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Ever since Microsoft released ASP.NET in 2002, web developers have been able to use a powerful platform to build a wide range of web applications and services. But this power comes at a price. Getting started with ASP.NET takes quite some time and effort. Before you can run your first Hello World page, you need to download and install a lot of software, taking up quite a bit of time and bandwidth. You need Visual Web Developer (Express), you need SQL Server (Express or any other version) and you may need IIS if you want to test out more realistic scenarios, some of which require special privileges for the account you use on your machine. Once you have all the tools, the real work begins. My latest book, Beginning ASP.NET 4 in C# and VB needed 803 pages to take you from a developer newbie to a competent ASP.NET web developer.

In other words, you're facing quite some hurdles when you want to start developing web applications on the Microsoft platform, especially if you're a hobbyist web developer.

To make the Microsoft stack more appealing to beginning web developers, Microsoft is introducing WebMatrix.

Over the past couple of weeks I've been reviewing a number of Sketch and Mockup Tools. You can find the complete series here:

• Balsamiq Mockups
• Axure RP Pro
• Microsoft Visio with the 'GUUUI Sketchy GUI Shapes'
• Pencil
• Microsoft Expression Blend 4 + SketchFlow

For now I won't be reviewing any other tools as I haven't worked with them (extensively) enough to say something useful about them. Thanks to everyone who contributed suggestions for additional tools to review.

To close off the series, I'll briefly recap the five tools and give my opinion of the one(s) I liked best.

As a software designer and web developer I usually focus on the back end of web sites and applications and leave the User Interface and UX design to people more knowledgeable. Still, occasionally I have the need to do some sketching and drawing with a customer, for example when designing a web interface or when working on use case documents. While paper and pencil often work fine, they lack durability and the result is hard to share, especially with "digital" clients or clients in a different country. Over the years, I've been working with a number of software design tools to aid me in this process. Since I get asked which tools I use every now and then, I decided to write a short blog series outlining a number of these tools, including Balsamiq Mockups, Axure RP Pro, Microsoft Visio with the 'GUUUI Sketchy GUI Shapes', Pencil, and Microsoft's SketchFlow.

In this series I'll be (re)creating a design mockup for the Management section of my web site with each of the tools, giving you the opportunity to compare their output. You'll find a screen shot of the existing Management section at the end of this article.

Today's tool: Microsoft Expression Blend 4 + SketchFlow

I recently got the chance to review the book .NET Performance Testing and Optimization by Paul Glavich and Chris Farrell published by Simple Talk Publishing. Since I am usually a "performance aware" coder and try to think about performance right from the start, I was looking forward to this book with the hopes to learn a few new tricks, techniques and tools. Having read it now, I am not disappointed.

As a software designer and web developer I usually focus on the back end of web sites and applications and leave the User Interface and UX design to people more knowledgeable. Still, occasionally I have the need to do some sketching and drawing with a customer, for example when designing a web interface or when working on use case documents. While paper and pencil often work fine, they lack durability and the result is hard to share, especially with "digital" clients or clients in a different country. Over the years, I've been working with a number of software design tools to aid me in this process. Since I get asked which tools I use every now and then, I decided to write a short blog series outlining a number of these tools, including Balsamiq Mockups, Axure RP Pro, Microsoft Visio with the 'GUUUI Sketchy GUI Shapes', Pencil, and Microsoft's Sketchflow.

In this series I'll be (re)creating a design mockup for the Management section of my web site with each of the tools, giving you the opportunity to compare their output. You'll find a screen shot of the existing Management section at the end of this article.

Today's tool: Pencil 1.2.

As a software designer and web developer I usually focus on the back end of web sites and applications and leave the User Interface and UX design to people more knowledgeable. Still, occasionally I have the need to do some sketching and drawing with a customer, for example when designing a web interface or when working on use case documents. While paper and pencil often work fine, they lack durability. Additionally, the result is hard to share, especially with "digital" clients or clients in a different country. Over the years, I've been working with a number of software design tools to aid me in this process. Since I get asked which tools I use every now and then, I decided to write a short blog series outlining a number of these tools, including Balsamiq Mockups, Axure RP Pro, Microsoft Visio with the 'GUUUI Sketchy GUI Shapes' stencil, Pencil, and Microsoft's Sketchflow.

In this series I'll be (re)creating a design mockup for the Management section of my web site with each of the tools, giving you the opportunity to compare their output. You'll find a screen shot of the existing Management section at the end of this article.

Today's tool: Microsoft Office Visio 2010.

As a software designer and web developer I usually focus on the back end of web sites and applications and leave the User Interface and UX design to people more knowledgeable. Still, occasionally I have the need to do some sketching and drawing with a customer, for example when designing a web interface or when working on use case documents. While paper and pencil often work fine, they lack durability. Additionally, the result is hard to share, especially with "digital" clients or clients in a different country. Over the years, I've been working with a number of software design tools to aid me in this process. Since I get asked which tools I use every now and then, I decided to write a short blog series outlining a number of these tools, including Balsamiq Mockups, Axure RP Pro, Microsoft Visio with the 'GUUUI Sketchy GUI Shapes' stencil, Pencil, and Microsoft's Sketchflow.

In this series I'll be (re)creating a design mockup for the Management section of my web site with each of the tools, giving you the opportunity to compare their output. You'll find a screen shot of the existing Management section at the end of this article.

Today's tool: Axure RP 5.6.