This quick start guide shows you how to open the editing screen for a project, open a design in the visual editor, and add components to it.

When you sign in to ProtoShare, you see the account overview screen, which looks like this:

Account Overview Screen

Prototypes in ProtoShare are organized into projects, and your account comes with a starter project called “My First Project” for you to use. You can learn more about creating and managing projects in the main user guide.

Click the “My First Project” thumbnail to open it. The project editing screen opens in a new browser tab, and looks like this:

Project Editing Screen and Getting Started Dialog

There’s some really useful information in the Getting Started dialog, so give it a look.

When you’re ready, click the  button at the bottom of the dialog. Clicking this button opens a design for you to start editing. You can re-open this design later by double-clicking the “Home” page.

Most of the project editing screen is devoted to the visual editor, with a small area on the left side listing the pages, designs and library items that make up the project. You can learn more about working with pages, managing designs, and working with library items in the main user guide.

When using the visual editor, you add components to your canvas by dragging them from the component palette, and configure them using the property inspector. The palette and inspector are windows that float above the canvas, and they look like this:

Component Palette (left) and Property Inspector (right) Windows

You can show and hide these windows using the  and  buttons in the toolbar above the canvas.

In addition to a WYSIWYG editor, ProtoShare includes a robust review system to help you quickly iterate on your designs. When you’re ready to share your design, check out the Review Quick Start guide.

Remember: the key to successful prototyping is to share your ideas early to home in on the best ones.