App design tool?

Any free tools out there you guys/gals use to design your app with? I like to have everything drawn out before I start to code.

All joking aside… A fresh ringed sketchbook with paper that doesn’t bleed and a nice art quality marker that’s fat enough to not worry about design details.

I haven’t used any free wire-framing tools that beat paper and markers.

Also not free but i’ve had a lot of success with Balsamiq mockups (the desktop version). I’m having a hard time finding a more productive wire-framing tool.

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What’s funny is I was hoping to get an answer from you!!! I’ve read all your opinions on managing state and why you like React, and I thought to myself, “Crap. Maybe I need to draw this up before I go down that road and have to refactor like crazy”.

Skinny geek making a fat joke about a marker. Ironic?

Cheers!

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Haha, too funny :smile:

Drawing box out for which items will be components can help too. When I first started I made the common mistake of shoving a lot of markup in one render function… but it works better to breakup into many small stateless components.

I just read an article today that explains this really well (it’s Flux oriented but aligns closely to my prev Meteor Flux post): http://blog.mgechev.com/2015/05/15/flux-in-depth-overview-components/

Some talks that may help you refactor/migrate:

Refactoring an existing app:

and Rethinking best practices:

Cheers

I’m a fan of Balsamiq!

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