In case you aren’t familiar with wireframing, it’s the process of designing a mockup that acts as a visual guide to the structure of a website or application.  There are a lot of applications, both desktop and online, that let you mockup a design quickly.  Even if you aren’t a designer you may want to play around with these tools if you have a concept for a new website or other application.  This will really help a designer realize  the basic structure  you are looking for.

New to this scene of wireframing mockups is Mockingbird.  A beta online free application that is built on the Objective-J framework, cappuccino. It’s a very nice tool including a nice set of widgets for your disposal.  Also, you can share your mockups with your designer or your client.  It’s fully web based and supports multi-page sites.  Above you can see a simple mockup that took about two minutes with Mockingbird.

Mockingbird isn’t the only free wireframe tool, another great tool is Pencil.  A free prototyping tool that is a that is a plugin for the popular Firefox browser.  With Pencil, you can create complex application mockups, with built-in stencils, multi-page documents, and it’s cross platform.

One more application that is worth noting here is iPlotz.  While it’s not free, except for the 24 hour demo, it is a feature rich application for prototyping.  I personally like the ability to switch between themes, from hand drawn to Mac Leopard theme.  It also supports annotations by your added members.  The toolbox also contains an abundance of tools.

With iPlotz demo you cannot export from their site, but you can take a screenshot when you are done to share with anyone.

Do you have some indispensable tools for wire-framing or creating mockups?  Please leave a comment below.