More details on the new Jumpchart
From the beginning, Jumpchart has always been about making website planning quicker and easier. As designers and developers, planning has, historically, not been the most rewarding part of our jobs. Jumpchart was created out of a strong desire to ease the pain of planning. Originally, we built Jumpchart for ourselves and used it internally, but we quickly came to realize that there must be a lot of other people just like us. So we set Jumpchart free into the world, hoping that others would benefit from it just as we had, and hoping that we could create a viable source of revenue from it as well. Almost a year and a half later, it makes us incredibly proud that so many other studios have adopted Jumpchart for their website planning (12,000+ accounts and counting) and we’re happy to say that we are in fact turning a profit. But after 16 months, it’s time that we take Jumpchart to the next level. This is part two in our open ended series highlighting some of the changes coming to the new and improved Jumpchart. You can see the first post here.
New Textile Formatting Palette
The new Jumpchart sports a totally redesigned formatting palette. It’s now smaller in size and pops up right in context with the column that you are editing. We’ve also given the palette springy little sub-panes for quick access to files uploaded, internal links to other pages or to one of your snippets. Check out this quick video to see the new textile formatting palette in action:
Or check it out the really big version here.
Page utilities
Currently in Jumpchart, both global options and page specific options reside in the sidebar. While there isn’t anything particularly wrong with this, we’re committed to improving the efficiency of the UI. The first step we took was moving anything that had to do with the Jumpchart as a whole to the top of the page. That left the “Add file” option, which has to do with the specific page you’re working on. We grouped that at the bottom of the page, right next to the new “Page Settings” option.
Before
Now
Global options at the top, Page specific options at the bottom. Cleaner, clearer and it carried the added benefit of freeing up an awful lot of space for the content area.
Stay tuned for more news and updates about the new Jumpchart. Also, if you’ve built a site using Jumpchart, we’d love to highlight it here. Drop us a line and tell us about your experience, don’t forget to include a link to the live site as well.
Hi, I haven’t used Jumpchart yet but I’m delighted by what I see.
The first idea that I got to make Jumpchart the definitive website planner is to include layout planning.
A very simple page that would allow me the designer to layout where everything goes. Headers, sidebar(s), footer, and so on. Everything marked with beautiful colorful icons.
My clients could just move an icon here and there with their suggestions in real time. Yes, real time collaborative web planning with my clients who don’t know the first thing about web design.
The designers interface can include many options with a more cluttered interface.
The clients interface kept minimal and clean, allowing them more of just the option to move stuff around and add notes.
It keeps the designer in control of all the technical stuff with the clients only having to worry about “simple” things.
Also important. Allow checkpoints that a designer can ask the client to sign off on. That way you can only move forward with the planning.
At the end, allow for easy export as Jumpchart does but with the new custom layout scheme and voila, I’ve got a functioning website ready for it’s new skin and my clients are happy because it’s easy, easy, easy, and dare I say it, fun.
Thanks for the feedback Jimmy. Some pretty cool ideas in there. To be honest, we’ll probably never take Jumpchart too far down the path of full blown interface mockups. that type of thing shouldn’t be plug-and-play in our opinion. It goes against the creative process of design… Still we have some really amazing new things to show you in JC2 that are going to rock your sock in that department… Thanks again for the feedback, – and thanks for using Jumpchart!
I’d also vote for adding control of layouts. I just don’t get the point of using a tool to mockup the page structure of the site – that’s not such a big deal for me, compared to the trouble of getting people to work on and agree a design for a page.
J.
Hi Jonathan, while we totally see where you’re coming from, Jumpchart will probably never have the ability to do design prototypes. We’ve thought a lot about it and we have come to this decision because we value the design process too darn much. Jumpchart is meant to be a place to plan the big picture of the site, collect assets (photos, pdfs, etc.) and to let the copywriters get going on the individual page’s written content. The design process is something altogether different in our minds and something that must be conducted with a blank slate (or a blank monitor in this case). While adding design to Jumpchart would be a next (monstrously large) step, it is one that we will probably never take, because it lies beyond what we think Jumpchart does best, which is planning and organizing content.
Thanks for taking the time to comment!
Hi,
Thanks for the response.
Funnily enough, it hadn’t clicked that JumpChart could let copywriters get on with the job of copy-writing whilst the developers and designers are also doing their job. That completely changes the way I perceive the value of the tool, and now I can see that it’s useful!
I’ve added it to the “Website creators” section of my list of online services: http://jnthnlstr.tiddlyspot.com/index.html#Hosted%20services
I’d suggest taking “wireframing” out of the product description, as that’s misleading (to me, at least, wireframeing is a layout and interface-focuessed visual design process).
J.
Jonathan,
Glad that helped to clear things up. For sure, Jumpchart is built to do one thing really really well. And that is content, not design. I guess there is a distinction in many people minds about what wireframing is, that is why we try to describe Jumpchart as a Content Wireframing App when we talk about it.
Thanks for the mention on your site!
[...] you’ve read through our Jumpchart preview posts (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) you’ll already know many of the changes that have come to the new Jumpchart, but not [...]