Pencil wireframing tool

Pencil is a tool for the stage of webdesign known as wireframing. This is when the layout of the page is decided. It's not meant to be the point when the fancy graphics are decided, rather where they should go and what size they should be.

Pencil is available as an Add-on for Firefox but this download is for the standalone version that works by itself.

It is quick and easy to create template pages by dragging and dropping different objects for the page from the large selection on the left. These objects can be edited so you can personalise the page title with your own text. Images can be inserted or areas marked for images to be added later. Personal collections can be created and there is a new attractive Sketchy UI stencil set.

Pencil 1.2 introduces object snapping, where objects are automatically aligned with other objects on the page. Guidelines appear when this happens so you will know exactly what the object is lining up with. As alignment is so important for design this is a very useful feature, and avoids having to clutter the document with permanent guidelines.

There are plenty of export options once the page has been finished. Pencil can export pages as HTML, Open Office, Word, PNG and PDF.