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Balsamiq Community Discussion

Material design and Android UI elements

#1

Title says it all. Where can I find Material design symbols/controls/icons?

My team has to develop some Android UI mockups as part of a project here by my university (using our accounts provided by our university on mybalsamiq) and I would very much appreciate if anyone could point me towards the Material design library for myBalsamiq. Your current controls are kinda obsolete and do not reflect the design language used on mobile devices and are thus unsuitable for my needs.

I’ve seen a few threads and this has been requested multiple times since 2015 but all I can find are few libraries for the desktop version of your application (Mockups 3) which has unfortunately not been licensed by my university. I’ve played around with the trial version but the current symbols library is crude and lacks most Material UI elements. I just don’t get it, your competitors already have already stepped up their game and implemented the UI elements mandated by modern versions Android. Some of the web-based wireframing tools I’ve tried are vastly superior in terms of features and use modern web technologies.

Why has myBalsamiq not been updated (why the heck does it even use Flash in the first place?) and when can we expect some Material design/Android symbols? I have a tight schedule and I would like to get started with my work here.

#2

Sorry about the wait on this, @Yowan. We are working hard on adding more Android/Material Design controls to Mockups.

One thing you can do right now is import this Material Design Template into your myBalsamiq project by following these steps. Hopefully that will help you get started!

We are very close to launching a closed beta of the next generation of myBalsamiq. It’s completely rebuilt in Javascript, so it won’t require any 3rd party plugins to run. We had hoped to have it ready sooner, but it’s been a huge project for our small team, and we wanted to make sure it was done right.

Sorry again about the Material Design controls, my friend. More are coming!

#3

Thanks for the response. Is there any ETA for the new version or possibly a beta version to try out?

#4

Hi @Yowan! No ETA yet (it will depend on the beta version too) but I’m happy to add you to the list for trying it out, we’ll keep you in the loop. :slight_smile:

#5

I’d love to get in on that beta too. We’ve gone exclusively to material design for our dev and having more resources for that in balsamiq would be so helpful. thanks.

#6

Added, my friend. We will be in touch :slight_smile:

#7

Awesome - thank you!

#8

I would like to also be added to Beta, if it’s still open - thanks!

#9

Absolutely @eazyguru. You’re on the list now!

#10

Could I also get added to the beta?

#11

Sure thing, Jonathan. Shoot us an email.

#12

I just sent the email, thanks.

#13

I’d like access to material design icons in Balsamiq too. How do I get this? Can I get on the beta list?

#14

Hey @JFenton,

The Material Design controls we were discussing here are in the latest version of the app. If you’re looking for more controls than that, you can check out what we have at our Wireframes to Go community site. Here is how to import them into your project.

Let us know if you have any questions!

Edit: Alasdair pointed out that you may be looking for the Material Design Icons themselves. That is something we are looking at adding once the new desktop version of the app ships later this year!

#15

Hi Brendan,

I couldn’t find everything, including even just an android container. I had to go to wireframes to go community, and import the material design set from there, and import them into the project as symbols. That has seemed to work. It would be nicer if that worked ‘out of the box’ though. Is that what you mean is coming to the next version?

#16

Yes and no, @JFenton.

After the dust settles and all our apps are on the same codebase, we are going to look into adding the Google Material Design icons to our app. This wouldn’t be containers or windows, just the icons that Google uses across their Material Design apps.

We will, however, be adding a more seamless way to get Wireframes to Go contents into your projects. Those Material Design controls that you downloaded wouldn’t be included by default, but you would be able to search and add them all from within the app (it’s a pain to add stuff from WTG right now, and I’m sorry about that).