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Balsamiq Community Discussion

Mockups slow down severely after about 33 mockups with about 50 objects each

#1

Hey Guys,

Balsmiq is an excellent product and very useful.

Our current project has 33 mockups in it. It was running smoothly. We increased the amount of objects on each page from about 25 to 40. Now the project is extremely slow (1-2 seconds) when swapping between mockups. This problem is worse when we bring the project into google drive and open it in the browser. We have been using the desktop tool for developing the mockups since it has proved to be more reliable. Then we use the google drive version to view mockuos on other computers.

Are there any practical limits we should be aware of? or particular objects that cause a slowdown?

#2

Hey @phillipbligh, really sorry about the slowness here.

Would it be possible to email your project to support@balsamiq.com? We would hold your data in the strictest confidence and only long enough to diagnose the issue. It would give us a chance to poke at it and see if there is anything we can do.

Normally, there shouldnā€™t be any issue or limits. However, in extreme cases, Adobe Air can get grumpy when a lot of memory is being used.

Your project doesnā€™t sound like it falls into that category at all, and we love to figure out whatā€™s happening.

#3

Hi Brendan,

I sent you a recent backup of our design. I added a note asking to keep things confidential. Please let me know how things work out.

#4

@Brendan ,

I am really suffering from slow down as well. My project size sounds very similar to @phillipbligh. It is more noticeable in presentation mode. I have entered up exporting them as pngs and using Windows Photo Viewer just to be able to move between the mock ups easier.

Unfortunately I cannot share my project.

#5

Hey @Dan,

Iā€™m really sorry about that. It sounds like you and Phillip are running into similar issues. As mockups become more and more complex, the app takes more and more time to render each one.

It looks like you are using the same workaround I recommended to Phillip (exporting to a borderless PDF) and presenting the mockup that way. Iā€™m sorry that we donā€™t have a better solution right now.

Our native apps should help with this, and hopefully we will be able to talk more about those soon.

Iā€™m sorry again for the hassle you both are facing with this.

#6

We were using the desktop tool for creating the mockups as this seems to be the most performant option in our experience. We tried development with the google docs however there were problems with periodic dropouts. While these issues did not cause us to lose work, it got annoying having to constantly reload the mockups.

We were using the google docs to do presentations. This allowed us to show mockups from any computer. Unfortunately as the project grew in size it became slower, the slowness has become disruptive to our presentation.

The PDF Export is how we were sharing our the mockups files, so that everyone could have a personal copy to refer to. It contains all of the same links which navigate the same as the Balsamiq Mockups.

I think there are a few options:

We could break up our project into smaller sub-projects. We generally do not cover 34 mockups of features in each presentation for the sake of peopleā€™s time and sanity.

We could also take the PDF approach, this could be downloaded and used on just about any computer.

#7

Hey @Brendan,

I am noticing that building symbols in my project now has become unbearably slow. Could symbols be the reason for the performance issues?

#8

Hi @Dan,

Sorry again for the hassle with this.

Symbols are a part of the mockup complexity and might add some slowness to your project in this case. Best way to make sure about it: Does it seem more responsive/faster if you build symbols in a new project?

As Brendan mentioned, going native should help with this as using Adobe Air alongside brings some limits weā€™d like to get rid of.

#9

@Virgin

Yes it is faster in another project. How do I ā€˜go nativeā€™? Iā€™m not sure what you mean?

#10

Sorry @Dan! What I meant is that we are working hard on the native version of our little tool that should help with this slowness behavior you are facing. We hope to have more news to share soon!

#11

@Virgin

Is there anyway I can get around the performance issues? It is getting really bad now, changing between mocks up is near 5 seconds.

#12

Hi @Dan,

Sorry for the continuing hassle with this. Weā€™d love to provide some useful tips to help here but what works for one project doesnā€™t necessarily works for another one. We would need to have a look at your project to determine the root cause of the issue. I read above that you are unable to share it with us now but in case that changes later on, please let us know!

#13

Hi there!

I am using Balsamiq Mockups 3.4.1 (latest at the time of writing) on OS X and Iā€™m noticing severe degradation of user interface responsivness in my mockups. This is especially evident with ā€œData Gridā€ component. Resizing or dragging such component on screen is extremely slow. CPU usage is low and memory usage is low as well.

Is there something Iā€™m missing? I have 14 mockups (some have alternate versions) and the pages are not that complex.

#14

Hi @Miha_Valencic,

Sorry for the trouble with this. It seems like a weird bug so letā€™s see if we can find the root cause of it.

Could you please send your BMPR file to support@balsamiq.com so that we can try to reproduce the issue here? We will keep your data strictly confidential and only long enough to try to debug your file.

Also, are you running the latest OS X version (10.11.5)?

Weā€™ll do our very best to help, Miha!