With the highly anticipated release of Axure RP 8, we look at the 3 features that will definitely speed up your design workflow.

Faster HTML prototype rendering times

In Axure 7, the generated HTML protoype was a combination of HTML tables, images and Javascript to accommodate cross browser compatibility, especially on the dreaded Internet Explorer. This however introduces lag in wireframe/prototype loading times resulting a bad experience when testing or when presenting to client. Axure 8 now actually generates CSS elements from your shapes resulting in more code than rasterized images. As developers know, this means it takes the browser a shorter time to load your Axure prototype. Sign me up!!

Group Interactions

Grouping Axure widgets is a regular activity to make moving them and applying a style easier. In Axure 8, the design team has gone one further and now provide interactions for groups of widgets. This means you can select any number of elements, like content blocks, calls-to-action or text and apply an action/interaction to perhaps open up a page or pop-up. Very cool. This can be a tedious exercise when the project comprises of numerous pages with widgets that need linking and where Masters and dynamic panels do not help. This feature will definitely reduce the time to link together an awesome prototype.

The Fire Event

A new inclusion in Axure 8, this event allows you to trigger an action or event on another widget. It works in a similar way to the OnClick event but actually allows for copying one widget’s event to be referenced on another widget or multiple widgets. What that means for you as the designer, is that you only need to change an action in one location and its applied wherever else it is referenced saving hours of debugging every occurrence of your action in your project. A definite time saver for large Axure projects.

Published by Calvin Pedzai

Lead UX designer for digital agency

1 Comment

  1. It’s always been possible to create similar diagrams in other software, but the advantage of using Axure is that your lines will stay connected as you move elements around.

    Reply

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