This is version 2 of the Better Defaults library, expanded to sixty five (or so) interactive and cleanly styled widgets. Use it in place of the standard widget set.

Reasons to use these widgets include:

• Consistent and improved styling.
• Polished interactivity.
• Standardized labeling.
• Expanded set of shapes & controls.
• Rollover, MouseDown, Selected, and Disabled styles for most controls.
• Includes all defaults.

This is for version 5.5 and above. Put the extracted .rplib file in your “My Documents\My Axure RP Libraries\” folder (Windows) or your “Documents\Axure\Libraries” folder (Mac).

Preview |  Download

1. Plan
   • Choose a central theme.
   • Make a list of widgets that will be included.
   • Determine a common style to use throughout the library. This may include color, grid, typography, interactivity, and copy.
2. Create
   • Open Axure RP.
   • In the widgets pane on the left, click the “Wireframe” dropdown and choose “Create library…”
   • Save the new document with a short, clear name—this will be the name that shows up in the library droplist for everyone.
   • Create each widget just like you would create new pages in a normal prototype.
3. Polish
   • Name everything that may be interactive. A dynamic panel for showing a calendar should be named something like “panel – calendar”. A submit button should be something like “button – submit”. This will help your users during annotation and spec generation.
   • Add Rollover, MouseDown, Selected, and Disabled states to interactive shapes like buttons. Right click the object > Edit Button Shape > Edit Rollover Style (etc).
   • Many widgets may contain more than one element. Group them together (ctrl + G) to ensure they don’t get separated when your users move them around.
   • Sort the widgets. This is difficult because you have to do it manually and there is no best sort order. Play around with sorting options, such as alphabetical vs. order or importance, to find what’s right for you. It’s worth the effort.
   • Add custom thumbnails. Another pain-in-the-butt task that will improve the professionalism of your library tenfold. Take your inner icon designer out for a spin and start producing 32 x 32 px thumbnails in .png format. Apply them to widgets by right clicking the Widget > “Widget Properties” > “Import Icon”. Make liberal use of screen grabs. Even your lamest effort at producing an icon will look better than the grainy compressed default that Axure spits out.
   • Add descriptions. I don’t always do this, but for complex widgets, it can be good to explain them a bit. Right click the Widget > “Widget Properties”. Put your description in the text area.
4. Distribute
   • Hosting .rp / .rplib files is fraught with issues due to their resemblance to .zip files. There is one true method for hosting these things successfully (take my word for it): Put the .rp / .rplib file(s) in a folder, and zip the folder. This is the file you distribute.
5. Announce
   • The best places to announce Axure libraries are:
   • Twitter (plug: I’ll probably RT you if you direct a message to @lorenbaxter).
   • On the Axure Forum.
   • Submit to Axure’s official list of resources.

Happy prototyping!

Kevin Wick has posted a very nice sketchy-styled Axure library.  I highly recommend it.

Prototyping in a very low-fidelity visual style generally helps your stakeholders provide feedback at the right level, as discussed in this article, and has been adopted by many other design tools, notably Balsamiq.

I’ll be presenting two panels: Variables and Conditional Logic; Raised Events, and Axure Tips and Tricks. There are a bunch of other great panels hosted by Axure ninjas: Fred Beecher, Jeff Harrison, Luke Perman, Mark Johnston, Dhawal Shah, and a Q&A session with the Axure folks themselves.

And a huge thanks to Ezra Schwartz for organizing the whole thing.

Web applications and sites these days are using many social features. This library, compatible with Axure versions 5.5 and up, contains many of the standard widgets you will need to prototype basic social functionality.

You’ll find a lot more than nice looking stencils – these widgets have polished interactivity, for your prototyping and usability testing needs. And always feel free to contact me if you have any requests or additions!

Preview | Download the Widget Library

(place the .rplib file in \My Documents\My Axure RP Libraries\ for it to load automatically when you start Axure)

Widgets in this library

• Add Friend
• Email This
• Favorite
• Flag
• Follow
• Leave a Comment (single and multi)
• Loading GIF (big and small)
• Post Status
• Rating (plus/minus)
• Rating (thumbs up/down)
• Rating (stars, with and without label)
• RSS
• Save
• Share This

Screenshots

Add to Friends Widget

Rating Widget

Email This Widget

Notes

Although they were developed separately, there’s a bit of an overlap with another neat widget library by Roslyn Zolandor.

Most of the icons in this library are from the awesome Silk Icons pack.

Axure Social Widgets Library by Loren Baxter is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Engagebig.com v2 Prototype

This redesign was not too complicated – we wanted to present a more professional, modern site, focused on delivering a single point at a time, while keeping it all relatively simple. The small video clips of us were inspired by (and use an API to) robo.to. They are a fun way to get a better idea of who we are.

The main Axure lesson I’ve taken from this prototype is that we can use opacity gradients to “fade” scrolling elements in and out of the screen. Note the left and right sides of the carousel animation in the prototype. This effect didn’t go into the final design, but it was fun to develop.

Also note the nice browser chrome. Unfortunately I can’t redistribute the .rp file itself because it uses the very-awesome but for-pay Konigi icons.

About a month ago, the folks at Zurb published a nice article about sketching wireframes.  I went ahead and purchased some new sketching items including a nice thick sharpie and a cool gray “dropshadow” pen.

The difference in my sketches is incredible.  Zurb hits the nail on the head, saying, “Although we advocate keeping things as simple as possible, presentation is everything.”  I wholeheartedly agree.  While it’s important to stay in a sketchy, mostly grayscale environment while doing early prototyping, there is nothing wrong with keeping your deliverables professional looking.

In that sense, and through deep offense at the default White, Black, and Blue widgets offered with Axure, I’ve created a small library of widgets that are just a little more aesthetic.

This is for version 5.5 and above.  Put the file in your “My Documents\My Axure RP Libraries\” folder.
Download the Widget Library

In the name of transparency and providing a useful example for the design / ux / development community, I’ve posted the Axure prototype for our next version.  We’re pretty excited about the upcoming re-release, and I hope that the prototype can help show a piece of the process that our UX team goes through.

See the Axure Prototype for Do the Right Thing v2

The new design focuses on ideas – which are fundamentally more positive than complaints and compliments, because they are guaranteed to have a call to action.  The final release will have a few changes, and we had the liberty of leaving out some pieces that have already been implemented on the first site, but overall this is a fine example of what a site prototype can look like.

In other news, posts have been slow recently because I’ve made a move to South America.  There are challenges to being a global Web Worker, and I plan on writing a bit about the experience in the future.

This technique is a simple combination of the animation hack with the use of transparent fills.

Preview the prototype

Download the .rp file