Patapage

In a just released update of the Patapage service we introduced a new functionality: PataPic, which lets you take screenshots of web sites and have them available as an online URL, a bit like the TwitPic service for Twitter; PataPic also lets you download a Balsamiq Mockup file which contains a “sketched” version of the site image, which you can then annotate with all the Balsamiq Mockup tools. One Look is Worth A Thousand Words:

Say the site is our example one, Liz’:

and you are its designer and you’ve built a draft of the new version of it: now you want to show it around, giving the opportunity of making suggestions for improvements. Just add the PataPic button to such page(s), and when the visitors / contributors will click the button they will get the image generator page:

Proceeding they will get the URL to the screenshot:

Now they will have a public web link to the image (which may even be shortened), and if they have Balsamiq Mockups installed, the visitors can download and open the bmml file, obtaining in this case:

Ta-da: Your site in Mockups. Notice the cool “sketch it” effect: this way the user added notes are more readable, and it is immediately clear that your proposal isn’t the original site. Once they have completed their annotations, say obtaining this:

they can contribute the file or its screenshot back on the page using PataPic upload, getting:

You can see all this on a sample page here: http://www.open-lab.com/patapagedemo/patapic.html, or even better you can enroll in Patapage and try it on your site or on a test page.

We thank the Balsamiq guys for feedback. Get the Balsamiq Mockups application from this site: (produced by Balsamiq Studios):

http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups

One Look is Worth A Thousand Words: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_picture_is_worth_a_thousand_words