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Show HN: Konty – A Balsamiq-alternative lo-fi wireframe tool for modern apps
- pabe 2y agoLooks nice, like excalidraw fine tuned for wireframes. However, I'm on Linux so I'm not able to use the app.
- mkarliner 2y agoVery nice. I've been looking for a replacement hand drawn tool for ages.
- janwillemb 2y agoLooks nice! Maybe add some explanation about licensing on the first pages. And the name sounds like "butty" in Dutch, so that will be hard for me to recommend out loud for my Dutch IT students.
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- equalsabhi 2y agoIs this a free to use tool? I was thinking about whether the GTM should be a figma plugin vs. a desktop app. Would love to know the founder's thought process on choosing the desktop app route.
- rnavi 2y agoExcellent point.
- niklauslee 2y agoFor the future, we're looking at web-based version with real-time collaboration. But for now, we decided to start with desktop. We were also influenced by the "file over app" philosophy of Obsidian's founder: https://stephango.com/file-over-app https://stephango.com/file-over-app.
- keyle 2y agoWhat's going on with the url? https://konty.app/http://localhost:4321/ Nice app. Loved Balsamiq for years, now I use an outdated version of Sketch.
- Sparkenstein 2y agoSubmission url is incorrect. https://konty.app/anything https://konty.app/anything works.
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- donatj 2y agoAre people still using Balsamiq?! I haven't heard that name in literally forever. I used to use it and love it like fifteen years ago when I fancied myself a designer and not just a backend dev.
- keyle 2y ago[flagged]
- Brajeshwar 2y agoI remember was using an old version around the time just before the recent Pandemic. Balsamiq went with the current trend and is focusing on subscription/saas model targeting businesses. Peldi also seem to have retired or is semi-retired.
- toyg 2y agoI've not heard that nickname in 20 years! I went to his same highschool (liceo), he's two years older, and I was always pretty amazed by the guy - including how he took what was effectively an offensive slur against him ("carrot hair", pel di carota) and claimed it as his nickname. Doing that as a teenager takes balls. Great to know he's sorted for good, I wish I was (lol)...
- cstuder 2y agoThe desktop version of Balsamiq with a one-time-payment is still available, but you have to hunt for it a little.
- ilt 2y agoI am still using Balsamiq for low-fi wireframes and low-fi prototyping. Mostly for desktop application development these days. Absolutely love it. Desktop version is still mostly on par with its subscription model counterpart, only major difference being collaboration thingies.
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- thuhien2621 2y agoI'm a Business Analyst, so I find your tool quite interesting. I'll definitely give it a try. However, I would like to ask if your product includes sufficient notation to draw according to BPMN standards.
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- JakaJancar 2y agoLove it! I always liked Balsamiq, it really forces you not to obsess about the pixels too much, but it was so slow/bloated/buggy, like something from the Java on desktop era. This is much smoother!
- Brajeshwar 2y agoWell, yes, it was from the Flash era. It started in Flash/Flex. I love it and used it for a very long time. Huge respect for Peldi (Balsamiq founder).
- hermitcrab 2y agoIIRC the desktop product was rewritten and is still being updated.
- Brajeshwar 2y agoFor those who love this type of tool, you will also love Kinopio. I've no affiliation. https://kinopio.club/ https://kinopio.club/ I've seen the founder, /pketh answer questions here on HN. Update/Edit: The other open-source alternative to Balsamiq-ish tool is https://excalidraw.com https://excalidraw.com
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- porl 2y agoNo Linux support :'(
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- berkes 2y agoI don't understand these decisions. This is a collaborative tool. So you cannot say "only 5% of the audience is Linux users", but instead you'll rule out any team where at least one member is Linux user. Which is a far larger group. If I discount myself, that's 8 of 9 teams and startups I worked in last years where we needed wireframing. But I hope the Konty team has better numbers on this. I presume they know more than my anecdotal numbers.
- niklauslee 2y agoYes, we'll also consider Linux distributions.
- melicerte 2y agoIn the meantime, wireframesketcher[1] seems to do the same than Konty and runs on linux. I'm not related to them in any way but use this solution for years and I'm very happy with it (paying customer). [1] https://wireframesketcher.com/ https://wireframesketcher.com/
- 8mobile 2y agoHi, Balsamiq is one of my favorite products, I have already downloaded konty and I stress it a lot. Congratulations for the idea and for the product, how did you come up with it? After the beta will it be paid? I will give you some feedback soon. Thanks
- niklauslee 2y agoThank you for your feedback. I'm thinking of the paid version. I would like to offer it much cheaper than balsamiq, probably. Additionally, we'll be offering strong discounts for early users.
- tyrw 2y agoBalsamiq is already so cheap. We use it for our business and every time it renews I just think they could be getting 5-10x what they are. That in turn helps drive a better business and product.
- jonwinstanley 2y agoBalsamiq is a per month subscrtiption isn't it? Personally, I need a tool like this once per year or sometimes even less. So if Konty was a one off payment of $20-30 I'd be more inclined to purchase.
- nprateem 2y agoYou should consider a one time, lifetime payment. As a solo dev working on occasional side projects I just wouldn't even consider something on a subscription, and $140 (balsamiq's one time fee) is about $100 more than I'd pay. My alternative is a graphics app I already own. Follow what Affinity did (cheap and one-time) and you'll sell to a lot of people like me who would otherwise give it a miss. Save your subscription tiers for businesses needing more collaboration, SSO, etc. With that strategy as well you'll build brand awareness which will probably ultimately lead to more sales as those solo devs advocate for its use in teams in their day jobs.
- nreece 2y agoLooks good! I wonder if there's a way to combine a simple tool like yours (or Balsamiq, which I've used for many years) with generative AI to create plain HTML/CSS pages from mockups/wireframes. Figma seems bloated, v0 is React/Tailwind only.
- yoz 2y agoTLDraw Make Real - which was initially thrown together by a Figma engineer who added GPT vision to an open source whiteboard app - is remarkably good at this. You can find it at https://makereal.tldraw.com/ https://makereal.tldraw.com/ but the guide there doesn't explain how to get the best out of it. I recommend this article by the TLDraw team which goes into some of the remarkable tricks you can use, and what people have done with it: https://tldraw.substack.com/p/make-real-the-story-so-far https://tldraw.substack.com/p/make-real-the-story-so-far
- rnavi 2y agoMake real tdraw is just amazing. Love it.
- niklauslee 2y agoYes, we are thinking about integrating with AI!
- fleaaa 2y agoFantastic job! EDIT: No linux support :(
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- the_arun 2y agoLooks really cool & easy to use. In Mac, we cannot delete a frame or other objects with "Delete" key after selecting it. We have to right click & select "delete".
- niklauslee 2y agoOh! I'll check it.
- jonwinstanley 2y agoBackspace works for me
- steve1977 2y ago> Don't spend a lot of time and effort creating low-fidelity wireframes. Modern software development in a nutshell
- __bax 2y agoBalsamiq still rocks !
- juliushuijnk 2y agoIf you want to do this kind of thing on your phone, you can try my TinyUx: https://www.tinyux.app/ https://www.tinyux.app/ It has a non-standard UX itself, because of the small screen.
- albertgoeswoof 2y agoSo cool! Do you have an iOS version?
- aloisdg 2y agonice! Is it FOSS? Can I contribute to it?
- antisthenes 2y agoWhy is this on a phone? Are you supposed to draw the UI with your finger or something?
- thebeardisred 2y agoKudos for the wonderful onboarding tutorial. I appreciate that it was a 100% demonstrative process.
- pcranaway 2y agoI love how I just downloaded this, and had the wireframe of my app's main screen built within 3 minutes of me knowing about this piece of software
- steveharman 2y agoWould be nice to see a "push to Figma" option - where a lot of high fidelity work will probably be started, based on wireframes.
- niklauslee 2y agoGood point. Added to our backlog.
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- eashish93 2y agoI like it, it's better than other apps. Reason is it present you a list of all components of left sidebar so we don't have to think of creating it from scratch. Just drag and drop and your work is done.
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- fragmede 2y agolol nice try
- 0OcubmgOM2fM 2y ago[dead]
- monkeydust 2y agoThis is cool, fan of Balsamiq. What I would really like is some alignment/snap feature similar to what you have in MS power point when you put some shapes together and it overlays some lines to help with spacing and gaps.
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- saagarjha 2y agoPsst…you have a typo on one of the images, where it says "Delete from Shopping Card" when it should probably say "Delete from Shopping Cart".
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- probablybetter 2y agono Linux build? (appimage or snap etc? not expecting distro support for proprietary small-shop software)
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- olivierduval 2y agoSomething always bothered me: why using "sketch-like hand-drawn pencil" like style for that kind of tools ? I understand that "wireframing" is some kind of "brainstorming" tool, so it is used with a pencil and a whiteboard in a meeting room and require to draw/erase fast iteratively... so it's the "right" tool for this job... But as soon as you use a computer instead of a pencil, why not have a "realistic" and "clean" look instead of this kind of quick-and-dirty sketch-like style? It's an honest question Is it because designers are most used to this style? Is it because it make more clearly appear the essential points (for example: a list) and avoid discussion like "is this text exactly in this color ?"
- ashildr 2y agoIt’s an abstraction that makes people focus on the part that is relevant for the discussion at hand, and not on implementation details.
- olivierduval 2y ago(to be honest, I find this "pencil-like" look a bit like MS Comics for fonts, ugly and unprofessional... so I really don't understand why designer tool use it so much)
- toyg 2y agoAnybody who's ever been in a few meetings that try to put together stakeholders, designers, and developers, know how it will inevitably descend in painful back and forth about a shade of hue or an icon size. People get distracted by colors and graphics, and fail to provide actual feedback on functionality and layouting - which are the hardest bits to change later. The point of this style is to communicate that it's a rough draft, so that people focus on the essential implementation and functionality requirements, the hard stuff. It's easy to give it a lick of paint later. (It also keeps expectations low, so that the final result will feel like you're overdelivering. But that's just bonus.)
- olivierduval 2y agoFor those "downvoting" this comment, please: I wrote it right after my initial post, before any answer, to make my initial post clearer. I certainly should have added this to the main post. Now that I have all these answers, I understand better. But cant delete or modify this comment. So sadly it's here for eternity :-( Thanks a lot for your insightfull comments to the original post. Actually, I now think that I will use these method to help getting more feedback from users
- dewey 2y agoThe submitted url links to this, still works but just fyi: https://konty.app/http://localhost:4321/ https://konty.app/http://localhost:4321/
- niklauslee 2y agoOops! Is there any way to fix it? I can't find edit button.
- itslennysfault 2y agoIt's weird everything after the slash seems to be ignored. You can type anything and it still goes to the home page. funky.
- trenchgun 2y agoNot sure if it would be out of scope to have support for PlantUML etc programmatic generation
- aloisdg 2y agonice! Is it FOSS? Can I contribute to it?
- JTJTJTJTJTJTJT 2y agoOpening this up and being greeted with the main interface and not a login window or onboarding hit like a sip of Sprite after a year in the desert
- wiradikusuma 2y agoFYI in Indonesian slang* it means penis. * which is also a slang for another slang. Inception!
- patafemma 2y agoWell done! Basic functionality feels pretty smooth and polished. One thing that I found myself very quickly missing: being able to snap shapes to each other or to the grid.
- pentagrama 2y agoThis is great. Let you know that your blog seems that doesn't support RSS. I will like to follow the project there. https://konty.app/blog/ https://konty.app/blog/
- mdaniel 2y agoand while fixing that: this markup is not helping <link rel="canonical" href="http://localhost:4321/blog/">
- wusel 2y agoI thought the connecting arrows were bugged at first, then I realized it's a genius implementation. This alone makes me want to use this more than Figjam.
- chrisvalleybay 2y agoJust a question; I'm seeing so many tools pop up with these kinds of advanced whiteboard functionality, all the tools on the top and the tool palettes on the right. Is there a library or something that's being used to implement all of this? They all look the same. Product looks good, though! Congrats!
- tchock23 2y agoThis is great - thanks for making/sharing it! I use (and like) Moqups, but the lo-fi nature of Konty is really nice. Seems very easy to use and responsive so far.
- jksmith 2y agoDig it. I use Balsamiq all the time. Some challenges when using Wine, so I have to open a cringey Klaus Schwab windows machine. Would be great if this app showed Linux some love.
- warthog 2y agoThis looks amazing
- T3RMINATED 2y ago[dead]
- daverobbins1 2y agoLooks great. Can we get this on homebrew?
- mightyhacker658 2y ago[dead]
- replete 2y agoGomockingbird was the best at this (for my purposes), but they decommissioned and didn't open source it like they said they would. Balsamiq was next best and I use it still, but has a cumbersome user interface with enough friction that it gets in the way. I tried using Excalidraw for a while, for my dislike of using Balsamiq, but for wireframing even with libraries it was too fiddly. Just tried out Konty and it feels like an upgrade to Balsamiq for sure, and is clearly inspired by Excalidraw. Great work
- TuringNYC 2y agoI see the company is based in Asia. I highly recommend considering some branding feedback from westerners. The name of the app will raise eyebrows for many.
- febeling 2y agoWhat are the eyebrow raising connotations you have?
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- DonnyV 2y agoLooking into how this is built. I see they use something called Squirrel.Window for managing installs. I can't believe I've never heard of this until now! https://github.com/Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows https://github.com/Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows. Fastest loading electron app I've ever seen. As a long time user of Ballsamiq. This is FANTASTIC!! Everything is super smooth, nice drawing styling, well thought out. My only problem with Ballsamiq Desktop was the price. I just don't use it enough to pay $150 for 1 license. Something like $60 for desktop would be better. Good luck with the business. I will definitely be using your app. P.S. I just noticed it groups things automatically....HOLY SMOKES! P.S. 2 As a map user. When switching to the pan tool (hand). The scrolling up/down should zoom in/out. P.S. 3 It definitely needs a pdf export option
- groby_b 2y ago"Please download a random binary from a place that doesn't even charge for the binary and seems to be set up yesterday" is... raising my hairs. I'm sure odds are this actually isn't malware, but - I'd think about how to address that fear.
- MaxDorkroom 2y ago[flagged]
- aosaigh 2y agoThis is great. I'm a regular Balsamiq user but prefer the look-and-feel and subtle aesthetic differences in Konty. I'd love some sort of commenting or call-out system on drawings. The "stickies" work well in some cases, but I regularly find that I need to draw attention to certain parts of a design and don't want to have to manually create an arrow with a sticky, or an arrow with text etc. Also, a small frustration, but when deleting items I reach for "del" on the keyboard, which isn't implemented here ("backspace" works though).
- ted_dunning 2y agoThis tool is distressingly delicate. open text. type something. pop up a triangle. modal deadlock.
- CR-MX 2y agoThis is great! congratulations
- hallan 2y agoSubscribed. I’ve used Balsamiq quite a lot in the past and enjoy the freedom of Lo-fi design. I look forward to giving this a go.
- saurabhchalke 2y agoThis is very cool and pretty looking. I would love to see support for XR apps like Meta Quest/Vision Pro.
- Confirm2754 2y agoSkip the endless details, 1px, color anxiety and focus on the overall layout that matters most, this is a very creative and helpful UI design tool.
- jkob_ 2y agoThis is so nice, thank you very much for creating this! <3
- jaylane 2y agoThis is really great. I just used it to do some whiteboarding on a zoom call and it was event a lot more user friendly than miro.
- tritiy 2y agoAm I the only one having issues (Win 11)? - Drag/dropping from the Shapes panel does not work every time - I can not delete an object on the page - New page (+ character next to Pages) just clears existing page Can I report this somewhere?