Here’s the Penpot beta unboxing stream from last week:
I’ve been using it a lot for personal design work.
The main thing that I’m missing right now is stencils. I need to make them myself. And I’ve not got enough time. I’d like to have one that replicates the great and fun (I don’t get caught up in pixel pushing) Balsamiq low fidelity stencils:
Has anyone made any stencils? Would you care to share them?
The main topics in this thread:
the desire for a set of low fidelity hand-sketch stencil/library/UI components
Muy buenas @elhombretecla. And welcome to the OSD forum!
Ah, I wasn’t aware of that Github repository for libraries/templates/stencils/whatever-the-right-name-for-them-is. Thanks for posting that I’ll take a look.
Is there a “sketch” aesthetic - like Balsamiq - available in Penpot? Essentially it’s like digitised hand drawn wireframe. Or can I recreate that aesthetic in Penpot?
For me this is one of the best things about Balsamiq. I am not the UX designer who spends hours and days pushing pixels.
Low fidelity is what I want so I can focus on figuring out if the design idea is the right one.
If its available, or I can recreate it, then I’d try creating a stensil over Christmas when I have some time.
Thanks to new community member @colombene I came across a nice interview with @diacritica about Penpot development where he mentioned our wonderful FOSDEM devroom.
If its available, or I can recreate it, then I’d try creating a stensil over Christmas when I have some time.
I think it is possible, but it is never as good as in balsamiq, because text is a separate element in Penpot whereas it is directly integrated in balsamiq. It is also not easy to get the wiggly lines. I guess the most tool-appropriate way is going for a more blueprint-y look, see, for example this figma library
Somewhat. Its the model they use for what they show you. Balsamiq elements are visual representation, behavior, text all baked in one thing (“Dropdown”). In Penpot (Figma, Sketch…) the elements you can use are made by the designer from simpler elements, a Dropdown, e.g. consists of multiple nested rectangles. The advantage: You can make your own elements in your own style. The disadvantage: While there are stencils and reuse, the UI elements are never as tightly encapsulated as balsamiq’s.
You need to wigglify the lines yourself. But it works somewhat. I usually pick ComicSans and 2px black lines, slightly rounded corners to approximate, but if you draw/import svg lines that wiggle, you can use these, too.
Hello, I’m very much here for this thread
I’ve been using Penpot more and more for my work on CryptPad and I’ve been pretty happy.
Seems like there are still quite a few deal-breakers, but I’ve been dealing anyway. Of those that come to mind: export functionality seems more or less completely broken at the time of writing, no way of turning text into svg outlines (that I’ve noticed), and consistently bad results with the prototype view…
I think the product has already come a long way and is definitely useable. I’m just still at the stage where I regularly run into issues.
Hi @buovjaga I’ve never seen Rough.js, or Wired Elements. Thanks for the link. I like the astethic very much. I’ve seen Excalidraw before, again I like it’s low fidelity appearance.
I think it’d be very nice if prototyping tools like Penpot, etc had a lo-fi/hi-fi “switch” like Balsamiq does. I use this feature a lot when doing designs.
Yea will definitely catch that talk and the rest of the devroom!
and for sure looking forward to every batch of improvements, sorry if my initial message sounded grumpy, export was broken at a time when I needed it. I really appreciate that Penpot is there and big feels for any open source project squashing bugs
Hi @davidbenque! You didn’t sound grumpy at all, no worries there. We appreciate your feedback and your continued use of Penpot. We’re deploying/releasing 1.11 today and it would be great if you check whether that export issue is still there later this week. The list of bug fixes for this release is… LONG
Breaking news for the wonderful open source design community! 1.11 is now deployed on design.penpot.app. If you run your self hosted penpot server we recommend you update it. This is not an official release announcement, of course
Without doing a thread merge (where you move one Discourse thread to another already established thread), I’ll paste the Adobe buying Figma thread here.
Would be amazing if we could all rally behind PenPot and get the tool box of our dreams to happen. Might take years of blood, sweat, and tears, but there seems to be no other way.
Hey! I’m extremely happy to know I’ll be seeing some of you this weekend at FOSDEM! I just wanted to share that we launched our new website today! https://penpot.app/ Like, right now! You’re the first ones to be aware of it! But what’s really exciting today is that we deployed our official release, 1.17 “no longer beta!” with a ton of goodies, including Flex Layout. I think it’s hard to overstate how important is to commit to open source and open standards, we hope that features like Flex Layout will make more people realise that this is the way to go!
We have an live unboxing event later today if you’re curious to see us in action, it will be paired with the official presentation at FOSDEM this Sunday! Can’t wait!
[Edit: haha! I wanted to share this so quick that the new website is stll being deployed atm, but it’ll be there in a few mins, for sure! it’s a DNS thingy]
