Browsers and limitations

Contents

Preferred browsers

Wirify runs best on Gecko-based browsers, and reasonably well on Webkit-based ones. Try the latest versions of major browsers in this order:

  1. Firefox
  2. Chrome
  3. Safari
  4. Opera

Internet Explorer is giving us a lot of gray hairs in general, and IE6 is most definitely down for the count.

The generated wireframe is not pixel-perfect and modern web pages with proper semantic mark-up tend to give the best results. The internal algorithm relies on jQuery, which does not always return accurate element dimensions and positions. Wirify produces different results in different browsers.

Limitations and known issues

  • Wirify augments page content and scripts and it may not work correctly or at all on some pages. Some page content may also “show through” the wireframe.
  • Wirify may not work if the web page is not valid HTML, uses an old version of jQuery, or there are JavaScript errors on the page.
  • Not all element types are wirified e.g. divs, background images and elements smaller than 5 x 5 pixels are excluded. This is by design.
  • Any content within an iframe is not included in the wireframe. Pages with frames cannot be wirified.
  • Scrolling and moving the information overlay around can be slow on complex pages.
  • In greeking mode background images are not boxed and non-Latin alphabet not greeked. When closing a greeked page the original page is reloaded and all unsubmitted information such as form input is lost.
  • Clicking on JavaScript dialog Ok/Cancel buttons closes the wireframe on Safari on Windows. Use the Enter or Esc key to acknowledge or close the dialog instead.

Wirify Pro and general wireframe export limitations

  • Headings may not display correctly on all pages using the “Show headings” function
  • Complex pages with high number of page elements or large wireframe data size may not get exported. In this case your Wirify credits are not used.
  • Greeked pages cannot be exported.
  • Wireframe editing is not available on Internet Explorer or Opera at this time.
  • Exported wireframe may not download immediately on Internet Explorer. Go to Internet Options > Security > Custom Level > Downloads and disable “Automatic prompting for file downloads”. You can still access the exported wireframe using Wirify Manager.
  • IE9 can display the following warning under certain circumstances: “Internet Explorer has modified this page to prevent cross-site scripting.” You can ignore this warning.

Wirify Pro and Visio export limitations

  • Visio files are not downloaded correctly in IE when Visio Viewer is installed. Please use another browser.
  • Visio does not support pixels as a measurement unit. Wireframes are scaled at 100 pixels-per-inch, which means that a typical 1,000 pixels wide web page is 10 inches wide in the exported document.
  • Visio text blocks support wrapping but not hiding text overflow. Long headings may display outside their bounding box.
  • The centered “play symbol” in interactive elements is not downscaled for small elements and will display outside the bounding box.
  • Visio files are uncompressed XML and can be fairly large. To save space open the vdx file in Visio first and then save it in the native, compressed vsd format.
  • Visio export has been tested with Visio 2007 and OmniGraffle Pro only. OmniGraffle does not display tiled background images correctly, and element scaling behaviour is different to Visio.

Wirify Pro and Balsamiq Mockups export limitations

  • Balsamiq Mockups 3 update: Please use the Project > Import > BMML Mockups… function to open Wirify wireframes.
  • Image placeholders, interactive elements and input elements are shown using native Balsamiq controls for that “sketchy” look, and therefore the exported wireframe looks slightly different to your Wirify wireframe in the browser. Element locations and dimensions are still the same.
  • Balsamiq Mockups does not allow naming many of the native controls and therefore each page element is exported as a group. The name of the group is the same as the original source element (HTML tag) on the page.
  • Balsamiq Mockups does not support background image tiling and the paragraph graphic can appear vertically stretched depending on the size of the page element.
  • Balsamiq Mockups doesn’t have a similar concept of “layers” as other diagramming tools like OmniGraffle, Adobe Illustrator and Microsoft Visio. All page elements are part of the same single mockup in the exported document.
  • Balsamiq Mockups has a page height limitation of around 4,000 pixels. Wirify Pro will not let you export pages longer than this, as they are not easily editable.
  • Balsamiq Mockups can take a while to load more complex wireframes with lots of page elements.
  • You need to install BalsamiqMockups.cfg to correctly display headings with Unicode characters.

Wirify Pro and SVG export limitations

  • SVG 1.1 does not support automatic text wrapping. All headings are exported as a single line and clipped to bounding box dimensions.
  • Once imported all page elements may be displayed as a single group, depending on the application. Ungroup to edit individual page elements.
  • Adobe Illustrator may display warning such as “Clipping will be lost on roundtrip to Tiny” and “Font Problems: An unknown problem occurred” when importing the SVG document. Typically these can be ignored.
  • Inkscape may not import font definitions correctly.

This page last updated on 8 Aug 2020