is a prized example of a Micro-ISV product done right. This first release version is not overdone. It performs a clear function, and is very valuable as 1.0 version product. But at the same time, Napkee shows huge potential moving forward as an excellent bridge between layout mockups and finalized structured code. I'm very excited to see where it goes from here.
Congratulations go out to Enrico on such a fine product launch.
